Garmin GPSMAP 196

[Holdposition]

If anyone has used a 196 in anger would appreciate feedback on views etc, am thinking of purchasing one and wonder how they compare to the skymap by Bendix. I have read that the database is either not quite up to scatch re VFR details on 1/2m charts or a bit clutterd. Many thanks for any imput:)

[Ludwig]

Holdposition, I splashed out on a 196 a month or so back and have used it in anger. It was as a replacement for a Garmin 90 so I bought it because I knew my way around Garmin.

It's brill. The map is as cluttered or uncluttered as you like and can be scaled in an out. To give you an idea, I can fill the entire screen with the width of a runway at one extreme and see all of northern Europe at the other. The CDI and map combined on the same page are excellent and you can set other data fields to give running info that you find useful. I have time to next waypoint, distance to run ground speed and bearing, but there is a host of others.

The options are seemingly endless.

There is a page that gives you in effect an IFR panel with a VSI, altimeter, ASI CDI and DI and a sort of AH. I have flown around for half an hour with sole reference to these instruments (with a safety pilot of course) and they work. Might get you out of the pooh one day, but not a replacement for proper dials.

In addition to a normal aviation database it has towns and village, which you can use as waypoints, and the usual go to buttons. For airfields with a Jeppeson plate it is, I think, meant to be able to configure itself as an ILS, but I have yet to get that bit sorted. It has the usual 3d navigation facilities.

Aside from the aviation stuff it has a road map so you can use it to navigate in the car (not quite to street level) and a Marine database. Not used that because going to see in far too dangerous for my liking! Also has tide table, celestial databases and something to tell you the best times to go hunting and fishing!

The bits that come with it are useful, the aerial is on a decent length of wire, as is the faglighter power lead and some computer cable thingy which looks too complicated for me. If you have already got a Garmin power lead in your a/c it will work on the 196.

It seems to last about 6 or 7 hours on 4 Duracell type AA batteries and the satellite gain time is seconds. It has never lost the satellites whilst I have used it. Even in the car with the Arial stuck on the windscreen it still worked whilst under the canopy in the petrol station!

You may get the impression I am pleased with it. You would be wrong, I think it’s ******ing amazing.

BTW I have nothing to do with Garmin but would be pleased to receive usual agency rates for this eulogy!

[EGNTpilot]

Holdposition,
for your info there is a a 2 page review of the 196 in the Nov issue of Pilot magazine. Hope this may help.

Steve

[Fly Stimulator]

I agree with Ludwig - the 196 is a great little device.

I've had mine for just over two months now and it has guided me on various journeys from London to places including Mulhouse, La Rochelle, Jersey, Scotland and numerous local trips without missing a beat.

The information on airfields is quite useful - on one occasion I was gettting no reply from Cherbourg on the frequency listed in the 2002 Pooleys, so looked it up in the Garmin and found a different one listed which did the trick.

The on-screen text is quite small, so you'll need to mount it somewhere close to you. It does come with a range of mounts included in the box, which makes a nice change from some others where you have to pay extra. Likewise for the computer interface cable.

Several software revisions have already been released which you can download and apply. I think that 2.04 is the latest.

The airspace maps are OK, and you can declutter the screen to throw boundaries into sharper relief. It does not seem to display ATZ boundaries within a MATZ, or MATZ stubs which is a bit of a drawback sometimes. It would be nice to have a colour version, but the greyscale display it pretty good, and has adjustable backlighting.

The extended runway centreline chevrons are something which I find useful when approaching my destination.

The process for entering your own waypoints from the map display is not as intuitive as the Skymap, and it lacks the handy little textual location display (e.g. "2.5 miles NW of Southampton") but you can buy that sort of thing separately.

I get about the same battery life as Ludwig.

I have used it in the car, but only to play around with rather than to really get me somewhere. It seemed to work pretty well, and comes up with proper driving instructions with road numbers. You can add Metro Guide cards to it so that it has detailed navigation instructions, but I haven't bothered with that.

It has quite a handy flight log feature, and you can download a little log book program from the Garmin web site which will pull data from the GPS into the log on your computer.

There's also an 'E6B' computer function which works out TAS and winds aloft for you if you enter OAT and IAS etc.

Overall I'm very happy with it. The main thing I'd really like is colour, but no doubt that would take the price over the £1,000 mark.

[strake]

I bought a Pilot 3 a few months ago and was a bit dissappointed at first. Couldn't see the screen properly, fiddly controls etc. Now, having purchased the Yoke mount accessory and flown about 20 hours with it, I think it's great. Until, that is, I read about the 196 and saw the review in Pilot. Now I want one a 196...right now in fact! OK, I admit it, I'm a technology victim...:mad:

A question to those fortunate enough to own a 196...does it have the "air-roadmap" screen similar to Pilot 3? I find that easier to use than the normal map screen as it is less cluttered and makes following the track a wheeze....

[Ludwig]

Strake, No.

[Min Sink]

I'm seriously thinking about buying a 196 but I've heard various things about Garmins and Class-A airspace (or rather the lack of it). Can anyone confirm what the situation is with the 196, all the specs I can find only mention Class B, C & D.

Thanks
DG

[Crossedcontrols]

Does it have the flux gate compass, and pressure sensing altimeter like the posh etrex. And how does it do the turn indicator ?
CC

[Fly Stimulator]

Min Sink

Mine certainly has Class A on it - I've just fired it up again, and sure enough, the London TMA and Channel Islands zones are all still there!

As I mentioned before, what it doesn't have is MATZ stubs or any indication of the ATZ within a MATZ.

Crossedcontrols

I can't comment on the flux gate compass. What does one of those look like :confused:

My guess is that the turn co-ordinator works by looking at the rate of change of direction and the aircraft speed and computing what bank angle would be required to produce that rate of turn. I can't see how it would be able to work with airspeed, only groundspeed, so its accuracy must be limited. In extremis though, it would be a lot better than nothing.

[Crossedcontrols]

The etrex summit hand held GPS for walkers has a pressure sensor for the altimeter, because GPS is not to accurate for altitude, and it also has an electronic compass so you can see direction when you are stood still or can't see the sats. I just wondered if your gizmo used other devices other than GPS to derive the other functionshttp://www.garmin.com/products/etrexsummit/spec.html (http://)

CC

[Holdposition]

Thanks for all the input folks, sound in general a cracking bit of kit and I think will go for one. Was thinking of the colour skymap but the greyscale on this product does seem to be quite effective and along with all the features seems the dogs bollocks! once again many thanks.


EGNT: Cheers for the info, I had read the report which I feel isn't quite as deep as it could be, so the input here is appreciated all the more.

[skydriller]

As my Pilot Mag has yet to wing its way down to France (isnt there another thread going about this..:rolleyes: ) I am also pleased to hear everyones comments about the Garmin 196, as I was edging towards getting one too. I would like to ask if there is anything any of you dislike about it, Fly Stimulator mentioned MATZ, but we dont have those down here in France.

Something we do have alot of though is Class E airspace and restricted areas - especially around here - is this included on it?

Regards, SD.

[MR TEDDY]

Crumbs, what a lot of responses in such a short space of time!

Thanks for all the info so far folks. It looks like the 196 is getting the biggest backing at the moment. Can any of you tell me if it has the position reporting text which is something I would really like?

Cheers,
Mr Teddy.

[Fly Stimulator]

Hi http://www.kidsdomain.com/icon/teddybear/7.gif,

No, the 196 doesn't have the "2.5 miles W Milton Keynes" type text display that the Skymap does. That's a slight shame, but, having used both, on balance I think that the runway centreline display, the panel display, and the fact that you can use the 196 for road navigation as well in land mode, more than makes up for that.

PS - not that short a space of time; look at the year on the first posts above! ;)

[dmjw01]

The 196 is great - I recommend it thoroughly. One of the things I preferred when I compared it with the 295 is the speed of redraw - much faster than the 295.

Very important point: It is absolutely vital that you visit the Garmin website and download the latest database. In older versions, the representation of airspace is not to be trusted. This is improved if you do a database update (although you still need to be careful and obviously use your chart as primary reference). Doing a download is easy with the cable supplied, and you should find a voucher in the box that entitles you to a free download. It only took me about 15 minutes to upgrade both the software and the database.

Do not assume that your 196 will have the latest database when you take it out of the shrink-wrap. It will have been sitting in Transair (or wherever) for several months.

FlyStim... I assume you've done a database upgrade since your post above (if not then you'll also need to upgrade your software before you can upgrade the database... the software version is 3.20 now). You'll be pleasantly surprised about the MATZ stubs, and the size and shape of some ATZ's has been corrected as well.

[Fly Stimulator]

Quite so.

We seem to have the slightly confusing situation of both the old and the new thread running in parallel now. On the other one, I made the same point as you have just done:
My comment in it about the Garmin databases not showing MATZ stubs etc is no longer relevant - Garmin fixed that problem earlier this year.

[Jepp]

Just a quick comment,

I have had a 196 for some time now and I absolutaley love it ! apart from one thing........ the automatic logbook !!!!!!! I dare not use this function, it records TOTTALY inaccurate times and records upto 4 of 5 landings on a single trip ! ( no my landings are not that bad )

Anyone else noticed this ?

[eharding]

Jepp - yes, I've noticed mutiple take-off & landings in the flight log.

Does anybody else have a problem with the yoke mount? - fits
fine on the older PA28-161s (White Waltham), but the newer
examples have more "chunky" yokes which the 196 mount
doesn't fit over.

I've found the audible alarm bleep a bit weedy in the air - but a
great little bit of kit.

[dmjw01]

Yep - I get 4 or 5 landings per flight as well. At first I thought it was criticising the quality of my touchdowns. ;)

However, I notice from the Garmin 196 software update page (http://www.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?product=010-00301-00) that one of the changes from version 2.07 to 3.00 is "Improved takeoff detection to correct the landings count in the automatic flight log".

I'll have to try downloading that and see if it fixes the problem. I'm currently running version 2.07 I think.

I thought of a great improvement Garmin could make as well. Why not include an audio output that could plug into an empty microphone jack - say on the P2 side. Then you'd hear the alarm beep through your headset.

[Edited about 15 minutes later]
Well, I've downloaded the software. Will let you know if it's an improvement next time I fly. Now if I could just get rid of this rotten stinking lousy cold... :(

[Jepp]

dmjw01

I thought that downloading that update would cure the problem...... it in fact made the number of landings worse !!!!!

garmin really do need to sort this one out, as this is one of the main/unique features of this GPS that they advertise.

[Fly Stimulator]

True enough - I'm on 3.10 and my last three arrivals have been recorded as 2, 2 and 4 landing respectively. They didn't feel quite as bouncy as that to me!

[drauk]

My 196 always records a single landing as just 1. As I understand it it works by detecting speed above a certain threshold, presumably with some hysteresis in the algorithm to avoid logging dozens of landings due to a a bit of speed wavering. Other GPS systems allow you to set this threshold, but on the 196 this is not an option.

Are people that are seeing multiple landings logged for each real landing flying very slow planes in strong headwinds or doing aerobatics?

As for the original discussion, I think the 196 is excellent. Its ground use capabilities are overrated in my opinion - an iPAQ or similar with a Bluetooth GPS makes a great road navigator. As I've said before my favourite setup is a 196 and an iPAQ with CAA charts and Memory-Map software.

[skydriller]

Further to my post from last year, I have since bought a Garmin 196, and all I can say is that it is the dogs whatsits!!

The Extended centerlines are really useful, as is the panel page, and the ability to put in your own danger spots/areas with warning zone – very useful with all the TRAs springing up like a rash over France this last summer.

I have also used it in the car, and it helped me no end when trying to find my way around Paris when half of it was closed off one weekend over the summer, and also on trips to Holland/ Spain.

A mate has just bought a Yacht and I will undoubtably get the chance to try it out in marine mode soon……

The only thing is…. Garmin did have some errors in their aviation database software for europe back in April after all the new 2003 maps came out, I got my download from their website around this time, and noticed some errors, which I emailed them about. They then sent me a free download voucher for the next few months databases. By June/July update(my lastfreebee!) all the errors were fixed and I have yet to find any discrepancies so far….
…..also, it doesn’t show railways, useful in Europe.

But I still think its great.

Regards, SD..



BTW, I notice that my earlier post from last year says that I have not yet registered, that I don’t have any posts and that I am a guest?

What happened??
:confused: :confused: :confused:

[Fly Stimulator]

druak,
Are people that are seeing multiple landings logged for each real landing flying very slow planes in strong headwinds or doing aerobatics? I had wondered about this too, given that my CT does have a very low approach speed (50-55kts over the numbers) but the same thing happens in the SR20 (70-75kts over the numbers). In fact, my record of five 'Garmin landings' was in the SR20 at Beaune. I even have the video to prove that that one was in reality a greaser!

Never done any aeros in either type!

[dmjw01]

Well, I said I'd give an update on whether that software upgrade solves the multiple landing problem....

I upgraded to V3.20 and almost immediately noticed a glaring bug - "Edit on map" didn't allow you to select lines in your route and "rubber-band" them. A couple of days later I went back to the Garmin site to see if they have a bug report form, and noticed a new version of software which said it fixed a fault with manual route editing. Installed that (V3.30), and presto!

Took a day trip to Duxford today. It says I did one landing at Duxford, and one landing when I returned to Redhill. Things are looking good!

[bar shaker]

Thanks dmjw :)

I hadn't used mine since upgrading to 3.20, so didn't see the bug. Now running 3.30:ok: