At 01:00 10 May 2005, Doug Snyder wrote:
Does anyone have experience with the Navman 3450?

I guess I could just throw the iPAQ out the vent next
time I fly and
start all over with a better PDA and better navigation
software.

Doug



I own one and it sits in a drawer in my garage. I
used it a few times for car navigation and once for
flying with WinPilot Advanced (at the time it didn't
work with Pro - I don't know about now).

It has some shortcomings - especially compared to units
based on newer GPS chipsets. First, its Time To First
Fix (TTFF) is awful. In many cases even in open space
it would take tens of minutes to get a fix (some times
never). This is in part because it has no memory of
where it was last or where the satellites ought to
be so every time you power it up it does a random satellite
search. Second, it doesn't seem to hold a fix well
at all. When I flew with it it got lost frequently.
This is not a good thing to happen on a marginal final
glide. Third, it will suck its rechargable batteries
dry in about 45 minutes, so you better have a good
source of external power. The cigarette lighter adapter
that came with mine didn't provide enough current to
offset the draw so I often found if I used it to get
to the airport my iPaq was dead for flying and had
to be recharged.

Recently my iPaq went legs up so I replaced it with
an iPaq 5550 with build in Bluetooth. I did some research
and got a latest generation bluetooth GPS - the GlobalSat
BT GPS Receiver BT-338 - it's $179 - about $40 more
than the Navman. It's based on the SiRF III chipset
which keeps a database of expected satellite locations
so it picks up a fix from a cold start in about 15
seconds -- it's ready before I can get the nav software
booted. It runs on it's own internal battery for something
like 15 hours (!) Not sure how long the iPaq runs
just on its own battery with the backlight on and Bluetooth
active, but I think it's a few hours.

I have used it with SeeYou mobile and it works flawlessly
(not tried it with WinPilot yet). For auto navigation
I got a copy of CoPilot 5 for $99 (normally $250 or
so) by trading in my Navman software. It too is a big
improvement though I am still working through some
installation issues. I picked CoPilot in large part
because it is the only auto navigation software I looked
at that will navigate to a LAT/LONG position - nice
for retrieves.

Of course you need an iPaq with Bluetooth to use it,
so a drop out the vent window might be in order. Depends
on if you want to pony up $600-700. Maybe there's a
bluetooth module for the SD slot on your iPaq.

9B