Garmin 695/696

[twitch]

i have used the 696 and the 796 extensively over the past few years... Both are great and of course expensive to keep up to date and to have the XM online to get all the good WX functions working. The complaint I have with the 696 is the Battery... It it very sensitive to charging at higher temps (like in the summer while sitting in the windscreen) and the worst part is that the Batt is very heavy and slides in from the bottom which puts stress on the lock mech. and eventually wears out the contacts. It would be fine for fixed wing but doing RHL work the vibration kills the battery connection... we started flying without the batt but too late to save them and of course as soon as you loose Aircraft power then bye bye GPS. The 796 is awsome... Much faster than the 696 and the synthetic vision is great (although water and trees blue and green are too close in tint and can be hard to distinguish in sun light) The touch screen works well but you have to be sure that your hand is well anchored to the unit before trying to touch the screen or you miss your spot... One great item that garmin did with both (for us old guys) is that when entering data the numbers are blown up large unlike the 296 with the tiny little numbers

[maxtorqe]

I agree with S11111, just sent a 296 with the same problem as you to a garmin dealer, $280 and 2 weeks later a re-furbished unit showed up. works good as new

[Plm]

I had the 695 but it kept deleting the waypoints, garmin gave me a 795 and is much better for helicopters as you can have either landscape or portrait so it fits in alot more aircraft when your limited for space.

[kiefk]

Just played with a 796 from Maxcraft ($2200/2500 with mx weather) very nice, especially synthetic vision......

Connector very friendly, portrait or landscape and long battery life.

Also there's a quick brief on youtube:

 

or as S11111 says $250 for factory refurbishment

[Vampire]

Garmin has a repair program, flat fee of 250. Call them at 1866-739-5687 they will provide you with all the details and you pretty much get a brand new unit back. If you advise them to put "repair" on the shipping details that will get you out of any duty. Remove your antenna, battery, and data card...The unit you get back will have these items replaced.

[they]

Anyone have any ideas for Canadian maps for the iPad? Something that will store waypoints etc? Garmin and Trimble both suck.

[Phil Croucher]

There is someone doing Canadian topos on the app store

 

phil

[Freefall]

The problem with getting good topo maps on a tablet is nav canada taking its sweet time digitizing the VNC charts. Foreflight will have them when nav canada releases them like it already does for the vfr charts in the US. Nav Canada has said for quite some time that they will release them "soon".

[Helilog56]

I agree, iPad with Foreflight is the way to go. Although it is too bad it doesn't work in Canada.

Have you looked at 396/496's on eBay?

 

I forgot to mention...yes it does, with a GPS plug from Bad Elf.

[HillerWhat]

Sorry, let me rephrase that- it works, on my iPad even without the Bad Elf, but there just aren't any VFR charts. So it's about as useful to a Canadian VFR pilot as a TomTom.