GPS Question: What to buy

What kind of flying are you doing that it matters if you lose your track for
30 seconds without knowing it? The only context I can imagine this making a
difference for is an IFR approach, which you shouldn't be using this for
anyway.

"Ted Lindgreen" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Andrew Gideon wrote:
Mark Astley wrote:

Although the 196 is great, I've recently started to have second
thoughts... ...
....
Still, the Anywhere looks like such a nice product.

So...anyone tried both?

I've only experience with the 196, which I own over a year and have
used extensively, but that might help you also in your decision.
At least it may focus you on some things that the sales-bla does
not tell you.

The 196 is a great GPS, but it has two "features", that, had I
know it before, would have caused me to never have bought it.

1. Lock-to-Road.
The 196 is a combined aviation/automotive/marine GPS.
For road-usage Garmin build in a feature, "Lock-to-Road",
to coverup both map- and GPS errors. As some maps are
pretty bad, and it seems to try to "fix" pre-SA GPS errors,
this can offset your actual position by hundreds of feet.
I have observed my 196 a few times to kick into "Lock-to-Road"
mode when flying above a road. Needless to say that whatever the
instrument then tells you is complete bogus, especially the HSI
is "fun" to watch.....
You will ask: "why the heck don't you disable this??".
The problem is that the 196 automagically enables again it all
the time as side-effect of other settings. There is no way to
set it to off and keep it off (this is confirmed by Garmin).
The only work-around I found sofar is it to religiously check
and reset it every time I at startup and then not touch power,
mode, settings, etc., anymore.

2. Dead-Reckoning.
Whenever the 196 looses the satellites (which does happen
now and then near certain airports and/or with certain radio
settings), it does not tell you. Instead, it covers up this
fact and just extrapolates whatever your course was for no
less than 30 seconds. You can set an alarm on "accuracy",
but also this alarm is delayed by 30 seconds. So, if you
loose the satellites, only after 30 seconds you find out
that the information the 196 was giving you was bogus.

I have had several e-mail exchanges with Garmin about this.
Although I always got promptly very (overly) polite answers
(Thank you bla bla.., etc.), when you skip the politeness,
the answer is: "yes, this is how the 196 works, and no, we
have no intention to change it".

What I want from a GPS, in fact from every aviation instrument, is
that as soon as it knows there something wrong, it raises a flag,
and not to deliberately, and silently, cover it up by "fixing" the
position, or extrapolating the past.

I'm very interested to hear how Anywhere behaves in this respect,
and may trade my 196 in for it when it behaves better.

Regards,
-- ted