Buying A Gps, Suggestions?

[Rayzor]

Looking for any suggestions on buying a hand held GPS for in the A/C. Any suggestions would be fantastic. I was thinking of a Garmin 76C. Want something with color, and not to expensive. What do you guys/gals use???????

 

Thanks for the input

 

Rayzor

[heliben]

Excellent choice. Our crews just got these and are really happy. Fast to aquire, easy to use, easy to read, color and uses aa batteries or you can plug it in to 12 or 24 volts. GPS Central is where we got them. Great service and good price. Canadian too.

[koalaa119]

I have owned the GPS 96 for the last two years and have been very happy with it. I like the fact it has the aviation information on it and I update it at least annually. I also picked up a Ram mount from www.ram-mount.com with a 4" rubber sucktion cup on it. This gives me the flexiblity to place it on the window where it works the best for each a/c. I have had the opportunity to use the 96 Color gps and found it much easier to read. In hindsite, I wish I had spent the extra money on the color screen. I have also tried a 486 but found the size a little large for mounting and visibility for the small a/c that I am flying. I originally purchased a Pilot 3, but found the screen a little small and it tended to lag while moving through the map. It also doesn't have the availablity to load topo maps like the 76 or 96 do.

 

 

steven

[treetopflyer]

Can't go wrong with the Garmin GPSMAP 76C. (The 76C is discontinued and the 76Cx is it's replacement or so it appears from the web) I've used it and it's black and white predecessor for several years in both the bush VFR world and for personal use with no complaints. The airspace information of the aviation version would certainly be nice but most of my VFR time was in nothing but class G anyways.

 

I also use the Ram suction cup mount and it works great in all the aircraft i've flown and vehicles i've driven.

 

The best part is if you're in the pool you can download all the local waypoints off a base pilot when you show up unless they're all luddites!

 

ttf

[ray]

Sometimes I wonder why we spend thousands of dollars on installing GPS units in our aircraft, when everyone uses their own units that cost a fraction of what we spend.

 

Not slagging anyone, just musing out loud.

[Rayzor]

c'mon ray those new ones in the Astars are so pretty. lol. I want one for going in the pool/contract next season. Most of the waypoints in the ships have different names for the same place and there's no list at each base that I've ever seen anyway, except maybe for fuel cashes.

 

Thanks for the input guys, its much appreciated.

[rotorheadrob]

maps are 20 bucks! how did we work with only a track and heading? The new gps's are cool but all those colors confuse me

[T-rex]

Remember that you can go to any Canadian Tire store and buy a moving map GPS for about $200.00 and up! Alot of the aviation GPS's are more. They do give you airspace, really only good if your going to the USA. Buy what you can afford, in the end a GPS does all the same, some with more bells and whistles!

[Slinger]

I have been using the Garmin 76CS for 3 years and I'm very happy with it. I suggest to look at the memory capability. That way you can buy MapSource Topo Canada and really get good reference like lakes and rivers. But it take a lot of space. That's why I got the S for it's 115MB memory. I can load the maps that covers a large area. Just a suggestion.

 

Mike

[Harmonic_Vibe]

Costco has the 276 for $649.00 with the marine mount and the works... a smokin' deal I'd say...