Garmin 296 worth the money?

C J Campbell wrote:
: But, if you have a 295 already, is it worth upgrading to the 296? The 296
: has somewhat better battery life, but uses a proprietary battery. If you
: already have a 295, the question is the 296 really worth $1700 more than the
: 295? I don't think so, not by a long shot. In fact, if you have a 196 it
: probably is not worth upgrading to the 296. The 296 is not worth $1700 more
: than the 196.

I have a 295 and concur.

: The 296 should have full approaches in it, not just the final approach
: segments. Sure, it is not certified for IFR flight, but it would be a fine
: emergency backup tool in the event of the loss of primary aircraft systems.
: Garmin obviously has chosen not to include full approaches for several
: reasons:

Until about 18 months ago, the 295 had full GPS approaches in it. When the
GPS approach into 1B9 was changed, I updated my 295. Lo and behold, the
approach was gone, leaving only one IAF and the FAF. It appears that Garmin
or Jeppesen removed all intersections that are not either (1) on the en-route
charts, or (2) the closest IAF and the FAF of an approach.

: One other argument, that the 296 does not have the memory to include IFR
: procedures, might also be valid, except there is no excuse for putting such
: a small memory in GPS units in the first place. For the money manufacturers
: charge for them, the things ought to have a gigabyte of memory.

My 8 year old Northstar M3 has all of the GPS approaches, intersections,
NDB, VOR, airports, and all of the appropriate frequencies for the US on its
2 MB data card (it does not contain SID/STAR, you have to generate those
manually in a flight plan). The excuse that the 296 can't hold the approaches
because of memory size is just that: an excuse.

--
Aaron Coolidge (N9376J)