Gosh, I was so proud of my Garmin 296 until you had to tell me all that good stuff! Now I feel barely capable of navigating.
--- In [email protected], Larry Snyder <les...@...> wrote: > > I hope this is the correct forum for this. I received a Garmin aera 500 for > Christmas. I had expressed an interest in it after seeing it demonstrated on > YouTube, and reading about its features. This is a real step forward for an > aviation GPS, and makes it almost as easy to use as Garmin's automotive GPS, > the nuvi. In fact, in automotive mode, the aera IS a nuvi! > > My previous GPS was a Lowrance 600C, which 3 years ago was really cool to me. > Its screen, however, was small, not very bright and kind of difficult to > read. I always had to have a pair of reading glasses handy to be able to read > the numbers on the bottom of the map on the 600C. I also found moving the > cursor to a spot on the map to get more information about something very > difficult, particularly in rough air. > > The aera is a touch screen GPS, so if you want more information about > something on the map, just touch it. Also, this is a 4.3-inch screen and the > display is brighter and easier to read than the Lowrance. I flew in direct > sunlight and had no problems. > > The NEAREST feature on the aera is cool. It can show nearest airports, > nearest nave aids, nearest ARTCC frequencies (really cool) or nearest > airports with weather and the frequencies. It will also show nearest FSS > frequencies. Very cool. And it shows the names - so I don't feel stupid > calling FSS not knowing the name of the radio station. Same for ARTCC. > > The HSI screen is cool, with lots of instruments simulated, including bank > indicator. > > One thing the 600C I miss is a runway extension feature that helped you line > up to a runway from afar. > > Now for the coolest part (for me). If you own a Garmin SL30 or SL40 radio, > you MUST get an aera! > > Four years ago I had a Garmin SL40 installed in my Ercoupe. Little did I know > how well that would work out! You can get a bare wire harness for the aera > that wires directly into the radio. When you select the frequency tab on an > airport, or ARTCC or FSS, if you just touch the frequency on the screen it > loads automatically into the standby frequency on the radio! Also, you can > have it download the complete list of frequencies associated with an airport > into the REM list on the radio. Just flip through and pick it out. I will > never have to tune a frequency manually again! If I want to contact ATC for > flight following, I just touch NEAREST, then touch ARTCC, then touch the > frequency and hit the flip-flop button. When I approach my destination, I can > bring up the frequency list for it on the GPS, touch the AWOS frequency, > flip-flop, then touch the CTAF frequency and it is now loaded into standby on > the radio. Awesome! > > I also wired the audio output from the GPS to the intercom so I get its > audible warnings through the intercom (PULL UP!). > > There are getting to be a lot of touch screen GPSs out there, and many have > bigger screens than this one. But I can easily read this one without glasses > and everything on the screen is big enough that I don't fat-finger things too > often. > > I have the low-end model the 500. The 510 supports XM weather, the 550 has a > few additional feature and higher resolution terrain data (you have to be > really pushing it to need that kind of resolution) plus the AOPA airport data > (which I have on my iPhone) plus SafeTaxi diagrams (I never land at big > airports). The 560 is just the 550 with XM weather support. So for me, the > base model is all I need. If I need to worry about weather en route, I don't > go. > > I hope this is informative to folks - if not, I won't do it again. > > Larry > N99340 >
