Which Aviation GPS is the best for the money???

[pif_sonic]

First of all I want to thank all of you for your opinions. I have used a GPS for approximately 275 hours of my flying, all of it cross-country. The only bad thing about GPS flying is I find myself getting lazy when it comes to the use of charts. I always have on with me but I find it is not always open. The last three cross-country trips I did, I made sure I had a chart available and open. A little story of the handiness and life saving abilities of a GPS. (I know a chart would have worked but the GPS was much better.)

A few weeks ago my wife, my daughter and I flew from Baker OR to Driggs ID for a birthday party for my nephew. Well the wife does not like getting up very early unless she gets her coffee, for her there is not enough coffee in any cup that early in the morning. We took off at 5:30 am, so of course she had to get the biggest coffee available. With the weather getting better as we went further east and a nice tail wind, I changed my flight plan as we went. Can you believe the weather report I got was wrong about the wind!!! My original fuel stop was changed by about 45 minutes. To me that was a great thing, faster ground speed, less fuel for the distance. To my wife that meant she had to wait another 45 minutes to go PEE!!!!! And of course for me that was a bad thing. So I explained to her it was only another 45 minutes and I GOT THE LOOK!! So I hit the “NRST FIND” button on the GPS and Picabo ID was 7.6 miles away. Now you can also find the same info with a chart. But it was nice to tell the wife, “Honey, it is only 7 miles away, we should be on the ground in a less then 5 minutes and you can go PEE!” I was also able to see on the GPS, that Picabo was a public airport and it has a 3000x100 grass strip, and I did not have an unfolded chart keeping me from seeing out side the cockpit. And we all know the 170 is most comfortable on a grass strip. By that time I was the hero of the day, the wife was happy and I got to land on a grass strip. What could be better? I had to go and open my mouth and remind my wife my daughter was only three and has a much smaller bladder and she did not have to go PEE in less than 2 hours of flight time!! That was a bad thing, because I was not the hero any longer.

After the PEE adventure, guess what, my wife buys another coffee. Now the first segment of the trip was only 1.8 hours, so I knew we could make it to Idaho Falls for fuel without another PEE break. I learned to have two flight plans available when flying with the wife, one with a small coffee and one with the largest available coffee. It’s a bad thing when you plan a flight because of the size of the coffee your wife drinks, and not the size of your fuel tanks.

The trip home was not as bad because I planed for the PEE breaks according to the size of the coke my wife drank before we took off. I think she was much happier with me.

That was a long story to get the point across that GPS’s are a great thing for aviation. I think I am going to get a 296. I am going to sell the 196. I think mine should be worth a little more because it saved my life, from my wife. I am sure Garmin would be proud.

[voorheesh]

I am very happy with a Garmin GPS 150 that I got from Ebay for $480. These units come up for sale frequently and have everything a VFR flyer could need except moving map. Garmin will overhaul (yellow tag) for about $300 and a current database is available from Jeppeson. I prefer a panel mount unit to a portable.

[3958v]

Sounds like I am the only one still flying on loran. I keep planing to upgrade but still always seem to find something more important to spend my money on. It amazes me what some guys think they need. The guy next to me in the hangar has a nice cherokee six with a $50,000 pannel and an instrument rateing. When I told him I was going take my 170 with a $50 pannel to Wyoming from Pennsylvania this summer he looked at me like I was crazy. Said he would never consider flying his plane that far. I do consider the nearest Airport feature a real safety feature. But on my lattest trip when I needed an airport the closest one was 35 miles away as per loran or chart. But I found one the old fashioned way by looking out the window. Saw a farm airstrip that was not on the chart and landed The owner never came out so I fixed my minor problem and took off. A piece of rubber trim had started to come off and was slapping on the fusealage, made one heck of a racket. I still do plan on buying a GPS some day maybe when pannel mounts with weather come down in price. T hate the clutter that you can get with the portable units. Bill K

[voorheesh]

There is nothing wrong with loran. If you have an apollo flybuddy, I think you can use the same tray plus a new antenna if you want to have flybuddy GPS. I like the combination of pilotage/dead reckoning/chart with a simple nav device that you can select just about any location you choose and get a reliable ground speed/distance. Also I think having gps or loran at night or over remote terrain is very helpfull and worth the investment.

[lowNslow]

Sounds like I am the only one still flying on loran. Bill K

I still have a very old loran unit installed. I was really amazed at how well it lined up with GPS position and ground speed. If it weren't for the hassle of having to program in every waypoint, I probably would have stuck with the loran.

[GAHorn]

i see tropic aero has a 296
used for sell for 499!!
dave

I believe that is 295. Not a very popular unit and frequently found cheap on ebay. I am not sure what the problem is with these units.

The 295 is larger physically than the later 196/296 etc., and the 295 also ate up batteries fairly quickly. (Not a problem on ship's-pwr, of course.) Otherwise 295's are good units....just don't have the features of the latter 296/396/496, of course.

[GAHorn]

Sounds like I am the only one still flying on loran. Bill K

I still have a very old loran unit installed. I was really amazed at how well it lined up with GPS position and ground speed. If it weren't for the hassle of having to program in every waypoint, I probably would have stuck with the loran.

My ship's permanently mounted Nav is a KLN-88 Loran that does very nicely, and generally tells me the same basic info as my 196 GPS. I like having two Nav radios handy (but the Loran is technically the only one legal for navigation...portables are for "entertainment" value and must be confirmed with other nav info....like my KLN-88!)

[170C]

I don't think there is a "best" GPS just like George pointed out in another post about there not being an "average" 170. The best GPS is the one that fits your needs, pocketbook & ability to use its features most easily IMHO. You aren't likely to find anyone who has laid out the $$ for a unit to tell you the unit isn't any good. It all depends on what works for you. I have 2 GPS's. One is a panel mounted Magellan that is 12 yrs old and the second one is a 1 yr old Lowrance 200C hand held. The 12 yr old still gives the same accurate data on speed, time to destination, whether I am on track or not, etc. as does the newer unit except you can no longer get data base updates so I have to have a printed list of airport identifiers that have changed. Most things these days that are that old are intended to be tossed and replaced with something much more capable --I just refused to get rid of it because two units are nice to have. The newer unit has a nice color moving map which I like because it has towns, highways, towers (most anyway) airspace areas, terrain awareness, etc on it. Its screen is larger than any of the handheld Garmins and cost a lot less than the 396 or 496. It does not have the weather data capability of the later Garmins. Garmin makes a good product and they preform well, but you pay a premium for the name. Other units, not just Lowrance, will do the same job for less $$, but its up to you what you want and whether having a popular brand is more important than saving $$.

[N2865C]

You aren't likely to find anyone who has laid out the $$ for a unit to tell you the unit isn't any good.

I have have a Garmin 196 I purchased before the 2000C came out. I have used both Garmin and Lowrance products and I think the Lowrance products have better features for a lower price. If I had to replace mine it would probably be with a Lowrance unit. As George mentioned, the 196 has a built in log that can be transferred easily to a PC logbook. I really like that feature and don't think the Lowrance units can do that.

[futr_alaskaflyer]

My general feeling is the "best" aviation GPS portable for the money is the newest model you can get used which has "just" been superseded with the latest/greatest model from the manufacturer e.g. the 296 after the 396 came out, the 396 after the 496 came out, etc. Ebay and classified ads are always flooded with them.

I got a really good deal on my 296 after the 396 was released. For what it's worth I like the 296, it does everything I need including basic E6B and W&B calculations. XM isn't available in AK so I wouldn't buy the 396/496 even if $ were no object.

[c170b53]

I bought the 2000 Lowrance, the thing is when you shop for electronics now, the units that you're looking at are being replaced with a newer unit under development. Therefore you're buying something that's about to become obsolete, its tough to keep up with. I like my unit, but I think the units that can give you weather would be advantageous over, the units that just tell you where you are.

[thammer]

The one thing they don't tell you though is the weather costs something like $50 a month, every month, every year. It might come down if competition can get into it. That's on top of the $300 a year GPS database updates. Total about $900 a year in subscription fees to keep the GPS up to date and have weather. I'd sure like the weather on display too but I can't quite bring myself to spend that money.

tye

[GAHorn]

I just check the weather before takeoff by calling the 800 number.

[jrenwick]

The one thing they don't tell you though is the weather costs something like $50 a month, every month, every year. It might come down if competition can get into it. That's on top of the $300 a year GPS database updates. Total about $900 a year in subscription fees to keep the GPS up to date and have weather. I'd sure like the weather on display too but I can't quite bring myself to spend that money.

tye

Weather is $50/month for everything, but only $30/month if you don't need all the features. There's also a one-time activation fee of $75. Info is here: http://www.xmradio.com/weather/get_xm_wx.html.

One-time Jeppesen database updates are $35. I do that once a year for a VFR unit. So your $900/year could be $395 if you did it that way and didn't sign up for the full weather service.

Still, you're right that the recurring costs need to be considered.

Best Regards,

John

[jrenwick]

I bought a Lowrance Airmap 500 last summer. For about $300 you get the GPS unit, an antenna extension, a whole lot of RAM mounting hardware that lets you mount the unit almost anywhere, terrestrial map data for the entire US, a SD/MMC card reader so you can program the data cards from a PC, a waterproof pouch, and I forget what else. I think with Garmin units you have to buy some of the equivalent accessories separately. It seemed like a heck of a lot for the price.

It works fine, but I've had some disappointment. It comes with a 32 meg MMC data card, which is too small to make much use of the surface map data they provide. So I bought a 512 meg SD card, because my camera can use it, and Lowrance says the unit supports both MMC and SD card types.

When you buy a database update from Jepp for this thing, it's registered to the data card, not to the GPS unit. So if you have multiple data cards, you've got to buy the database separately for each one. The database that comes with the unit is registered to the 32 meg card they supply, and it can't be used with a bigger card. You get one free update initially, so I downloaded that to the 512 meg SD card. The Airmap 500 couldn't load it, even though the function to browse the data card could see the file was there. I put a file of surface map data on the 512 meg card, and it couldn't load that either.

I called Lowrance's software tech support (a free call), and they talked me through all the steps to download and install a database update. I was doing it correctly, and they couldn't tell me why the GPS unit couldn't load the data. In the end, I said I guess I would have to spend more money (e.g. buy another SD card) if I hoped to get anywhere with this, and the tech support guy didn't disagree. I eventually bought another card, with the same results. At least I can use these cards in my camera, so it's not a total loss.

The surface map software registers each card you put data on, and it only allows you five of them. I've now burned three of those licenses for nothing, unless tech support can get me going somehow or reset the licenses.

So while I still think the Lowrance was a pretty good buy, it hasn't turned out to be everything they said it was.

Be careful out there!

John