GPS Recommendations
ENTREPPRUNEUR
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: The 60s
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You've said you want a map, so this isn't really relevant, but I can recommend a Magellan GPS Pioneer as mentioned above. Mine was about £100 new and is like having your own INS. Gives you track, groundspeed, distance and bearing to waypoint, ETA and off-track error. Stick your airfield on it as a waypoint and you can do VOR/DME-like approaches. Very underestimated, these things. All the people that sell GPSs charge a huge mark-up so they don't want you to know about cheap devices. Why does Transair advertise the tacky E-trex? Just to make you think you've got to pay a fortune to get something useful.
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Join Date: Apr 2002
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my apologies for trawling this thread up out of the depths again, but i am still investigating the whole world of aviation GPS and have so far been unable to make my mind up!!
anyway, i went down to shoreham on sunday to have a look at the pilot III which i did think was superb - and had to use all my willpower to hold me back from throwing plastic at the man behind the counter!!
the only thing stopping me is the world of the compaq iPAQ/Navman GPS where it would appear that you can upload CAA digi charts (1:500,000 and 1:250,000) and fly against those. this is obviously very appealing and all for a similar price to a pilot III (assuming you own an iPAQ already).
so my question is based on this. what are these like to operate? how user friendly is the software and what are the problems in using such a combination??
cheers,
spils.
anyway, i went down to shoreham on sunday to have a look at the pilot III which i did think was superb - and had to use all my willpower to hold me back from throwing plastic at the man behind the counter!!
the only thing stopping me is the world of the compaq iPAQ/Navman GPS where it would appear that you can upload CAA digi charts (1:500,000 and 1:250,000) and fly against those. this is obviously very appealing and all for a similar price to a pilot III (assuming you own an iPAQ already).
so my question is based on this. what are these like to operate? how user friendly is the software and what are the problems in using such a combination??
cheers,
spils.
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: London, UK
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Having the CAA charts (both half and quarter mil) on your PDA does work well. It is great for knowing exactly where you are and the software is very easy to use in this respect. In fact, you don't really interact with it at all (which is why it works so well) - you just look at the screen and it shows you the map around you.
It isn't so good for navigation in my experience. You can use the PDA or desktop to plot a route and it'll give you a heading to fly, but it won't give you a correction to your current heading, an ETA, your current position relative to a beacon or what have you, all of which you'd get from something like a Garmin Pilot III.
The Navman sleeve GPS is less than ideal in that the GPS reception is then a function of exactly where you place the PDA (on the yoke, your lap, the seat next to you or whatever), unless you use an external antenna. A very neat solution is a bluetooth PDA (the most recent iPAQ and Toshiba have them built-in) with a bluetooth GPS. It is expensive but it means there are no wires at all and the GPS can be positioned to get good reception. It's also completely portable. And for another 100 quid you can have sophisticated in-car navgiation for example (which you could with the Navman too).
The best setup I'ved tried for planes without any panel mount GPS is a Garmin aviation GPS for routing, whose signal also drives an iPAQ showing the CAA moving map.
It isn't so good for navigation in my experience. You can use the PDA or desktop to plot a route and it'll give you a heading to fly, but it won't give you a correction to your current heading, an ETA, your current position relative to a beacon or what have you, all of which you'd get from something like a Garmin Pilot III.
The Navman sleeve GPS is less than ideal in that the GPS reception is then a function of exactly where you place the PDA (on the yoke, your lap, the seat next to you or whatever), unless you use an external antenna. A very neat solution is a bluetooth PDA (the most recent iPAQ and Toshiba have them built-in) with a bluetooth GPS. It is expensive but it means there are no wires at all and the GPS can be positioned to get good reception. It's also completely portable. And for another 100 quid you can have sophisticated in-car navgiation for example (which you could with the Navman too).
The best setup I'ved tried for planes without any panel mount GPS is a Garmin aviation GPS for routing, whose signal also drives an iPAQ showing the CAA moving map.
Join Date: Oct 2002
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DRAUK - I haven't used my iPaq/Memory-Map setup aloft as yet, only played about with it in the car.
I thought the track to next waypoint arrow would give a similar feature to a highway in the sky in that if you went left of track the arrow would point slightly to the right and gradually increase the angle of deflection as you went further off track.
So in order to get back on track you would just need to steer until the arrow was pointing ahead again or is that not the case. I know it doesn't tell you to steer x degrees to the left or right but surely that is not necessary ?
I'm a complete beginner so please feel free to put me right.
I thought the track to next waypoint arrow would give a similar feature to a highway in the sky in that if you went left of track the arrow would point slightly to the right and gradually increase the angle of deflection as you went further off track.
So in order to get back on track you would just need to steer until the arrow was pointing ahead again or is that not the case. I know it doesn't tell you to steer x degrees to the left or right but surely that is not necessary ?
I'm a complete beginner so please feel free to put me right.
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Savannah GA & Portsmouth UK
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I'm with twistedengineer
I've tried the GPSIII and found the map a pain.
I have a cheapo Magellan GPS315. 500 waypoints, comes with a database of towns so you get the equivalent of a moving map but with towns and airfields (and any user wayponts you care to put in) marked on it. Very easy to relate to the chart and see where you are.
It has a rubber sucker mount and will run all day on a pair of AA's. Also have a serial cable to plug into my PC and Datasend on CD to upload worldwide waypoints from. There's also a shareware package called Magway which allows you to build your own databases and upload/download.
If I wanted to I could plug the serial port into a PC of some sort and get a full moving map display. Tried this with Microsoft Autoroute 2000 on my laptop and it told me I was driving up Portsmouth Harbour when I was on the M275. Not the fault of the GPS position, the digitised map in Autoroute is inaccurate.
There have been a lot of complaints about the accuracy of the airspace info in GPS databases. High resolution maps require a lot of memory so what you tend to get is things that approximate to the real thing but are not precise.
New CAA charts come out every 6 months, how often do users update their GPS databases and what Quality Assurance is there to ensure that the databases match the UK AIP?
It's an area that the CAA are taking an interest in at the moment.
Mike
I've tried the GPSIII and found the map a pain.
I have a cheapo Magellan GPS315. 500 waypoints, comes with a database of towns so you get the equivalent of a moving map but with towns and airfields (and any user wayponts you care to put in) marked on it. Very easy to relate to the chart and see where you are.
It has a rubber sucker mount and will run all day on a pair of AA's. Also have a serial cable to plug into my PC and Datasend on CD to upload worldwide waypoints from. There's also a shareware package called Magway which allows you to build your own databases and upload/download.
If I wanted to I could plug the serial port into a PC of some sort and get a full moving map display. Tried this with Microsoft Autoroute 2000 on my laptop and it told me I was driving up Portsmouth Harbour when I was on the M275. Not the fault of the GPS position, the digitised map in Autoroute is inaccurate.
There have been a lot of complaints about the accuracy of the airspace info in GPS databases. High resolution maps require a lot of memory so what you tend to get is things that approximate to the real thing but are not precise.
New CAA charts come out every 6 months, how often do users update their GPS databases and what Quality Assurance is there to ensure that the databases match the UK AIP?
It's an area that the CAA are taking an interest in at the moment.
Mike
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New CAA charts come out every 6 months, how often do users update their GPS databases and what Quality Assurance is there to ensure that the databases match the UK AIP?
Thread Starter
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Salisbury
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having just read another thread on GPS Recommendations that seemed to be on a similar vein to this one, i thought i would just state that i eventually made up my mind and bought a Garmin III Pilot.
i took it flying yesterday for the first time and found the route log it stores to be fantastically interesting when sat on my sofa later in the evening.
my only problem with it is that when you have all the jeppeson database bits turned on (such as restricted areas, control zones, tower zones and all the land data) it does become very cluttered on the small screen.
i tend to use it as a confidence check more than anything, and all the info i need is on my half mil anyway so i did think for a while that maybe the extra £200 on top of a standard III may have been wasted - until i saw my track down boscombe runway which i could zoom in to really closely!! i'm afraid i have been sold on the gizmos it gives me and really feel it is money well spent.
i took it flying yesterday for the first time and found the route log it stores to be fantastically interesting when sat on my sofa later in the evening.
my only problem with it is that when you have all the jeppeson database bits turned on (such as restricted areas, control zones, tower zones and all the land data) it does become very cluttered on the small screen.
i tend to use it as a confidence check more than anything, and all the info i need is on my half mil anyway so i did think for a while that maybe the extra £200 on top of a standard III may have been wasted - until i saw my track down boscombe runway which i could zoom in to really closely!! i'm afraid i have been sold on the gizmos it gives me and really feel it is money well spent.
