TJ wrote:

Hi,

So, which is the best GPS unit to buy for
eventual use in a sailplane?

I bought a Garmin 12 in 1999. At that time it was widely
available in France at prices near 1200 or 1400 F, (we had
not yet Euros at that time, this should be near 200 Euros).
At that time it was the cheapest way to fulfill a precise
purpose: my club, as most clubs in France, has an informal
requirement that any pilot flying cross-country a club glider
(and this is the normal way they are flown) provides some
proof of his flight, either photos or a GPS track log, and
I wanted to avoid all the stuff related with cameras (film
not cut, developement, finding an appropriate ground feature,
buying film, etc.). Most pilots in my club were doing the
same choice at that time for the same purpose, although some
others having more money to put in it preferred aviation
models with a price 3 or 4 times higher. Since that time
the price of the Garmin 12 has raised and the general opinion
among my fellows pilots is that the best choice for the same
purpose is now the Magellan MLR. The major improvements in
the MLR are 1) altitude logged in the track log, while the
Garmin only logs time and position; 2) much more memory for track
log; 3) higher speed for downloading; 4) glide ratio function.
Concerning the downloading speed, this is a software problem
with the Garmin which has nothing to do with the baud rate. I
observed a downloading session with an oscilloscope. Each logged
position is sent in a packet and then, according to the Garmin
protocol, the PC should reply with an acknowlegement packet, which
it does immediately, but then there is a long delay between the end
of this acknowlegement packet and the next position packet, so the
effective speed is much lower than the nominal 9600 bps, since the line
is idle a lot of time.

But I just checked the web site of Magellan
(http://www.magellangps.com/en/products/mlr.asp)
and the model we use (MLR SP24 XC Free Flying) is listed as
"Not available in North America" for an unknown reasom.