GPS reviews

[FREDSIMTH]

I'm looking to buy a GPS system, and I'm interested in getting some opinions on the Lowerance range ( 500, 1000 & 2000 ) and the new garmin's 96 and 96c.

[FREDSIMTH]

Come on Guys / girls. Someone must have an opinion

[Mariner9]

GPS pros/cons/model reviews/preferences/databases/ etc have been discussed ad nauseum on here. Try the search function, you should find everything you need.
eg: Lowrance (http://www.pprune.org/forums/search.php?searchid=157935)

[IO540]

Buy the biggest colour screen moving map GPS you can afford. That's what a GPS is for: superior situational awareness. End of story.

If you want something which will give you the lat/long (for when you are floating in the life raft and calling the coastguard on the mobile phone) get a £100 GPS from a camping shop :O

Get a remote aerial for it, attached to the top of a window with a suction cup.

Other than that, it's a personal preference. Personally, when I was renting, I used to prefer leg-strapped units, and most Garmins can't be used like that.

Today I would buy the Avmap EKP IV - not cheap. It's sold by various pilot shops in the UK including www.flightstore.co.uk. Not cheap but very good.

The next factor would be whether you want to use flight planning software, and for Europe Navbox is by far the #1 choice, and you may wish to be able to load the planned route straight into the GPS. Unfortunately Navbox doesn't support the Avmap...

Having said all this, most people asking this question don't have the budget.

[Julian]

IO,

Got the AvMap myself, its a bl00dy good piece of kit and can fault the display.

The menu system takes a while to find your way around but that just takes a bit of playing. Swapping between flightplans can also be a bit of a pain.

Dont bother with the European distributor - which if I remember correctly is in Italy - as they will charge you about £1200. I rang AvMap direct in the US and got it for about £600. I also bought the European database and the extra battery pack.

Julian.

[FullyFlapped]

Guys, I'm interested in one of these for flights into Europe. How do you keep the navdata up to date ? Would I have to buy (yet another!) Jepessen subscription, and if so, which one ?

FF :ok:

[stuartforrest]

Julian

I would love to have a look at one of these. I agonised over various options to change my 196 for and ending up plumping for the 296 which is very good and I am not unhappy with it but I cant help feeling the screen is not large enough.

Is there any chance I could get a look at yours if you know what I mean. Where are you based.

Any chance you can email any photos if I gave you my address. Its really hard to imagine the scale of this device.

I tried speaking to the distributor who was useless and this put me off a bit. Also nobody had them in stock to look at.

I would still change my 296 for one of these if I liked it better.

[IO540]

Julian

Very interesting.

I looked into this unit in some detail recently. If you buy it in the USA, you need to spend a fortune (about 400 quid) to get the Euro database afterwards. It's a right con, a nice cartel, and not unexpected given that the US enroute and terminal charts are all free (and geo-referenced, so with a pocket/pc or Windows Tablet device you can run them under Oziexplorer) so Jepp can't rip people off for the US data as much as they can rip off the rest of the world.

I also never established if the two databases can co-exist. This won't bother most Euro pilots.

The unit is very poorly supported. You can email avmap.it and you may get a reply the same month. If you are very lucky, the moron might have even read past the first line of your email. None of the Euro dealers I contacted know any detail, like the update process, the update pricing, the pricing structure for different update frequencies, the ability (if any, and I believe there isn't any) to load different data into it, etc. The mapping data comes from a big map data marketing outfit called Cmap, which appears to own (or be associated with) Avmap.it. Cmap have done a deal with Jepp for the standard Jepp aero database, like everybody else does nowadays.

The unit was well marketed in the USA, where there is a proper setup for database updates etc. But even then, none of the dealers know anything about it...

It's a pity because this is the best GPS on the market, IMV.

It's probably OK because a handheld isn't going to be used for approaches :O so one might update the database say once a year. At Jepp prices, you won't want to do it more often!

The main downside is that there is no flight planning software that supports it. Loading PC-planned flight plans into a GPS avoids the principal gross error modes. And, for Europe, there is just one FP software that's relevant: Navbox. The other properly updated solution is Flitestar, bloated, much more expensive and very few UK PPLs use it, and it doesn't support the Avmap either.

The trouble is that, at this price range, you are close to buying an LS800 tablet and loading something like Flitemap onto it... except that Jepp have recently dropped Flitemap. The Yanks have it good :O

[Julian]

FF - I think the extra Db was roughly $100, probably about 12 mths ago.

Stuart - I can email pics at weekend if you PM me with your email address and I can find my digital camera! However, its about the size of an A5 book (Maybe a little bit bigger!). The screen is very clear and you can even read it in turbulence which is a bit of a problem with the smaller screens.

IO540 - The US also does the European database as I ordered it all in one package from them. They are on a card and the unit I have has two card slots in the top, very easy to swap over.

If you PM me I have just checked my phone and have to phone number of Avmap I used when I ordered it, not sure what the guys name was though!

YOu are right that it is poorly supported and a lot of people look at you blanked faced when you tell them what you are using. The other -ve I forgot is that the flight planning software you get with it is absolute pants!

Julian.