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I was scanning some of the “deals” on Ebay about 2 weeks ago, not intending to buy anything, just looking. Since I am contemplating an upgrade to the panel for 79P I like to see what’s available. Also, one of the things I would like to get is a GPS (not for the panel, just a handheld). I navigate exclusively by pilotage and ded reckoning, along with the trusty Cessna ARC 300 series Nav radio (sarcasm intended), and so does Liz, but it would be nice to have something better. I found a Trimble Flightmate handheld GPS up for auction for 99 cents. There were 6 days left in the auction so obviously this would go for more than that, but 99 cents, Geesh, I can’t pass that up!
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I did a little research on the Flightmate and discovered that it was one of the first handheld GPSs available. It didn’t have a moving map and it had all of the airports and VOR’s in permanent memory. On the plus side, it was small, it ran on 4 AA batteries and it was, after all, a GPS. It had bearing and distance to the station, groundspeed, altitude, and a CDI. I thought, what more do I need? If the VOR in my plane flips its lid, I can grab this thing out of the flight bag and fire it up and I would be good-to-go. I was sold.
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However, I wanted a deal. The bid was at 99 cents now but in looking at other auctions that had ended it seemed that this thing was going for around $50-$60. I put a maximum bid on it of $40 and waited. Throughout the week, the occasional bid would be placed on the Flightmate, each time Ebay would outbid them automatically since it was below my max-bid offer. After 3 days the bid was up to $35 and it stayed there. 2 days left, 1 day left, the evening of the last day, with 20 hours left, I went to bed, Confident that I was about to get a deal. I woke up the next day and I was still the high bidder. I was getting excited about the prospect of having a GPS. I started explaining to Liz what we would be able to do with it. “It’s like having DME!” I told her, “Except you don’t have to worry about slant-range errors.”
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With 45 minutes left in the auction, I was watching it like a hawk. Every 5 minutes or so, I would refresh the page. 15 minutes left, still the high bidder, I started thinking about all of the nice feedback I was going to give the seller. I refreshed the page with 10 minutes left.
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WHAT? $41? Somebody outbid me!
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I was devastated. I wanted that GPS. I told myself when I placed the $40 max bid that I was not going to go over that amount. 7 minutes to go in the auction and it was no longer mine. This guy was going to get the GPS even though I spent most of the past few days thinking about it. It wasn’t fair!
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Still, If I was going to spend $40, what’s another couple of bucks or so. There’s only 7 minutes, Oops, 6 minutes, left in the auction and if this guy’s not a crazed lunatic and sitting there refreshing the page every few seconds (like I am) I may be able to outbid him and still get this thing. I put a bid in for $42. I was outbid automatically. I put a bid in for $45, and was outbid by that same amount. Those of you who know how Ebay works will understand what that meant. $45 was the other guy’s maximum bid! With 4 minutes left in the bidding I held all of the cards, All I need to do was bid $46 and the thing would be mine. I just had to delay bidding until there were only a few seconds left in the auction.
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I put in $46 and pressed bid. The page came back asking me to confirm the bid. I waited.
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With 2 minutes left in the auction I pressed confirm. The page came back saying I was the high bidder! YES! Now as long as the other guy is not watching the page, I would win. 1 minutes and 45 seconds left, I was outbid, it’s now $47. My son Tom said “Too bad Dad, you didn’t get it”. “Oh yeah” I thought. “I’ll fix this guy”. I bid $60 with a minute and a half left and I was outbid. Oh man, what’s this guy thinking. I bid $65 and was outbid. $70, outbid, $75 STILL OUTBID.
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Tom said “You know, Dad, you didn’t want to go over $40 and now you’re at twice that, perhaps you should look around and see if there is something better for that price.” My God, you’re right, what am I doing…
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Now I wanted a GPS. I never needed one before but now I have to have one. It’s got to be cheap, it’s got to be upgradeable and it has to have a moving map. No more messing around. I was feeling a terrible sense of loss after having my Flightmate grabbed from me at the last minute. I felt like it was stolen and the only thing that would make me feel better was to get something better for less. Oh, yeah, one more thing. Not from Ebay!
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About a year ago a guy at work gave me a pocket PC. He had upgraded to something better and had no use for it. I told him that I would buy him dinner (which I haven’t done yet, sorry Mike). I gave the pocket PC to Liz and she loves it. She keeps her calendar on it and I bought Pocket Quicken for it so she knows her checking account balances. Liz asked if there was any moving map software for the pocket PC. “I don’t know.” I said, “I’ve never thought of that”. I googled “pocket PC moving map for pilots” which returned quite a few pages. Hmmm, Liz may be on to something here. I found that there are quite a few choices but Anywhere Map seemed to be the most popular. The problem was that it was $200 and required a more powerful pocket PC than I had. There’s got to be something that runs on the PDA that I had. Then I found pocketFMS.
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PocketFMS (www.pocketFMS.com) is a moving map, flight management system that runs on a PC and a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). It’s donorware which means that you get to download it for free and if you find that you can’t live without it, you can help ensure its continued success by making a donation of any amount to the developers. Best of all, it will work on the PDA that my wife has. I eagerly downloaded it.
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It has been my experience in the past that anything that seems to good to be true, probably is. I had high hopes for PocketFMS but I was mindful of my past experiences. I could be setting myself up for a big disappointment but the lure of having a moving map solution for my airplane was too compelling. The installation on my PC was quick and painless. First you download the program and install it, then after choosing what areas (FIRS) you are interested in, you get the Navigation Data, the Elevation Data, the Maps and even the current weather information in the form of METARS and TAFS.
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The program was written somewhere in the Netherlands and I guess their airspace is divided into things called FIRS. They seem to be analogous to our ARTCC’s (Centers). I selected Cleveland, Chicago, New York, Boston, Montreal, Toronto and Minneapolis. I then downloaded all of the data and a file was created on my PC. When I selected the “Transfer to PDA” button, it told me that there was too much data to copy to the PDA. It suggested that I either select fewer “FIRS” or do not load the elevation data. The trick actually was to tell the software that there was more room available on the PDA and it built the file just fine. This meant, however, that I had to get a memory card for the PDA. That cost me $35 for 512 Meg.
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$35, not too bad, It’s what I was going to spend for the Flightmate.
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The software itself is rather nicely set up. When you download the software and install it, it sets up an application on your PC that you can use to get database updates (also free), plan your flights, etc. The nice thing about this is that you can do all of the work on your PC and then transfer it. Much easier than planning the flight on the PDA.
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The last thing I needed to get was a GPS receiver for the PDA. Although the PDA I have is bluetooth enabled, I elected to get one that was hard-wired to the PDA. Deluo (www.deluoelectronics.com) makes one and after having good luck with the company in the past, I elected to get it. It cost $80 but that included an adapter that plugged into the cigarette lighter of the plane (it works with 12 or 24 volts!) and not only powered the GPS but also kept the PDA charged. I ordered it online.
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I’ve now spent $115 which violated my rule about spending more than $75 but it seemed like it was going to be a very nice setup. I couldn’t wait for the GPS receiver to show up.
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As it turns out, I didn’t have to wait. Somebody wrote a module that interfaces with Microsoft Flight Simulator (which I have) and sends GPS signals over the USB connection on the PC. Essentially, you can hook up the PDA to the computer, run flight simulator and have the PDA track the flight just as if you were actually flying! In fact, the signals sent to the PDA are exactly the same as if you had a GPS receiver actually hooked up to it. This was too cool! This enabled me to practice using the GPS before I actually got into an airplane. This was much better than the “demo” programs that you can get for the Garmin or Lowrance GPS’s because you are actually using the GPS the way you would in the airplane.
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When the GPS receiver showed up, I couldn’t wait to try it out.
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Liz and I planned to get up early on Thanksgiving and take a trip down to Elmira (That’s another story) We wanted to give the new GPS setup its inaugural flight. I planned the flight direct to KELM on the PC. I got the METARS and TAFS and then transferred it all to the PDA. Off to the airport we went. I plugged the receiver into the PDA and started the PocketFMS program. It recognized the GPS right away and started finding the satellites. I was surprised at how good it all worked. I have moved into the 21st century!
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One of the things that I was concerned with was the refresh rate of the screen. The PDA is not a very powerful one and I thought that if the screen refreshed slowly, it would not be useful, especially during turns when the map rotates on the screen. As it turned out, it worked very well. Zooming in and out takes about 5 seconds which seems a little long, but it’s not bad.
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So I ended up spending a little more than $100 and getting a very nice moving map GPS for my plane. While it’s true that I started with a free PDA, you can buy one similar to mine for about $50. You could also go to dell.com and get a brand new one for $250 and still end up with an outstanding GPS for your plane.
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