Which magenta line to follow?
In my small aeroplane I usually carry a Garmin Aera 500 and an Airspace Aware.
The Airspace Aware has a non upgrading UK map overlaid by a free to upgrade set of airspace restrictions which give a helpful warning a little bit before you bust anything that gets officialdom excited. The unit was cheap, cheerful and a bit clunky but has been very helpful. The airspace warnings work over some of Europe despite the mapping only being UK, I know they were still helping out all the way into Spain.
The Aera 500 is a fully fledged navigation aid. State of the art in 2010. It has much of Europe covered by its mapping and gives warnings for terrain and obstacles. The mapping, obstacles and terrain databases are separately upgradable. The maps can be updated periodically, up to 12 times a year, at a cost of about £30 a go. It has a built in database of airfields with their pertinent information including the radio frequencies used. The unit is robust and well designed for its purpose. It fits onto a secure mount and mates with 18 gold spring contacts in substantial bracket. It will stand being dropped into wet grass and chucked into a kitbag with my headphones etc. It has never failed to work perfectly. It is also protected from ingesting any viruses.
With the advent of 8.33kHz radios the validity of the frequencies at UK airfields has become useless, they are changing at a faster rate than I can justify buying the updates. In addition to this I have just been reminded that the map data in my unit is dated September 2017 and is due for a refresh, the European obstacles database is from 2011. I am always "should I, shouldn't I?" with the obstacles as I am not in the habit of low flying and, being VFR only, can usually see any obstacles that might affect what I want to do. The terrain doesn't change enough to worry about!
Things have moved on a bit.
I have been mulling over binning one or both of my Nav aids in favour of going down the SkyDemon route. The obvious benefits of SkyDemon are more frequent database updates, the capacity to do flight plans and GAR submissions when intending going over the water, some measure of inflight info reception (depending upon which device I choose to run the software on) and the option to use a Pilot Aware to put flying traffic collision dangers onto the moving map display. The first of several downsides is the subscription cost for the software. It is expensive compared to the single annual Garmin update I do but cheap compared to the more frequent Garmin update I probably ought to do. To use SkyDemon I will probably need to buy a new tablet and some mounting hardware. I have yet to find a tablet that is engineered to stand the rough and tumble of my flying environment. The USB power/data cables and connectors all seem a bit flimsy, I worry that they might be short lived. There is next to no protection against malicious software messing with the navigation reliability.
So, am I doing the right thing?
If I go down the SkyDemon route should I keep the Garmin unit as a backup? (if I do I will feel compelled to update it annually just in case....). Should I keep the Airspace Aware unit? (it is basically free to keep current but does use up panel space). I will be installing a Pilot Aware system soon but I can use my phone to get the radar view of conflicting traffic without going SkyDemon.
And finally, which Android tablet would you recommend to hold a SkyDemon system? I don't feel drawn to any of the other OS devices. It needs to be sunlight readable, robust, have have GPS built in and have enough grunt to work smoothly.
Thanks for reading this far,
Rans6A...........