Personal flight computers

On Friday, December 7, 2012 6:09:22 PM UTC, Whiskey Delta wrote:
On Dec 7, 12:51*pm, kd6veb wrote:

Hi Gang

* There appears to be several very bright PNAs available on the market including the Vertica 2 and the Oudie and several software packages including SeeYou, XCSoar and LK8000 (is GN11 and any of the other older systems still supported?).

* I recently purchased A Vertica and down loaded the LK8000 software. I am pleased with the performance of the system with the display so much brighter than my old system using a HP PDA. That said and done have any of you done a recent comparison of the various systems and if so is there a strong winner or are they mostly similar.

Dave



I'd like to know how the Vertica 2 compares to the Oudie 2 or Oudie 2

Lite. My understanding is that they are similar. Can anyone offer a

comparison of the two in use? Do they have the same GPS engine?



Thanks!



WD

I have an Oudie and a GliderGuider.

Different GPS engine. The Oudie GPS engine has a 'track smoothing' issue which means that it is not accurate when circling - and therefore the wind calculation and other calculations which flow from it may not be accurate.

The Vertica 2 and other similar devices (GliderGuider and others are probably identical) use a GPS engine which is more accurate in flight - but which probably uses more battery power and which takes longer to lock on to satellites.

The Oudie has much more internal memory which means that it can run a worldwide terrain map from internal memory, whereas the GliderGuider cannot cope with the worldwide map, and the Oudie handles some tasks rather faster.

The Oudie comes with a much wider range of interfaces.

If you intended to use the device mainly or only using an external GPS engine the Oudie would probably be the unit to choose. I want the device to give a good result without any external connections (other than to a batery) when flying a club glider. I am using the GliderGuider running SeeYou Mobile and think that is an outstanding system for the purpose.

I had a good look at LK8000 to see how it compared to SYM. I found several features in LK8000 which were not present in SYM but none of them were significant to me, and I thought SYM made it easier to do the things which I do often. I accept that this may be due to my greater familiarity with SYM. I also appreciate the very good support which SYM has from the Naviter folk. I think the biggest difference is made by your software setup, and by the setup of your database files. Unless you are a serious boffin, I would choose a software program which is in use by pilots in your club who are good at the setup.