SP-400 handheld can display an ILS

[IO540]

Just seen this in U.S. Flying. $400.

This would make a great emergency backup.

Does anybody know whether it has an Icom-compatible headset connection? I have a Bose headset adapter for my Icom A22.

Has anybody had issues importing these "non CAA approved" radios from the USA? I have never heard of any problems.

[500 above]

540,

I believe you've been around the ga block a bit. Would you really trust a handheld glideslope indication? I think I would rather put my faith in a headset adapter (as you say) and accept a par or sra!

[Jan Olieslagers]

Would you really trust a handheld glideslope indication?

((beginner's bewilderment)) What's wrong about that? I for one would far prefer a handheld glideslope - however reliable - over no glideslope at all. But is there any reason a handheld glideslope receiver should be less reliable than its panel-mounted counterpart?

[flybymike]

Donkey's years ago I used to use an ICOM with VOR for post PPL radio nav in basic rental aircraft. I found it unbelievably unreliable, completely dependent on an ability to receive a decent signal, and the display virtually unreadable to my then relatively youthful eyes.

[500 above]

Hello Jan

The handheld ILS receiver has not been certified for primary use as such whereas the panel mounted version has. The handheld version has not been tested by the authorities from immunity against interference. Just try it near the compass on your Rans for example and see what it does ( if anything-my point exactly-not tested...)

Handheld are great for a backup in an emergency, indeed about 15 years ago iused a handheld Icom with an external aerial in a Luscombe I flew as a primary com, although there was no requirement to carry a com it does increase situational awareness. Anything that improves safety is good. My concern with the 'handheld ILS' is that pilots will use it as such...

On saying that, allow me to reitterate that there is always the PAR and the SRA. Much safer than eyeballing your way down the 'slope with a handheld radio's screen, possibly held by one hand.

I do however always carry a handheld comm in my flightbag for work (jets) just incase!

[IO540]

Would you really trust a handheld glideslope indication?

If my life depended on it, i.e. a total electrical failure, IMC, then yes of course. An ILS is the ultimate lifesaver. If I was teaching somebody to fly I would not let them go solo unless they could set up and fly an ILS :)

Donkey's years ago I used to use an ICOM with VOR for post PPL radio nav in basic rental aircraft. I found it unbelievably unreliable, completely dependent on an ability to receive a decent signal, and the display virtually unreadable to my then relatively youthful eyes.

It depends. I have an in-cockpit VHF "cable loop" (2 x BNC) which allows me to connect a handheld directly to the COM2 rooftop aerials. Then, the Icom has much the same range as the panel radio(s). It works superbly.

When I used to self fly hire, the planes were really crap and half the stuff didn't work. I was constantly flying with the Icom on a bracket, and every comms frequency would be backed-up in that too, in case the radio packed up. I found it reliable for VORs too (actually it was handy because it would directly read out the numeric radial FROM the VOR, which the old panel radios could not do) but only if one had a line of sight between its aerial, and the VOR.

there is always the PAR and the SRA

Not in most of the UK. There isn't a PAR for hundreds of miles of here. In the south of the UK, I am not aware of one. St Mawgan (now Newquay) used to have one. Manston likewise. Farnborough likewise. All gone now.

MI6's best moles in the USSR told them that the commies will never invade on a weekend because they are too drunk, so the RAF doesn't work at weekends, so no PAR there either. Nobody on the frequency, even.

SAR approaches have lousy minima. I could fly one with a handheld GPS, to a lower level.

But I have just realised there is a better way... My Garmin 496 can be programmed to generate a synthetic ILS which takes you down to 500ft AGL - to any airfield in the database.

[500 above]

540

You could indeed fly a gps approach with your handheld, totally illegal and uanpproved, but I do assume you mean in a (declared) emergency here? At least the SAR is legal and has published minima. The handheld you fly with, can it do a raim prediction and would you have time in an emergency to plug in waypoints off a plate for a pseudo approach at an unfamiliar airport? Give me the talkdown any day!

As far as teaching ILS before solo, to impart knowledge of the basics (ie handling and airmanship) let alone how to set up and fly an ILS takes enough of the average pre solo students skill set. Remember how long it took you as a beginner to set an approach up? It's best at that level to keep them out of the clouds, and to assess the met every flight. (Good exercise to show is also how quickly a student or average ppl can loose it in cloud)

I hope a reliable light aircraft portable GPWS (not TAWS) comes out soon... Good luck with the Garmin, watch those hills mate!

[IO540]

you mean in a (declared) emergency here?

Yes, of course.

As far as teaching ILS before solo, to impart knowledge of the basics (ie handling and airmanship) let alone how to set up and fly an ILS takes enough of the average pre solo students skill set.

I agree - if you have told him the minimum is 45 hrs :)

My son could fly an ILS at 12 and did so pretty well perfectly at every aviation exhibition he went to, on the Frasca stand. As an emergency procedure, it isn't hard.

The handheld you fly with, can it do a raim prediction and would you have time in an emergency to plug in waypoints off a plate for a pseudo approach at an unfamiliar airport?

It does EGNOS, does it now (no IFR GPS is allowed to receive EGNOS at present) and there are no waypoints to load. The config does however take a fair bit of button pushing (on a 496). RAIM is a bit irrelevant if you are stuck.

[500 above]

Whatever the 496 may be, you as an 'experienced' ga pilot should not be advocating it's use for instrument approaches on these forums.There are some types out there who may just use it as such full time, you know this full well. We've all met the resident scud runners and the chap with the hp twin who sets up his or her own 'approach' to an otherwise VFR field and has got away with it so far.

What happens when the GPS signal is lost? It does happen.

Maybe you should petition the CAA or EASA ( you do fly on a European licence, I assume?) to increase the minimum ppl hours to include more than the present 45 also. When I was the CFI of a school in a past life, neither my instructors or I guaranteed a pass to anyone within the minimum time for the simple reason that every student is different. Many, I have to say did it in the minimums. Those were the students who put effort in. It sounds like your son could be one of them. Having a father with a licence certainly helps. Good luck to him and his 'flying exhibitions'. On the other hand, many students with prior flight time with family and the like had learned bad habits and poor airmanship was installed in them, monkey see monkey do.

[flybymike]

Nothing illegal about home made GPS approaches for private operations as far as I am aware.

[500 above]

Hi Mike

No handheld gps as far as I'm aware has approach approval.

[IO540]

As I said, I was talking about emergency use.

The official "PPL way" of getting back down is to call up 121.50 and they will supposedly help, but if the bad wx extends beyond your fuel...? Also, their official coverage is poor/nonexistent at low level. That option is really for pilots with no instrument skills.

In an emergency, legal considerations are immaterial. You do what presents the lowest risk. This does not always (or even often!) align with actual (or perceived) legalities :)

But here we go... :)

Nothing illegal about home made GPS approaches for private operations as far as I am aware.

That is correct, for a G-reg.

For an N-reg they appear to be illegal (ref FAR 91.175).

No handheld gps as far as I'm aware has approach approval.

That is also correct as stated but the situation is less clear cut. For private ops (non-AOC), the equipment carriage regs state what equipment should be carried. They do not state what equipment should be used. This means e.g. you can fly an NDB or VOR approach using any other means (like a GPS, which is what nearly everybody does anyway, including airlines which fly them on the FMS.

More or less everywhere, if an airfield wants commercial flights, they have to stick an NDB in, and possibly a DME. Nobody will use the NDB for real but it has to be there to publish "IFR capability" and it is a lot cheaper than a VOR or an ILS.

One commuter airline ATP explained this to me last week. They don't have INS (twin turboprop) and they fly NP approaches using (in effect) GPS. All that is required is that the ground equipment is not notamed INOP. (JAR-OPS but not in the UK).

For OCAS certainly, nobody has found a reg yet which says e.g. an NDB IAP must be flown exclusively using the ADF. Any means of flying the published track is OK.

[500 above]

If you guys have the time you should search pprune for DIY instrument approaches. 540, I too fly approaches (in a multi crew jet with Efis/twin fms etc) such as ndb or VOR/DME 'out of the box' or straight from the fms. This is legal. However, I monitor the raw data 'classic' navaids also during this time. Vnav gives me a kind of glideslope, as you talk about. However, this is not using a handheld gps!

Rnav approaches are becoming quite common nowadays. Good if you have the kit.

[Contacttower]

I'm interested in this SP-400 as well. Aviation Consumer in the US gave it quite a good review, describing it as 'better than some panel-mounted gear' although some of the customer comments on the Sporty's website expressed concern about the apparently rather weak plastic used in its outer casing with one or two commenting that range with the standard aerial might be an issue. Overall most customer comments were very positive though.

Looks like a pretty decent piece of kit.

[robert mailer]

hi 10540 do you know if an 296 can be set up for ILS, have use it for FAF, works well:)

[IO540]

No idea personally about the 296, but I have read on a US forum that the 296 does this too.

The 496 "ILS" setup procedure (in part) is:
You have to go to the Setup page and set the VNAV waypont parameters to 0.0nm and 0 feet AGL and then program a descent rate appropriate for your airplane -- add a bit for a margin of error since the pseudo-glideslope is based on groundspeed.

I haven't tried it yet. I believe it works only with real airports. Certainly the VNAV feature seems to work that way; the other day I could not get it to compute the -VS when the DCT waypoint was a VOR.

[huv]

I did it yesterday. The SP-400 ILS works as advertised - readable, steady, precise and easy to follow. Most IFR planes I fly only have one battery and one generator, so the SP-400 is a cheap backup. I have had 4 generator failures in 2000 hrs (3 of them in 3 different PA-32s that I have flown a total of less than 150 hrs - watch out for PA-32s!) - 2 generator failures occured in IFR, one during night IMC, which was scary because the aircraft battery was not fully charged at the time of the failure, so I did not know how much time I had before things would go dark. When I first heard of the SP-400 I thought of that incidence immediately. Of course I use a handheld GPS also; a trusty old GPSmap196 or a Garmin 96C; nothing fancy.

An SP-400 shortcoming, perhaps: my (very) old KX-99 will accept an OBS selection without actually recieving a VOR; the SP-400 will not. It is not really an issue for emergency use. Tuning a VOR, the SP-400 centers the needle automatically. When the reception/needle is steady, it locks the OBS setting. The big display shows OBS, bearing/radial and of course a big CDI. I guess this it how it should work for emergency use.

Another problem that I need to investigate: using a headset adapter and an old David Clark 13.4 headset I was able to transmit, the station 30 NM away reading me 5, but I could not hear the answer, only a weak noise. Using the SP-400 without headset, holding the speaker close to my ear, worked better. But using the headset should of course be preferred, so I need to find out what is wrong.

The SP-400 COM reciever is significantly better (more sensitive) than my old handheld, the KX-99. I can tell by dialing distant ATIS'es on the two of them.

[Fokkerwokker]

I stuck my SP-400 on the side of the coaming on two approaches in VMC and it matched the ship's ILS accurately.

I'll try it on a light single soon and report back.

[Intercepted]

But is there any reason a handheld glideslope receiver should be less reliable than its panel-mounted counterpart? Yes according to the SP-400 manual there is a significant difference.

for a panel mounted ILS the localizer dots are 0.5 deg deviation each and the glideslope dots are 0.14 deg deviation each.

According to sportys manual the SP400 localizer deviation is 1 degree deviation per dot, i.e half the accuracy of a panel mounted localizer. The glideslope accuracy is not mentioned, but if each dot is something far away from 0.14 degrees deviation I would be very cautious to be below the glidepath.

I wouldn't be suprised if the manual is wrong though, but it should be confirmed before you use the ILS functionality.

Whats the best way to buy the SP400 In the UK? Do you order it directly form Sportys?

[soaringhigh650]

How is the SP400 calibrated?

[Intercepted]

...and a 3 degree deviation
up (fly down towards the needle to be on course).
I missed that one and obviously the manual is wrong otherwise the ILS functionality is completely useless, since 3 dots up would mean that you have crashed regardless of where you are on the glideslope.

[IO540]

How is the SP400 calibrated?In these days of digital signal processing, you don't really need a calibration process.

The VOR or ILS signal is demodulated to just the components which are all in the audio spectrum. This is called a "composite" signal (erroneously, many avionics people call it a "composite video" signal, which is something completely different). Then, elementary DSP techniques can be used to generate a CDI or RMI presentation from this, and you can do handy things like suppressing GS indications in the absence of a valid LOC, or suppressing GS if the thing thinks you are flying a BC approach.

In the past, you had a circuit board full of trimpots (e.g. the notoriously unreliable KN72 (http://www.peter2000.co.uk/aviation/hsi-failure/kn72.jpg) or some other "box" to which pilots would routinely trust their lives because it could fail in subtle ways) but today this would be just some firmware.

It would be trivial to test the SP-400 with a common avionics tester like the IFR-4000, or any of the cheaper boxes in common use.

There again, I would not be using a $399 handheld for a precision approach! I'd be making for my alternate!

Not if your panel is dead.

[IO540]

In IMC, yeah right, as they say in the USA.

[IO540]

If you never fly anywhere, that's fine.

I would also prefer a DIY descent, using GPS, over the sea, and then land VFR at a coastal airport. This is how "VFR" pilots have been flying "VFR" to coastal airports for yonks. This is why most non-precision instrument approaches at coastal airports are practically irrelevant (they are present for legal reasons, AOC ops etc).

But if you are inland, with some terrain around, not enough fuel to fly to the coast, and all the radar vectoring options are not going to get you to a runway in VMC, then your only choice is to fly an instrument approach. Same if the coastal airports are shut because they close at 6pm.... and it is dark and their runway lights are off.

There are loads of ways to run out of options.

Also, this thing is a radio and no pilot should fly without a handheld radio, in case of an electrical failure (plus a handheld GPS).

If I did not already have a good Icom radio which I don't want to get rid of just yet, I would buy this one right away.

Just make sure the US shop does not rip you off on delivery charges. Many US firms have no idea about the options and just send everything Fedex (etc) for $200.

[Fuji Abound]

You can never have too many contingencies - you never know, you might need them one day, better than have them than wishing you had them.

As to encouraging pilots to do something they shouldnt - complete nonesense, if a VFR only pilots thinks he can fly an G/S in IMC I bet you he will find a way of doing it without the need for help from a hand held radio.

[Intercepted]

Just make sure the US shop does not rip you off on delivery charges. Many US firms have no idea about the options and just send everything Fedex (etc) for $200. Has anyone in UK ordered stuff from Sportys without any suprises? I don't have a handheld yet and would like to buy this one.

[Genghis the Engineer]

Also, this thing is a radio and no pilot should fly without a handheld radio, in case of an electrical failure (plus a handheld GPS).



IFR pilots anyhow; backups like this are a bit overkill for pure VFR flying as an essential - more a nice to have.


For a US shop that is reliable and has sensible delivery prices to the UK, try Marv Golden (http://www.marvgolden.com/), although unsurprisingly they don't stock Sporty's radios - they do a few Icom and Vertex models that handle VOR, but not ILS. VOR is probably rather less useful if you have a GPS.

G

[Fuji Abound]

Genghis

Ah, so far as the GPS is concerned only if the mark 1 eyeball is still functioning and the lead is still sharp. :)

[Genghis the Engineer]

Genghis

Ah, so far as the GPS is concerned only if the mark 1 eyeball is still functioning and the lead is still sharp. :)

True in many things - but if I'd got my navigational knickers into an almighty twist, I'd rather try and sort myself out with a handheld GPS than a handheld VOR !

G

[IO540]

Except

a) the whole idea is that you can fly an ILS without any aircraft electrics

b) there are almost no GPS approaches in the UK

c) none of them can be flown with a handheld (well, not out of the database)

[Fuji Abound]

I think in much of the uk unless you are seriously short of fuel youve got a good shot ot getting yourself visual with a base of 600 to 800 feet - not suggesting you would want to but when the devil drives.

Your real problems start with bases of less and every where socked in.

With a total panel failure this could be a life saver but then again how many airports with an ils couldnt also provide a sar in an emergency?

Continueing a sar or letting down with this box of tricks when the base is really on the deck should prove interesting mind you.

[IFMU]

The reviews on Sporty's look pretty good. If I had one, and had an emergency, you bet I would use it.

-- IFMU

[huv]

Intercepted, I noted the same thing and wondered about it. I meant to be thorough about checking it, but due to various distractions I did not make enough notes to be able to tell. Also the aircraft was VFR and had no ILS in the panel so I could not compare. However, the experience from flying the ILS was not particularly different from what I am used to, so I too suspect that the manual has it wrong. If the glideslope dots are 1 degree each you would need to go 2 degrees below ground level to see full upward deflection on a standard 3 degree glideslope, and that does not make much sense.

Both needles move in half-dot steps, an information not available anywhere I have looked. If that seems a bit coarse, the flying experience actually suggested it is adequate.

I did not find a way to order the SP-400 other than directly from Sporty's in the USA. Shipping was 10 days to Denmark and cost a modest $14.80. However, the 12V power cable is in back order.

I expect to be billed for custom.

Back to IO540's initial question: the headset adaptor looks identical to my 15 years old King's adapter. So if ICOM and the old King's match, the answer is yes. Might be industry standard.

[Plasmech]

Not to hijack this thread, but does anybody know if the SP-400 has DME capabilities?

[IO540]

Definitely not.

DME needs a powerful transmitting device, and there would be massive legal issues selling a handheld "DME".

Would be great fun designing one though :) Fancy wading through the wonderful 1960s well-fingered documents...

[Jan Olieslagers]

So I know what I would be doing and it wouldn't be relying on a $399 handheld!. Each to their own.

In my trade I know of rock solid stuff selling for 100 euro's, and absolute **** with a 10.000 price tag. So I don't think it's a good idea to judge stuff by the price tag alone.

But indeed: each to their own.

[Jwscud]

You could just use the 496 for the "DME" :ok:

[huv]

I did not see the handheld ILS coming. Now I cannot help wondering, when will we learn about Sporty's Handheld Stormscope?