For a basic moving colour CAA Chart map and airspace bust warnings, with free monthly airspace updates the Basic £159 AWARE is amazingly good & readable. Small enough to fit on the instrument panel and the chart size I see is the same as my paper chart. The screen definition is actually just right too, no worries there !
I flight plan the old fashioned way with a line on the map so I can visualise the whole route and mark significant features, which no gps display can do unless scaled down to a minute scale which for obstacles and so on doesn't suit me.
Airfield data is always a problem, even with three modern guides, AFE, Pooleys & Lockyears there are many missing fields. Either because the publishers don't care or don't want to know. Actually they tell me fear strip owners complaining if they get shown.
Therefore it's unlikely any assembly of such extra data onto a 'GPS' combined with all the other more essential guff will be any more comprehensive.
To my mind expecting a very inexpensive but straightforward colour unit to do too much is unreasonable. To see where you are is plenty and reading off the map too means simplified non p.c. planning at home - or on the hoof - without cluttering the GPS dispaly with any more lines.
Remember the AWARE already has a pointer showing where you're going.
Of course I am a strip and 'grass roots' flyer.
mikehallam.
Last edited by mikehallam; 1st Apr 2011 at 09:48.