Garmin 496 GPS Portable

[flyu2there]

I know there has been a lot of talk about various GPS units but I came across this one the other day.

I suspect that at least some of the aviators amongst us use the 496 but while looking closely at one, I was informed that you can take it out of the airplane and into your motor vehicle and it becomes a street navigator. Added to that you can take it out of your car and take it to your boat and it will find it's way around the water ways...........

My question is.....I know it is very good in airplanes (airways, restricted areas,TFR,s and all) but how is it on the road or in the water???? Does the XM weather work in all modes...

Thanks in advance


John

[MangoMike]

John,

I have a 496 in the bus (back when JDUB was only sporting the 396) and it works great in all modes. Especially XM weather.

MIke

[Jon Wehrenberg]

I use my 396 in both the bus and the plane.

It is a little more effort than GPS units that are solely for road use, but it is accurate. You just have to download the map sections for the trip you will be taking.

I prefer it to a Magellan that I have so I have mounts for it in the plane and the bus.

[flyu2there]

Thanks Mike and Jon for the input.

I have a 530 in my a/c and never paid much attention to the portables until the other day. I know Garmin says it will do this and that but,.....never know until you ask the man who owns one.

That XM weather is really the cats meow....better than full blown radar because you can see so farther out and it updates every few seconds. While if I were in an a/c I wouldn't want to pick my way thru a line, in the coach... big red blob and you may want to find an overpass to park under till it passes. Stay away from tornado magnets...trailer parks!!

Thanks

John

[Jerry Winchester]

With the 496 it is rare you would have to download any road data. I have used it for a year and it is infinitely better than even the new Garmin that is utilized in the Kenwood 7200 system I just installed. But for the sake of fair disclosure, it is twice as expensive.

Why? Well first off, I like the ability to program the fields on the map page. I can put Altitude or ETA or any one of two dozen options on it. This is somewhat limited on the built in units.

The weather is the best part. Virtually real time radar and hail detection is invaluable for someone travelling in a stainless steel bus. I have weather on my new system, but it is a watered down version. I would almost rather have it in METAR form than in the grossly abbreviated version.

Exit information - hit NRST on the 496 and page over to the exit part and you get every exit until you get to your destination and you get the rest areas; all in the order you get to them.

And the best part is when you check the data records it says that your max speed was 265 MPH if you have had it in the plane. You can make all the SOB/POS crack whores envious.

It's not the cleanest set up but it is the best I have encountered for all around use.

[Jon Wehrenberg]

Maybe you pilots that use the handheld Garmins for weather limit your flights when it gets cruddy, but I never had the luxury. I have learned a lot since using the XM weather. I have radar, a Strikefinder and XM so here is the short version.

The XM is OK for long range planning. If I had it exclusively I would use it only to map a wide path around the back side of weather. XM has two serious deficiencies that offset its ease of interpretation. First under the best of circumstances it takes 6 minutes to load. That is a lifetime in an area of developing severe weather. As the weather worsens the XM load time for new weather gets longer. I have had delays in loading new weather as long as 40 minutes when the weather had turned to tapioca.

The strike finder is also a good long range device, and can be used to assist in the interpretation of weather when you are busy and do not have time to work the tilt. But like XM it is historic. Neither XM or Strikefinder are satisfactory for working through or around serious weather because they only tell you what has just happened.

Radar is excellent, but in our size aircraft it has a useful range of about 40 miles and it is a labor intensive device. I have to work the tilt to monitor cells to measure the tops, to determine if a cell is growing or collapsing, and to determine if I am dealing with just rain, or based on the height of tops something more serious. I am very aware of how radar can have blind spots so I am constantly watching weather development and comparing what I see on the radar with the other two devices.

The combination of the three is awesome, but if I had an XM only I would be ultra careful about launching or flying into areas of weather unless I knew I was dealing solely with benign rain showers. During the summer here in the south thunderstorms are a fact of life and I see XM as a nice accessory, but not a serious tool.

[jack14r]

Jon,I have a friend who has a King Air 200 with a Garmin 530 and he tells me it updates every few minutes,he likes it as well as the radar.I have 2 Garmin 530's in my P Baron and am considering the XM weather,do you think that the 530 updates faster?Jack

[Jon Wehrenberg]

I am not familiar with all the various weather downloads. I fly with a friend that has a 480 and the MX20 MFD and I am not sure who his weather provider is, but I have watched his delay updates. We were heading into an area of weather and my butt was puckering because his updates were stretching towards 15 minutes. Worse, mine and his are six minute updates, but those updates are delayed because the NOAA weather is massaged before it is put out so the real delay is even longer. I have flown into weather depicted on the XM that was bright red, but was clear in fact and on the radar I could see the red blob had moved away.

A guy flying in embedded stuff relying on XM could be in serious trouble.

I know for sure mine updates no sooner than every six minutes. I do not know of any that are real time.

If the XM weather did update more often than 6 minutes and it was guaranteed to do so I would prefer it to radar, but the real world is that it is a six minute update in good weather and when it really gets nasty out the updates are spaced even further apart. I pick my way through the close stuff with radar and use the Strikefinder and XM for long range planning only.

ATC is no help whatsoever, and I learned a long time ago to never rely on them. I think their weather depiction is a worked over composite and is not real time also.

[grantracy]

Jon, if you recall I have the 480 and had the MX20( which I recently replaced with the MX 200) I have found now that the resolution,range and download speeds have increased exponentially ( without changing the receiver) so I am going to assume it is in the MFD

[Jon Wehrenberg]

Gran, I don't know if the download speeds are the problem as much as the fact that it does not update with each sweep of the radar antenna. The data is downloaded once every time period on every weather depiction I have seen.

Mine shows a small legend in the lower LH corner showing the age of the weather. It is depicted as 00:00 wx

When I see the legend reading 00:01 wx I know it is a reasonable representation of the real weather, but as it ages its value diminishes. In my 396 when the weather downloads there is a barely perceptible blink of the screen and the depiction alters to reflect the latest. It is interesting to see just how much changes in the time interval.