COMPARE THIS ULTIMATE PANEL

Guy Byars wrote:
The panel in my glider is the ultimate in sunlight readability, low
power consumption, ease of use, low maintenance, low clutter and low
cost.

http://www.gfbyars.com/SGU1-20/final/P1010425.JPG

If you want to see terrain features, look out the window. If you want
to know where you are, look at your map.

Apparently, I'm buying my maps at the wrong sto my paper maps show
where everything is EXCEPT me! Bummer. Where do you get paper maps that
show where YOU are?

If you want to know how far
you are from the turnpoint, put your ruler on the map and measure.

Did that for 20 years, and it sucks. And by that I mean it's inaccurate
(see above comment), it's slow, it's awkward, and I still don't know how
much altitude I need, which is what I REALLY want to know. Doesn't show
me runway width, either, and don't get me started on how "great" a paper
map is for avoiding airspace incursions.

If you want to mess with computers, USB input devices and VGA
displays, why not just stay at the office.

If you are messing with those things in flight, you're doing it wrong. I
"mess" with the map on the computer, not the computer. The computer
handles the real "messing" by measuring the distances and calculating
the altitude required so I don't have to.

Here's a feature not available on the paper maps at all. In the olden
days, I'd mark about 20 or so uncharted strips, and 20 or so good fields
on my map. When I bought a new map, I'd have to laboriously copy them to
the new map. And, I still didn't have the elevation or any comments
about the landing place. With my PDA, it's just a separate file that
gets loaded in whenever I load a new map database, no effort on my part.
Also, the file is easy to keep up to date as the duster strips and
landout fields change, plus it has comments about the place.

Go back to paper maps? I think I'd rather drop a wing tip during assembly!

This was a troll, right? Kinda early for winter cabin fever...

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA
* Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

* "Transponders in Sailplanes" http://tinyurl.com/y739x4
* Sections on Mode S, TPAS, ADS-B, Flarm, more

* "A Guide to Self-launching Sailplane Operation" at www.motorglider.org