Hey guys:
Been a Garmin owner since 1995, but just sold a Garmin 12XL and bought a Lowrance Airmap 1000. I was looking for a backup aviation receiver with ground map features. The Airmap display is almost 5” square, which is nice on these eyes. Runs on 4 AA bats for about 10 hours. It also has a hard plastic cover which completely shields the front of the receiver so it can take a beating in a bag.
Besides some nice aviation functions, the big seller, beyond the display, was that the Airmap uses a standard SD card for memory. You pull it out of the unit and plug it into a card reader, so the receiver doesn’t talk directly to your PC via cable. The receiver also lets you delete user data. But as bad as that might sound, you have a copy of it on the SD card for reload. This function allows you to have different groups of data, so things don’t have to be cluttered on the display. This has been extremely helpful at work with normal waypoint route planning and plotting hazards.
Ron Powell