John Doe wrote:
Hi All,
I am looking for some advice on a palm nav setup,
my situation is this:
I don't own a glider, I fly club gliders, so I can't
rely on a glider having a particular wiring setup,
I already have a modern Garmin GPS, and am looking
to create a glider independent setup to switch between
gliders as needed. I've been looking at old r.a.s
threads and have sort of come to the conclusion that
an iPaq 36/3800 is what most people like, has anyone
tried running these off batteries other than the glider?
Does anyone else have any experience with this sort
of setup? Budget is quite limited (so =A32000+ pieces
of equip are out of the question ;-) )

Any help greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Jamie Denton

p.s. to contact me directly, use the form on www.deviantpenguin.co
uk as the email address above is completely fake



Jamie:

I'm in the same situation as you--needing a gps/nav setup that can be
moved between club gliders without tapping into the glider's battery.
I use a Palm OS PDA--the Tungsten T (140 mhz processor, good screen,
compact with relatively low power consumption, no longer in production
but available on ebay for less than $100) in a compact Palm "battery
sled" ($50 from Palm) for over ten hours of run time. I use a
bluetooth GPS, so I don't have to fuss with wires ($100 on ebay) and I
run SoaringPilot on the PDA--it's free from soaringpilot.org.
Soaringpilot is comprehensive (wind calculation, STF, etc) and includes
GPS-derived AGL capability if you load it with the appropriate terrain
data. The moving map and final glide screens are easy to read and
intuitive (track up, reachable airports turn to bold letters, etc). The
only item I wished SoaringPilot had was topo information on the moving
map. I mount the PDA in its sled on a two-suction cup radar detector
mount with velcro. As long as you keep the suctions cups clean they
don't fail. You could also epoxy the battery sled to a RAM mount with
an adjustable arm and a giant suction cup, though I wonder whether the
RAM suction cup, such as the one sold through Cumulus-Soaring, is too
large (4 inches) for the curved surfaces of a glider canopy. If you go
the Palm OS route you won't have any other software choices down the
road--everything else is written for MS-based pdas. Neither will you
be able to use a Palm pda for downloading IGC logs from a legal logger
using ConnectMe, though, of course, SoaringPilot has its own non-IGC
approved logger and support for transfer to a PC. The screen shot of
SoaringPilot on Paul Remde's site is from an old B&W Palm--the screen
on the Tungsten is white, and the graphics are mostly black with
tracklines, sua boundaries and whatnot in color.

Kevin Parker