New Garmin 396

"Jonathan Goodish" wrote

You will still have at least two cables running from the GPS: one for
power and one for the antenna.

Garmin is claiming 5 to 10 hours battery life. Scratch one cable. (use
rechargeable NiMH, and most likely increase the run time)

Many have said their 295 gets great reception with no external antenna, when
mounted on the dash, or even the yoke. Scratch second power cable.

Looks like no cables to me, are possible.

I guess if you want to use the XM music output function, you will use one
cable, to go to the intercom, or earphones.
--
Jim in NC

Jonathan Goodish wrote:
In article 1120746983.96c8ea236aee82fdb45a0f6f90deb804@teran ews,
"Richard Kaplan" wrote:
forums to give me pause
about whether I want to mess with such things while flying. Here, the
Garmin approach wins, and solidly.

That is absolutely true... not to mention no dealing with power cables,
bluetooth, configuring windows, etc. etc.

GPS with a competing software product. As someone else pointed out, you
will have a $2500 paperweight when the a new version with new
capabilities is released, if you want those new capabilities. And, as

It's been my impression that as serious capability upgrades are
introduced to the PDA software, the hardware requirements grow with it.
As a result, if you bought a PDA solution 3 years back, and wanted to
upgrade the software now, wouldn't you find yourself upgrading the PDA
too? (And the GPS if, say, you wanted a WAAS unit) Of course, actual
cost might still be lower since they sell 25 PDAs for every 1 Garmin
GPS.

As far as interfacing for TIS display, I wonder for how much longer this
will be a useful feature? Has anyone been able to confirm the reported
plans to start turning down TIS sites? I'm not sure that I'd invest in
a GTX330 at this point with TIS on its way out, but if you have one
already, it's certainly a selling point.

This is the first I've heard of such rumors, though I'm not in the
know. Is the plan to replace TIS with ADS-B? I'm surprised to hear
something so (relatively) new going out so fast. We're still using
NDBs, ferchrissakes.

Still, this opens up a new front in the old game of, "what will Garmin
think of next?"

The only remaining thing the current technology would support would be
some kind of solid-state backup AI. Nice, but (1) serious liability
issues and (2) only of interest to IFR pilots, which is a much smaller
group than the current gizmos attract. I therefore bravely speculate
that we won't see this anytime soon.

The real big next step will be portable ADS-B. Traffic, terrain, and
weather, all in one unit. I'm guessing $5000 or so, and it would be a
steal even at that price.

-cwk.

Jonathan Goodish wrote:

That all being said, Garmin produces a very good, polished navigation
system that is hard to beat--in my opinion, none of the PDA-based
software products does navigation as cleanly.

That's true, but I still want a feature available via the PDA route and not
via the Garmin route: a backup AI. But then I fly club airplanes with 430s
installed, so when I think "handheld GPS" I'm thinking "backup"...and I
want as much backup as possible.

- Andrew

wrote:
So... just got an email from Sportys about the new Garmin GPSMAP 396.

It looks pretty cool! A handheld with weather and terrain!

Also interesting are the interface features to get TIS from a GTX330

Here's a question for the propellerheads out the does TIS rely on a
Mode S squawk originating from the aircraft, or is it theoretically
possible to have a Mode S receiver-only? It would be nice to get
traffic without neding to upgrade your transponder, though this thing
is a brilliant way to get many people to do that upgrade without
needing to also go in for a 430/530 rig to get the value.

Ah, but alas, products like this make me yearn for IFR approaches in a
handheld. If only....

The FAA already approves of devices like this as situational awareness
devices. At this point I am coming close to concluding that the failure
to include approaches constitutes a major loss of added awareness and
thus compromises the potential of the device to enhance safety. What do
we need to do to get Garmin et. al. to include them?

wrote

devices. At this point I am coming close to concluding that the failure
to include approaches constitutes a major loss of added awareness and
thus compromises the potential of the device to enhance safety. What do
we need to do to get Garmin et. al. to include them?

All the Garmin portables since the 195 do have final approach segments for
all IFR approaches; that is a huge help in terms of situational awarenes.

--------------------
Richard Kaplan

www.flyimc.com

wrote:
I wonder, though, will it really be able to download from the
satellites with the little antenna? I currently own a 196 and with the
built-in antenna it often has a hard time getting a lock on the GPS. I
might guess that the requirements to download the weather data (which
is a lot more data than GPS) would be higher.

I have had a 196 for nearly 3 years and have never had a problem
getting or keeping a GPS lock. I don't even bother using the suction
cup window-mounted antenna; the little flip-up one works just fine from
the yoke mount in my Warrior.