Dumb GPS Question

[William Bruce]

I've just bought a TomTom GPS for my car with preloaded road maps of the US
and Canada. My question: Will it work in my 172 at 3,000 to 5,000 feet,
showing the roads below, etc?

[[email protected]]

On Nov 22, 6:45 pm, "William Bruce" > wrote:
> I've just bought a TomTom GPS for my car with preloaded road maps of the US
> and Canada. My question: Will it work in my 172 at 3,000 to 5,000 feet,
> showing the roads below, etc?

It better.. :<))

[Thomas Borchert]

William,

> Will it work in my 172 at 3,000 to 5,000 feet,
> showing the roads below, etc?
>

Sure. Following the turn-by-turn instructions will be rather
inefficient flying, however. Might be a great way to build time, though
;-)

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

[Ron Rosenfeld]

On Thu, 22 Nov 2007 19:45:50 -0600, "William Bruce" >
wrote:

>I've just bought a TomTom GPS for my car with preloaded road maps of the US
>and Canada. My question: Will it work in my 172 at 3,000 to 5,000 feet,
>showing the roads below, etc?
>

My Garmin Nuvi does. On the "stats" page, it shows my maximum speed of
about 210 mph!
--ron

[Paul Tomblin]

In a previous article, "William Bruce" > said:
>I've just bought a TomTom GPS for my car with preloaded road maps of the US
>and Canada. My question: Will it work in my 172 at 3,000 to 5,000 feet,
>showing the roads below, etc?

There was a time when Garmin GPSes meant for terrestrial use would cut out
at around 100mph, which limited their usefulness for aviation. But that
was a long time ago. It's doubtful that TomTom did that same stupid
thing.

There is an on-line book at http://www.cockpitgps.com/ that has some
information about using non-aviation GPS in aviation.

--
Paul Tomblin > http://blog.xcski.com/
I wouldn't be surprised if I'd have to put garlic in the CD drawer
to really get rid of it.
-- Arthur van der Harg on 'Gator'

[Jim Macklin]

But it will tell you where the $500 hamburger is!



"Thomas Borchert" > wrote in message
...
| William,
|
| > Will it work in my 172 at 3,000 to 5,000 feet,
| > showing the roads below, etc?
| >
|
| Sure. Following the turn-by-turn instructions will be rather
| inefficient flying, however. Might be a great way to build time, though
| ;-)
|
| --
| Thomas Borchert (EDDH)
|

[Dave[_5_]]

On Nov 22, 8:45 pm, "William Bruce" > wrote:
> I've just bought a TomTom GPS for my car with preloaded road maps of the US
> and Canada. My question: Will it work in my 172 at 3,000 to 5,000 feet,
> showing the roads below, etc?

It will, but a better way to use it is to zoom out to show your
position in relation to towns, cities and geographic features - in
other words, Situational Awareness. A terrestrial GPS is a good
backup, but one with an aviation database is vastly more useful for
flying (IMHO).

David Johnson

[Andrew Gideon]

On Fri, 23 Nov 2007 09:36:41 +0100, Thomas Borchert wrote:

> Sure. Following the turn-by-turn instructions will be rather inefficient
> flying, however. Might be a great way to build time, though

There's a route through the EWR class B called the "GSP Transition".
It's not an exclusion zone; one gets clearance through from the EWR
tower. But it's a well-known path for both pilots and controllers,
following the parkway below. I've been told that this was originally for
traffic observation, but I don't know that that's true.

I was flying this with a CFI once when he pointed out that one doesn't
have to follow the road as precisely as I was. But that's the fun!

- Andrew

[John[_1_]]

On Nov 23, 9:37 am, (Paul Tomblin) wrote:
> In a previous article, "William Bruce" > said:
>
> >I've just bought a TomTom GPS for my car with preloaded road maps of the US
> >and Canada. My question: Will it work in my 172 at 3,000 to 5,000 feet,
> >showing the roads below, etc?
>
> There was a time when Garmin GPSes meant for terrestrial use would cut out
> at around 100mph, which limited their usefulness for aviation. But that
> was a long time ago. It's doubtful that TomTom did that same stupid
> thing.
>
> There is an on-line book athttp://www.cockpitgps.com/that has some
> information about using non-aviation GPS in aviation.
>
> --
> Paul Tomblin /
> I wouldn't be surprised if I'd have to put garlic in the CD drawer
> to really get rid of it.
> -- Arthur van der Harg on 'Gator'

Garmin doesnt do that anymore . . . . I have seen over 700 kts on my
Garmin . . . once in a United 737, it must have been a mother of a
tailwind. This is back several years ago when some airlines were ok
with GPS in the cabin.

Take care . . .

John

[Andrew Sarangan]

On Nov 22, 8:45 pm, "William Bruce" > wrote:
> I've just bought a TomTom GPS for my car with preloaded road maps of the US
> and Canada. My question: Will it work in my 172 at 3,000 to 5,000 feet,
> showing the roads below, etc?

I have tried Tomtom (on Dell AXIM) on an airplane and it doesn't work.
It will get a fix of your position, and you can watch yourself fly
across roads, lakes and rivers. But you can't ask it to navigate
anywhere. In order to compute a route, you have to stand still for a
while (for long routes this could take a couple of minutes). In the
very least you should stay on one road while it is computing. Since
you are obviously not doing any of this while flying, the program will
never finish computing the route. My screen just said "computing
route" with a progress bar for a very long time. When it seemed like
it was getting close to the end, it would start all over again, and
the cycle never stopped. My guess is by the time it computed a route,
we were far from that position and an entirely new route had to be
computed. This may also have something to do with the processing
speed of the Dell AXIM. However, even if you ran this on a faster
platform, it might still be constantly recomputing a new route because
you are obviously not following any of its suggested routes. One
possibility is to fly over a highway in a sparse area, and it may be
fooled into thinking that you are actually on that road. But that
might also be hard to do because it is quite sensitive to your
position. If it thinks you are off the road, it is going to start
recomputing again. It was fun trying it, but I can't see how this can
be made to work.

If you really need to find a street while flying, the best approach is
to insert the lat/lon co-ordinates into a regular GPS.

[Newps]

Andrew Sarangan wrote:
But you can't ask it to navigate
> anywhere. In order to compute a route, you have to stand still for a
> while (for long routes this could take a couple of minutes). In the
> very least you should stay on one road while it is computing. Since
> you are obviously not doing any of this while flying, the program will
> never finish computing the route. My screen just said "computing
> route" with a progress bar for a very long time. When it seemed like
> it was getting close to the end, it would start all over again, and
> the cycle never stopped. My guess is by the time it computed a route,
> we were far from that position and an entirely new route had to be
> computed. This may also have something to do with the processing
> speed of the Dell AXIM.


I have seen something similar to this on a number of navigation programs
on PDA's. When you go to start a route the software does not allow
present position as your starting point, it forces you to give it an
address or some other point. Unbelievably stupid. The driving software
in the 496 is among the best I've ever seen, a nice suprise.

[Andrew Sarangan]

On Nov 25, 10:07 pm, Newps > wrote:
> Andrew Sarangan wrote:
>
> But you can't ask it to navigate
>
> > anywhere. In order to compute a route, you have to stand still for a
> > while (for long routes this could take a couple of minutes). In the
> > very least you should stay on one road while it is computing. Since
> > you are obviously not doing any of this while flying, the program will
> > never finish computing the route. My screen just said "computing
> > route" with a progress bar for a very long time. When it seemed like
> > it was getting close to the end, it would start all over again, and
> > the cycle never stopped. My guess is by the time it computed a route,
> > we were far from that position and an entirely new route had to be
> > computed. This may also have something to do with the processing
> > speed of the Dell AXIM.
>
> I have seen something similar to this on a number of navigation programs
> on PDA's. When you go to start a route the software does not allow
> present position as your starting point, it forces you to give it an
> address or some other point. Unbelievably stupid. The driving software
> in the 496 is among the best I've ever seen, a nice suprise.

Actually Tomtom starts all navigations from your current position. But
this is the problem when you use it in an airplane. Your current
position is literally flying at 120 knots, so the software can't keep
up.

[Gig 601XL Builder]

William Bruce wrote:
> I've just bought a TomTom GPS for my car with preloaded road maps of
> the US and Canada. My question: Will it work in my 172 at 3,000 to
> 5,000 feet, showing the roads below, etc?

The only problem you will have is the issue with the TomTom telling you you
are on the road. It is designed to assume you are on the street or highway
and if it calculates something different it puts you on the closest road.

[Gordon Hamm]

On 2007-11-22 17:45:50 -0800, "William Bruce" > said:

> I've just bought a TomTom GPS for my car with preloaded road maps of the US
> and Canada. My question: Will it work in my 172 at 3,000 to 5,000 feet,
> showing the roads below, etc?

Yes it will, but you could use a program like OziExplorer(www.oziexplorer.com)
and digital air charts, topographical maps or Google Earth images.