GPS questions

In article .com,
"peter" wrote:
As a practical matter, I think the Garmin 396 will require ship's power as
well.
It has rechargables that recharge from your 12 v. outlet.

Certainly it would be most convenient to plug it in if that's
available. But with a rated battery life of 5 - 15 hours depending on
backlight use it appears to be usable in rental planes without a
suitable outlet, especially if one brings along an extra charged
battery pack. OTOH, the one hour battery life on the Avmap seems
designed as an emergency backup in the event of an electrical power
failure.


Folks seem to be reporting battery life quite a bit less than 5 hours
when using XM on the 396. And, do you really want to shut down the GPS
in flight, change a battery, and power it back up again? Doesn't seem
too practical to me.

I suspect that you would see much better battery life on the 396 if you
did not use the XM features.



JKG

I highly recommend Garmin. They have GPS figured out and their customer
support is good (I recommend email, but phone works too). Used Garmins
go for a song. Get a black and white screen if you plan on running off
of batteries. ALL the Garmin's are really good. I have a 195. It is
getting a bit old in the tooth, but does pretty much everything I want,
though it does not have terrain height or antennaes on it. The latest
Garmins do that.

Morgans wrote:
"10Squared" wrote

...

Power converters are often the source of much RF noise.
Yes. One of our cell phone rechargers wipes out the AM radio in the
car. The noise is especially noticeable when tuned to a weak station
near the bottom of the dial.

I respectfully disagree with that. I was trying to download a pay-for
database update using Firefox and getting nowhere. I switched over to IE
and had no trouble. This is not common, but it is not unheard of if you
haven't written your web page code properly. Here is the cut and paste
answer I got back:

Thank you for contacting Garmin.

Our aviation database can work with the Firfox (Mozilla) browser. It has
been tested here and has worked you might want to check your proxy settings
otherwise it will work.

Best regards,

I don't call that a "good customer support". Besides lousy grammar and
spelling, it didn't help the customer solve the problem.



Jim




"Doug" wrote in message
ups.com...
I highly recommend Garmin. They have GPS figured out and their customer
support is good (I recommend email, but phone works too).

Repeat after me. A handheld is NOT an aircraft radio. Devices tested to
work with "normal" aircraft radios may or may not work with handhelds. The
designer did not intend the antenna of the radio to be less than a meter
from the device he tested.

A handheld is NOT an aircraft radio. Most of them do NOT have the noise
suppression capability OR the filtering of an aircraft radio.

Jim



"10Squared" wrote in message
.. .
Morgans wrote:



Yeah, that was my reaction. I noticed on my Icom IC-A23 handheld that I
was
getting static on 122.8.

Thomas Borchert wrote:

Do you have any pointers to where I could find this? On their website,
maybe?

Our new Lowrance 2000C arrived this week, terrain is an add-on that will
take place next month, it will be available through their dealers. I
know ours promised us a price lower than what Jay quoted...

He got the best deal on the original purchase though at Oshkosh...

Thank you to all for the tips. I got the Garmin 296. Basis for my decision
was...
- excellent advice that as a neophyte, my weather avoidance should be done
on the ground with FSS, not in the air with satellites (hence the 396 not
required).
- portability (battery power on the 296 vs. Airmap et al)
- resale should I need to upgrade in the future should be easy.

Thanks again to everyone for the insight.

Been playing with the 296 today... cool...


"Jase Vanover" wrote in message
. ..
Background... newly minted PPL, looking to ease navigation via GPS. I
actually find it cool to navigate via maps, compass and timepiece, but I
realize there is a lot more capability out there.

Our new Lowrance 2000C arrived this week, terrain is an add-on that will
take place next month, it will be available through their dealers. I know
ours promised us a price lower than what Jay quoted...

Really? What price are they quoting now for terrain?

If it gets cheap enough, I may actually spring for it. (Even living in
Iowa! :-)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Jay Honeck wrote:

Our new Lowrance 2000C arrived this week, terrain is an add-on that will
take place next month, it will be available through their dealers. I know
ours promised us a price lower than what Jay quoted...


Really? What price are they quoting now for terrain?

If it gets cheap enough, I may actually spring for it. (Even living in
Iowa! :-)

Jay, I've flown with the terrain feature of a GPS. It is a complete
waste of money for a VFR pilot. It's even useless out here where we
actually have terrain. If where you fly there is a lot of antennas and
you often scud run and are dodging these antennas then an obstruction
database may be of some use.

Jay, I've flown with the terrain feature of a GPS. It is a complete waste
of money for a VFR pilot. It's even useless out here where we actually
have terrain. If where you fly there is a lot of antennas and you often
scud run and are dodging these antennas then an obstruction database may
be of some use.

Yeah, we've got the antennas depicted on both the AvMap and the Lowrance
2000c, and they're nice to have.

And some of 'em you don't even need to be scud running to hit. Those danged
things are thousands of feet tall around here!
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"