Well have read the various comments and have deceide to go for a Lowrance 1000 -- just ordered it from George Delahay (
http://www.delahay.co.uk/acatalog/) as he had best price and a number of people have said they got good service.
The reason I have decided to order the Lowrance AirMap 1000 is because I have a Garmin GPS-III Pilot which I have been using happily for a few years, but it has a some weaknesses that I don't like and want to improve upon:
- GPS III's display is small and resolution not fabulous... ok in HSI mode but map is not ideal. Not too bad for seeing airspace boundaries, and relative position of airfields, but wanted something a bit bigger and a bit better than the GPS-III's display.
- The buttons on the small Garmin unit are a touch fiddly, especially the arrows which make it just as easy to enter "up" as "left" for example -- this has been an issue when diverting due wx say, using the the "Direct To" function -- you can be fiddle-farting around with the arrow buttons trying to seelct your alternate airfield... its doable but not ideal.
- Garmin units don't have global basemap, and I want to be able to use the unit when travelling both in the US and Australia, as well as day-to-day here at (my new) home in Blighty. The GPS-III (and I think most other Garmin units) have basemap data for one part of the world or another, burned into ROM in the factory, and can't be readily changed by the user; whereas I am told the Lowrance has a basic global basemap, with low detail, and you can use their (somewhat poor) software to upload more detailed local base-maps for a given area if you wish.
So time will tell if the new model will live up to my hopes -- I will let you know how I get on!
Andy
