GPS

[Oxford1G]

Does anyone have any experience of operating an aircraft with a hand held GPS, if so could anyone give a thumbs up to a particular type of GPS?

Thanks

[twistedenginestarter]

I have a basic £100 Magellan which I use in small planes. Works fine. 8 satellites. 100 waypoints. 1 route of 10 waypoints. Doesn't sound much but I remember when I was young hankering after a £x00000 Doppler Inertial. This is miles better.

The essential problem with any GPS is it works beautifully for 99% of the time but not 100% so you always have to have a Plan B.

It's always in my flight bag.

[Feather #3]

Just bought a Garmin GPS III Pilot.

Very impressed. Check their website for specs.

G'day

[con-pilot]

As I replied on a earlier thread I have used a hand held GPS designed for boats on a B-72. It worked well, but we did not use for area-nav. We used it as a backup for when ATC would give us a heading for a fix down the road. We looked up the Lat/Long and pluged it into the GPS. By the way the winds read out as current, current is 250 degrees at 95kts. That was funny, but it workred well.

[NIMBUS]

Handhelds are a great back-up. I never fly, especially IFR, without a Garmin 195 and handheld radio in the flight bag. Not IFR approved, but who cares about paperwork when everything electrical dies?

Just don't rely on it all the time! I knew one guy who always used one. Very efficient in terms of straight line from one airport to another, but his last night flight hit the side of a mountain.

[411A]

Use a King KLN-89B (panel mount) IFR approved in my Turbo-twin and have done approximately 60 GPS approaches so far, all right on the money. The KLN89B is now quite inexpensive as the KLN94 is now on the market. Superior performance.

[Londoner]

The Garmin GPSMAP 295 is rather nice in that it is a moving map, provides HSI type display and also knows about airspace. I think it also knows about terrain heights so that if you were to say enter a start point of KJFK and a destination of KLAX it would know that the Rockies are in the way and give you an appropriate obstruction clearance altitude.
The only problem is that it is rather pricey. USD1500, and you need to keep it fed with batteries as well as updated nav data from Jeppesen.
Maybe I'll buy one when I get my Private...
As everyone else has said, great as a secondary source of info, but don't ever rely on it as your sole means of navigation.
Funny story: I live on the 4th floor and my friend brought his Garmin round to show it off. We had a good play with it on the balcony (to get a signal) and noticed that the altitude readout started at 80ft and went down to -20ft despite the fact that we hadn't moved... :)
On the subject of GPS, I was at the AOPA show in Long Beach the other week. There were a plethora of PalmPilot and PocketPC add-ons available, many of which were GPS related. Anyone have any experience with those? Two things worry me: crashing of the OS (my Palm has been known to lock up), and fiddling around with a stylus on a tiny screen...

[This message has been edited by Londoner (edited 22 November 2000).]

[Oxford1G]

Thanks for all the information.