Monday, April 03, 2006

Seeking Recommendations

The Boys are thinking about equipping 78S with some in-cockpit weather. Either a Garmin 396 or the Anywhere XM. There are competing views. We're seeking some real-world feedback.

We offer nothing in the way of compensation, other than our eternal gratitude. And maybe a $100 hamburger, if we ever visit you in your hometown airport.


Thanks y'all.

4 comments:

Avimentor said...

I've seen the 396 and it's hard to beat. The design is elegant and, unlike the G1000, the interface is pretty intuitive.

The software engineer in me is made nervous by solutions that depend on a "general purpose" device. There's just too much that can go wrong in an operating system so my bias would be to go with a dedicated device - the 396. But that's just me ...

Anonymous said...

Personally as a current Garmin 196 owner, I'd vote for the Garmin 396 and wire it to the ships power. As Jon commented, straightforward and easy to use.

Resale is something else to consider, say, if you ever found it not being used enough. The Garmin products do well on eBay.

FWIW, I recently met a Cirrus driver with the legacy (non-bluetooth) anywheremap product. He said he never turns it on because of the complexity to get everything working just right.

If you need a little nudging off the fence you might reason that when in need of transponder replacement you could bolt in the GTX 330 ( pricey :-( ) and get TIS traffic.

Isn't 78S a 4 partner ship? Doing the math (carry the 1...) that's a $250 surcharge per partner. Advantage Garmin.

Anonymous said...

I have the 396 and love it. I use it in a SR22 that I fly as a backup and for the TAWS component (I fly in the mountain west so the terrain feature is very helpful). I am not familiar with the Anywhere XM but I can highly recommend the 396...don't forget the $50 a month for the weather subscription and $7 a month for the XM radio in your cost analysis. I suppose it's the same for both though...

Enjoy!!

Greybeard said...

The Garmin.....hands down!

(I own stock in the company.)