GPS Receiver obsolescence

[Ron Lee]

I just called LEI to get a databse update for my Airmap 100 and was
told that they can't get them because the databae is too large. I was
told about a rebate program to upgrade the receiver. Yea right.

It is bad when I have a perfectly good receiver and can't update the
database. Still, it is a useable receiver and goes with my on all
cross country flights.

Ron Lee

[Icebound]

"Ron Lee" > wrote in message
...

> It is bad when I have a perfectly good receiver and can't update the
> database.

Especially when you will probably only ever use a small fraction of it.


>Still, it is a useable receiver and goes with my on all
> cross country flights.

A *really* "obsolete" Magellan 2000XL sells on eBay for 30 dollars or less.
Not to be even *considered* for aviation use, yet should I get hopelessly
lost, it will still direct me to a known location such as my original
destination or my home airport.

[George Patterson]

Ron Lee wrote:
>
> It is bad when I have a perfectly good receiver and can't update the
> database. Still, it is a useable receiver and goes with my on all
> cross country flights.

Well, as one of the regional FAA inspectors put it, "they haven't moved one of
these airports in decades."

George Patterson
Give a person a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a person to
use the Internet and he won't bother you for weeks.

[[email protected]]

George Patterson wrote: Well, as one of the regional FAA inspectors put
it, "they haven't moved one of these airports in decades."

Not true in my area (near SFO). Both Byron (C83) and Rio Vista (O88)
moved within the last decade, or maybe just a bit longer. I was able to
Google up that Rio Vista moved two miles in 1995, but could not get the
date for Byron. And there's talk of moving Concord -- though hopefully
that won't happen since the alternative sites appear to be not as good
as the current one. Is this a fluke or do airports like to travel more
than we think?

Martin

[Ron Lee]

George Patterson > wrote:
>
>Well, as one of the regional FAA inspectors put it, "they haven't moved one of
>these airports in decades."

But airport identifiers change.

Airport frequencies change.

It is still a fine unit but I wanted a more current aviation database.

Ron Lee

[Grumman-581]

wrote:
> Not true in my area (near SFO). Both Byron (C83) and Rio Vista (O88)
> moved within the last decade, or maybe just a bit longer.

I've encountered one airport in my travels that moved... Ruston, LA
built a new airport a couple miles to the east... Initially, it had a
different identifier, but once it was complete and they have moved
everything from the old airport, they gave the new airport the old
airport's identifier and closed the old airport...

A more common occurance is just identifier changes to reflect new
naming standards or whatever... My Northstar LORAN has a 10-ish year
old database in it and it works quite well for me... Sometimes I have
to look up what the old identifier for an airport might have been, but
it doesn't happen often... On one airport that I was going to, it
wasn't in the database, but I figured that I could find it anyway... I
was on Flight Following and when I told the FAA the name and identifier
of the airport, Razorback Approach didn't even have it listed in their
database... It was listed at Airnav though... End result was that I
found the airport, refueled, and continued my trip -- no big deal...

[George Patterson]

Ron Lee wrote:
>
> But airport identifiers change.

True. Goodrich dropped all the small airports from the Foster database around
1995. I ran with a 1993 database in my unit. Every once in a while, I would try
to use an airport as a waypoint and find that the identifier had changed. It was
annoying. In one case, I entered the new Id as a user-defined waypoint, but
that's a pain. I was never in the habit of getting frequencies from the
database, though. I always used charts or the directory for that.

George Patterson
Give a person a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a person to
use the Internet and he won't bother you for weeks.