I have a friend who I worked with in the Ford Motor Company who was renowned for his ability to get a bargain on just about anything. So much so, that he became known as “Every Expense Spared” and I think he ultimately set up a website under the same name. In a hobby where cost is always high I was refreshingly pleased when I found that I had managed to put together a budget GPS solution for my flying.
I had been looking at a device that would cost almost £650 and I was prepared to spend that sort of money, but when I submitted the order to several vendors I discovered that the device could not be sold because of legal reasons that I am not going to go into here. However, the solution was based on the HP iPAQ 314 SatNav device which I discovered I could get for £130 from Amazon in the UK. As I already had £30 of vouchers on my account I was able to buy the device for just under £100 and with a 4″ touch sensitive screen it was a great purchase even as a SatNav which my partner particularly finds useful.
Then I went on the hunt for some software. I now have two alternatives. I purchased the electronic version of the CAA maps for Northern England (1:500000) and that software has the capability to be installed on a SatNav device.
My investigations led me to Pocket FMS Foundation. These people sell an annual subscription to their software including monthly upgrades for €150. The software installs on your home computer and hooks up to internet to download all the maps and weather data you couls possibly imagine. I had to reduce the amount of data that it loaded because it covered significantly more than I really needed for the flying I do.
Setting up the SatNav was a breeze. From the menu system I configured an SD Memory card with the software. I say I “configured” it, by that I mean that I selected the menu option and then did as I was told from there on out. The final step was to insert the memory card into the SatNav and press the reset button. Pocket FMS then started up all by itself and the rest was handled by large buttons on the touch sensitive screen. I can plan my flight on the computer and then everything gets transferred to the memory card – weather information, maps, my specific aircraft etc.
One of the other really great things is that it creates a log of where you have been by creating a “Breadcrumb” file. This file is really just a log of all the position fixes, but someone on the PocketFMS website has provided a neat utility that enables the conversion of the file to a Google Earth KML file. That means I can load the flight into Google Earth and see a plot of where I flew including the height I flew at. It also has a neat feature of logging your take-off and landing times based on a reaching or dropping below a preset speed respectively.
The other thing that I find helpful is that as the mapping software is designed in layers, you can choose which layers to see on the map at any one time. You have two maps to choose from whilst in flight and you can set the layers up differently for each map. When you are flying south, guess what, the names are all still right way up as well!! How awesome is that! So many systems I’ve seen are just map images and therefore go upside down when you are flying south. I can even tell the system to exclude information such as airspaces that are x-feet above or below me which removes some of the irrelevant clutter while I am flying.
So … for £225 (approx) I got myself a really awesome GPS system for in the air. You might be able to access this Google Earth KML file and see what the outcome is.
Have fun Flying.
