"Jose" wrote in message
om...
There
is no proof at all for the claim that some straightforward math
calculations
in any GPS software is going to to double the cost of the GPS.

Have you ever written software?

I have managed at least three teams commercially on four projects in the
last 10 years, and at least two of those projects had over 200K lines of
code. So I guess that would be a yes.


If it prevents one death that results in a multi-million dollar lawsuit,
it
would payback the one man-month of work it might take to do those
calculations in software 100 fold or more.

It is actually more likely to =cause= a death - to a pilot who decides
to rely on a handheld because it has RAIM.

First, the pilot shouldn't be using the handheld in IMC unless he got there
during an unplanned emergency and primary instruments failed. Your
position appears to be that any non-FAA certified tool should be
deliberately crippled in order to make sure that pilots don't cheat and try
to use the instrument during IFR flight or during an emergency flight into
IMC? By that logic, we should just stop all technological development,
because God forbid that someone innovates and makes something that is
actually precise, useful, and more advanced than what is already in the
cockpit?

Once the pilot is in an emergency condition, how do you figure that the
pilot is better off following a GPS trace in complete ignorance of the fact
that it is inaccurate by thousands of feet? Since when is (optional)
knowledge a bad thing?

In any case, if someone deliberately takes an uncertified instrument and
uses it as a primary instrument in IFR, they are violating the rules and I
guess they are responsible for their own bad behavior.

--
Will