Many pilots in Italy use Garmin 76S or 76CSX with custom airspace maps made
out of SUA with cgpsmapper.
I'm the one beyond the work. Also, all seeyou turnpoints and thousands of
ridges, valleys, mountain tops etc. were converted to transparent maps that
we can select.
I fly with XCSoar, but wouldn't take off for a long flight without my 76CSX.
Once fed with custom maps, PDA and PNAs are way below the 76 usability and
visibility, not to mention the autonomy (12hours on 2 AA batteries).

Maps for garmin are loadable on almost any garmin product, even the old
StreetPilot.
Creating maps is not trivial, and there are limitations in the cgpsmapper
software unless you pay for the cheapest shareware version which is worth
every penny.

An article on our national soaring magazine was published some time ago,
available here
http://hosting2.cwnet.it/~admin288/m...view&obj_id=88
with some screenshots of what is possible to achieve with a cheap 76S.
The newest 76CSX is much faster and has got a beautiful sunreadable screen,
with the same power consumption of a 76S.

It's a pity that the only flight specific informations given by the 76 are
glide ratio to destination and current glide ratio (and relative variometric
values).

Paolo



"Edward" ha scritto nel messaggio
...
At 15:15 13 May 2009, chipsoars wrote:
Is it possible to load a SUA file on a COTS such as a Garmin Map76 or
ETREX? If so, is there a preferred format or procedure? I've
performed some searching on RAS and Google with no success.

thanks,

Chip Fitzpatrick

Have you tried one of these? -
http://www.img2gps.co.cc/
http://www.cgpsmapper.com/
http://web.abnormal.com/~avia_dbm/index.html

I'd be interested to know if they work with something as basic as an
eTrex.

Edward