In article
,
Kevin Black wrote:
Firstly I'm in Australia and VFR. I have a Garmin III Pilot, but am also
about to purchase an iPaq PDA. Rather than upgrade to a colour GARMIN
(296/396) at megabucks I thought I could get similar functionality using
the PDA. Costings seem to be PDA nil (it's a sunk cost I'm going to buy
it anyway), Bluetooth GPS AUS$100 or so on e-bay, and the software
(Anywhere map special US$95 and NavGPS US$290).


You may save some bucks with a PDA-based system, but you will give up
the reliability and accuracy of a purpose-built unit.

As far as I know, most of the PDA-based systems are geared toward the
domestic U.S. market, and I'm not aware of any of the PDA software
vendors who use the Jepp navigation database. In my experience, even
the domestic U.S. data from these companies is fraught with errors and
inaccuracies, so I can't imagine that foreign data would be any better.

A PDA or TabletPC-based system may be a great way to go for backup, but
I wouldn't want to rely on it for anything--ever.



JKG