On Wed, 03 Mar 2021 11:45:36 -0500, Moshe Braner wrote:

On 3/3/2021 10:49 AM, Mike Carris wrote:
On Wednesday, March 3, 2021 at 8:36:11 AM UTC-7, Dan Marotta wrote:
Yeah, and all those 40 year old gliders got badges and records without
any of that fancy stuff. And who doesn't miss the fun of turn point
photos taken out of the sector, or film disallowed because the
processor cut it, balky barographs, etc.? It took more flights but it
was more fun, I think, the diamonds still sparkle!

Dan 5J On 3/2/21 5:54 PM, Moshe Braner wrote:
On Tuesday, March 2, 2021 at 6:26:48 PM UTC-5, nickkennedy wrote:
Len I had a Colibri 2 I really disliked that thing, very difficult
to use unless you have programmer level skills I found out.
Ancient technology.
LXNAV has 3 IGC flight recorders from $480 ,$610 ,$810 The $$610 and
810 have map screens and alot of features along with a logger.
Easy to use and will last forever.
CRAGGYAERO.COM has them at a good price point.
Call Richard, he'll fix you right up.
Nick T

Alas nothing lasts "forever". Funny when people put such faith into
the current models, but when I ask why I can't get factory support
for a 15-year-old model I'm told "what do you expect?" Old mechanical
instruments of good quality did last a long time - e.g., Sage varios.
The Scheumann box in my (originally Kai Gertsen's) HP14 was still
soldiering on after 40 years. Electronics: not so much. Computerized
electronics: designed obsolescence.

A Nano works great and is simple and relatively inexpensive. Connected
to a XCSoar smart phone via BT, gives you everything you need for XC on
any level.


Right, a usable and relatively inexpensive setup. I similarly use FLARM
+ Tophat.

But, after a decade or so the battery keeping the IGC security data
inside the Nano (or FLARM or whatever) will die, and you'll need to have
it officially re-blessed. And even if you don't care about official
badges and records, the loss of settings may force you to replace the
battery - if it's replaceable. And the tiny battery in the GPS module
will eventually die, making it slow in re-gaining a fix, and may lose
necessary settings. And that battery may not be replaceable. And the
main power battery inside the Nano (or any other unit) will die, and may
or may not be user-replaceable. And there may or may not be factory
support.

Batteries, can't live with them, can't live without them.

Something I found out the hard way, back when the Garmin GPS 2+ was
pretty much the bees knees of GPSunits:

As Moshe says, a lot of these devices have a tiny, non-rechargeable coin
cell soldered into them whose job is to keep the memory holding setup
values alive while you're replacing the AA cells or have the NiMH cells
out for a recharge.

No matter what cells they use (Alkalines, NiMH of Lithium) almost all of
them, unless they have a mechanical ON/OFF switch will, slown discharge
their batteries even on apparently switched off, because the neat touch
to power on/off switch uses battery while waiting to sense the next ON
command. if you leave it over winter without periodic recharging this
will destroy their main rechargeables by running them flat. Worse still,
once the main batteries are fully discharged the coin cell, if fitted
will be drained as well, so you'll loose all
your settings *AND* wil have to junk the device if you can't find anybody
to replace the coin cell.

So, keep a beady eye on the charge state of your toys and make sure you
recharge them before the charge state becomes 'red'.

This way you won't need to replace any fully discharged and ruined NiMH
or Lithium rechargeables and/or have to replace the device of you can't
find somebody to replace the dead. soldered-in batteries.

I've been there and done that. Had a GPS II+ flatten its coin cell and
die because I didn't know what I've just written: fortunately it was
*just* inside guarantee (and one of a batch that had duff coin cells) so
I got this stuff explained to me when Garmin replaced the coin cell.

I still own usable Garmin GPS IIs, but only because they have always had
good AA Alkalines, replaced as needed, in them since the 1990s, they
still remember which GPS epoch this is: if they ever forget that due to
no AA cells fitted and a consequential dead coin cell, they'll become so
much unusable junk.

Both my EW Microrecorder (flight logger) and the Medion PNA I run LK8000
on get regularly recharged during the winter.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org