"Jonathan Goodish" wrote

How is this any different than the Garmin 396? As far as I see it, it
isn't much different from the pilot's perspective.

It is quite a bit different. The 396 can be charged in advance and thus
does not require ship's power at all. There is a grand total of one
required cable for the 396 and that is the cable from the smart antenna to
the GPS. That is a complete non-issue in even an rental plane.

It's fairly painless
to practice some basic cable management and power becomes a non-issue.

Doable? Yes. Painless? No.

It is not painless for someone who rents a plane and has to run cables every
time he rents the plae.

I'm not disputing that, but in this section, I was responding to your
comments regarding integration with the 430/530.
I doubt that many
airplanes in the rental fleet will have the interface available for that
type of integration.

Absolutely agreed. I am simply showing the advantages of the 396 to both
renter and owner pilots.

In my experience, entering a flight plan in a PDA or TabletPC is easier
than with the Garmin units.

Definitely not. Turning knobs on a panel-mount is much less time-consuming
than pressing buttons to scroll through the alphabet.

Besides, for IFR presumably the PDA will be a backup but not the primary nav
source so any way you look at it you will have to duplicate your flight plan
entries -- such duplication is very much undesirable when busy with other
things in IMC.

PDA system, and I've had to change flight plans, but it's no big deal
because I have a keyboard at my fingertips.

It is a nuisance to have to change flight plans on both your primary and
backup nav sources - that is highly undesirable.


Would it be nice to do it
once a push a button, sure, but I doubt that most users of the 396 will
interface it with a 430/530.

Well the 430/530 are extremely popular. It is hard for me to imagine why a
430/530 owner would choose a portable GPS model that will not interface with
the 430/530. The parts/labor to interface the 430/530 to the 396 cost
perhaps 2% of the total cost of the 430/530 installation. I am not saying
all 430/530 owners need a 396 but it is inconceivable to me for someone to
install such an IFR GPS and then not be willing to pay $400 for a used 195
and $150 to an avionics shop to interface the two. That is a bargain if
ever I saw one in aviation.

Not sure why it isn't fine for IFR. It's perfectly safe and it's legal
enroute if you are in a radar environment.

It is indeed legal in a radar environment. But it is not legal on an
approach. And it is also a good idea to be prepared at any time with Plan B
if radar services are terminated. At that point IFR certified panel
avionics are required.

Not sure how this works exactly, but there are software packages that
offer similar types of emergency glide features for other systems.

Lowrance has similar VNAV on its high-end models. The Chelton glass EFIS
system has superior VNAV capabilities. There is no other general aviation
system available at any price that is as capable as Garmin VNAV in the event
of an engine-out emergency.

Maybe, but I still contend that the landscape display orientation of the
296/396 and some units before them is less-than-ideal. The display
resolution itself really isn't that nice either. Other software vendors
have better terrain features, but I guess some folks just like to see
"Garmin" on their navigation equipment.

I do not know of any other software vendor with a better terrain feature
than Garmin on a portable unit. Terrain warnings on a 296 are actually
substantially superior to even panel-mount terrain features on an MX20 or
EX500. But again, the VNAV feature of the Garmin portable GPS is so good as
to make the point moot. Lowrance is just about the only competition to
Garmin.


I'm not arguing that the 396 is a bad unit; quite to the contrary, it
looks like a great unit. I just don't think that it is going to "kill
off" all of the PDA/TabletPC competitors like some folks seem to
suggest.

You are correct that the competition you mention will continue. But that
will only be the case because of customers who are highly price-sensitive or
who perhaps are not aware in detail of the features discussed above. Anyone
with any concern at all about handling an engine-out failure would choose a
Garmin handheld hands-down.

For example, WxWorx appeals to a wide audience and provides
capability that the 396 can't match

What features can the 396 not match? The only ones I can think of are
point-and-click echo tops and radar intensity made possible by a mouse or
tablet interface; the other features I mentioned more than balance that out.

as does Control Vision's product.

Control Visions's "Cones of Safety" feature is nice indeed. But it only
tells you where you can glide; it does not tell you HOW to glide there, i.e.
how fast, as the Garmin portables do.


--------------------
Richard Kaplan

www.flyimc.com