I use both. L-Nave/GPS Nav combo. The Dell Streak with XCSoar is fantastic for situational awareness and I rarely fiddle with it in flight since I can see what I can reach. Maybe zoom in or out. Usually set MC2 and forget it although I have the polar degraded to about 32:1 for my Duo to pad my margins. As mentioned before, it is the trend of things I pay most attention to. Flying out west where we have lots of airports and landable fields, the terrain and other details aren't really that important.

I use the GPS-Nav for more point specific items. Point it at useful waypoint on course for relaying position info to fellow flyers so that we can get a sense of where we are relative to each other. I also like the L-Nav for final glide since it is right there in the panel front and center and has air-data that XCSoar doesn't so it knows about changes to the winds.

I could get by just fine with either. Air data into XCSoar or some other moving map would be my preference if I had to pick just one. The benefits of the added awareness without fiddling are quite apparent.

For contest flying in turn area or MAT tasks XCSoar is great. Just fly over the turnpoint and it adds it to your list. Arm a turn area as soon as you want to make your turn and move on to the next waypoint.

Backup devices are sure nice to have in the plane though. The tablets are good, but way more crash prone than an SN-10 or L-Nav it seems.

Morgan

On Thursday, May 23, 2013 10:07:36 AM UTC-7, Papa3 wrote:
On Thursday, May 23, 2013 9:50:21 AM UTC-4, Dan Marotta wrote:

All good advice, though I question the need for terrain to be displayed vs.



simply looking outside. Then, again, I fly where the visibility is rarely



*less* than 100 miles. Perhaps, in other locations, a terrain display



helps.





Certainly in Appalachian ridge country, terrain maps are hugely useful. Knowing which of the 3 low ridges ahead is the one with the valley in front or which one has the big gap in it is very helpful for newbies to an area.. More importantly, my ClearNav gives a very easy to use visual indication of whether I'm going to clear a ridge when making transitions.



P3