Like many YCs, we have a locker where old gear goes to die after being
banished from boats in favour of the latest and greatest hardware.
Members are invited to scavenge, and I've scored lots of decent gear.
Today I found a small satchel containing a Trimble Flightmate PRO GPS
unit (circa 1993) complete with "windshield antenna", a bunch of
good-looking power cords and connectors, a spiffy case, all docs and a
lithium battery pack for (I am guessing) keeping some sort of memory
active, like a lithium button battery on a motherboard keeps a CMOS
alive.

Did I mention the extremely well-built mounting bracket? That and the
12 V lighter socket cord will come it very handy, if nothing else
does.

Well, I threw 4 AAs in the unit, figuring "nothing ventured", and it
fired up promptly. Its screen is strictly alpha-numeric, and seem
oriented to avionics, which is fine with me. Whatever it held in
memory is long-gone, but I left it outside for half-an-hour and it
acquired six satellites and now has an "almanac" of them, probably
meaning the next fire-up won't take so long to acquire. Like every GPS
I've ever used, it eats batteries, although this could be because its
-3 C today and I left it in the backyard to mull things over for 30
minutes. Now it's working fine.

My little tale ends with this query...should I use this in my boat? It
looks professional and solid, if big and somewhat "user-unfriendly" in
operation, but it's got "bigger characters" than most handhelds.

On the other hand, it has about the same feature-set as my two
Magellans, circa 1999 and 2001, but it does have an external antenna I
can mount on a hatch and probably do faster acquires. I suspect the
thick instruction manual will tell me more. I do have doubt that it
could cope with the slow speeds of sailing, but I rarely need more
than lat/lon co-ords..

Does anyone (including pilots who sail) have any comments? The unit
looks mint, and unlike the crappy plastic mounts I have for the
Magellans, I thought this baby would make a great nav station unit,
because of its very solid mounting bracket.

I don't require it to interface with anything, but it appears to have
a stock nine-pin serial connector, so I guess I could connect it to an
old laptop if its NMEA 183.

Do I have a winner?

R.

I had a Magellan 5000 which was spiffy in its day (1994?) but became
obsolete when I received a chart plotter as a birthday present a few
years later. I gave it to friend, assuming that he would keep it
stashed as a backup for the newer unit he had wired to his computer. It
turned out he loved the Magellan in the cockpit because it had numeric
buttons which allowed him to punch in Lat/Lon quickly.

I'd say you probably scored a nice unit, especially if you're looking
for a backup.



rhys wrote:
Like many YCs, we have a locker where old gear goes to die after being
banished from boats in favour of the latest and greatest hardware.
Members are invited to scavenge, and I've scored lots of decent gear.
Today I found a small satchel containing a Trimble Flightmate PRO GPS
unit (circa 1993) complete with "windshield antenna", a bunch of
good-looking power cords and connectors, a spiffy case, all docs and a
lithium battery pack for (I am guessing) keeping some sort of memory
active, like a lithium button battery on a motherboard keeps a CMOS
alive.

Did I mention the extremely well-built mounting bracket? That and the
12 V lighter socket cord will come it very handy, if nothing else
does.

Well, I threw 4 AAs in the unit, figuring "nothing ventured", and it
fired up promptly. Its screen is strictly alpha-numeric, and seem
oriented to avionics, which is fine with me. Whatever it held in
memory is long-gone, but I left it outside for half-an-hour and it
acquired six satellites and now has an "almanac" of them, probably
meaning the next fire-up won't take so long to acquire. Like every GPS
I've ever used, it eats batteries, although this could be because its
-3 C today and I left it in the backyard to mull things over for 30
minutes. Now it's working fine.

My little tale ends with this query...should I use this in my boat? It
looks professional and solid, if big and somewhat "user-unfriendly" in
operation, but it's got "bigger characters" than most handhelds.

On the other hand, it has about the same feature-set as my two
Magellans, circa 1999 and 2001, but it does have an external antenna I
can mount on a hatch and probably do faster acquires. I suspect the
thick instruction manual will tell me more. I do have doubt that it
could cope with the slow speeds of sailing, but I rarely need more
than lat/lon co-ords..

Does anyone (including pilots who sail) have any comments? The unit
looks mint, and unlike the crappy plastic mounts I have for the
Magellans, I thought this baby would make a great nav station unit,
because of its very solid mounting bracket.

I don't require it to interface with anything, but it appears to have
a stock nine-pin serial connector, so I guess I could connect it to an
old laptop if its NMEA 183.

Do I have a winner?

R.

On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 17:41:05 -0500, Jeff Morris
wrote:

I'd say you probably scored a nice unit, especially if you're looking
for a backup.

You should see this thing. It resembles a price check scanner from a
supermarket, or the larger sort of PIN number consoles for a debit
card terminal. But it looks great, and you can believe from the
aluminum, rubber coated mounts that it was meant to be clamped to a
Cessna's steering yoke.

It figured out my height above sea level at home, which is 60 feet
higher than the "lake front datum" I inputed of 240 or so feet, and
self corrected.

It has XTE and ETE and ETA and gives me five characters to name
waypoints, not three. It also has location-specific sunrise and sunset
times (which a lot of units have) and azimuth angles (which they
don't). Plus if I want to sail to any of several hundred airports, I'm
good to go. G

So, yeah, I can easily see this in my nav station.

"rhys" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 17:41:05 -0500, Jeff Morris
wrote:

I'd say you probably scored a nice unit, especially if you're looking
for a backup.

You should see this thing. It resembles a price check scanner from a
supermarket, or the larger sort of PIN number consoles for a debit
card terminal. But it looks great, and you can believe from the
aluminum, rubber coated mounts that it was meant to be clamped to a
Cessna's steering yoke.

It figured out my height above sea level at home, which is 60 feet
higher than the "lake front datum" I inputed of 240 or so feet, and
self corrected.

It has XTE and ETE and ETA and gives me five characters to name
waypoints, not three. It also has location-specific sunrise and sunset
times (which a lot of units have) and azimuth angles (which they
don't). Plus if I want to sail to any of several hundred airports, I'm
good to go. G

So, yeah, I can easily see this in my nav station.

Trimble has always had a reputation for very high end GPS units. Its
probably very solidly put together but may not stand up to a moist
environment. You might consider offering it on eBay for $200 and see if
anyone bites. Magellan had units set up for aircraft use and these are
still selling well on eBay. You could then buy a marine unit with WAAS
capability for not much more.

On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 20:34:40 GMT, "Gordon Wedman"
wrote:

Trimble has always had a reputation for very high end GPS units. Its
probably very solidly put together but may not stand up to a moist
environment.

I'm on fresh water and this would be mounted inside on the nav
station. But your comments are noted...and thanks.

You might consider offering it on eBay for $200 and see if
anyone bites. Magellan had units set up for aircraft use and these are
still selling well on eBay. You could then buy a marine unit with WAAS
capability for not much more.

Hmm...there's a thought. Or maybe to be completely paradoxical, I
could put it toward my "sextant fund".

Thanks. I'd never heard of Trimble, and although they are still in
business making GPS and location-finding equipment, they seem focused
on surveying and such, not recreational GPS...probably the margin was
too skinny.

R.

there was a general 'roll-over' for GPS receivers just after Y2K that
required sofware / e-prom, etc. changes to keep them 100% compatible
with the international system. You should ckeck to see if this was
done (or not) on this unit. If not then the unit would not be totally
realiable with the worldwide system upgrade.


In article , rhys
wrote:

Like many YCs, we have a locker where old gear goes to die after being
banished from boats in favour of the latest and greatest hardware.
Members are invited to scavenge, and I've scored lots of decent gear.
Today I found a small satchel containing a Trimble Flightmate PRO GPS
unit (circa 1993) complete with "windshield antenna", a bunch of
good-looking power cords and connectors, a spiffy case, all docs and a
lithium battery pack for (I am guessing) keeping some sort of memory
active, like a lithium button battery on a motherboard keeps a CMOS
alive.

Did I mention the extremely well-built mounting bracket? That and the
12 V lighter socket cord will come it very handy, if nothing else
does.

Well, I threw 4 AAs in the unit, figuring "nothing ventured", and it
fired up promptly. Its screen is strictly alpha-numeric, and seem
oriented to avionics, which is fine with me. Whatever it held in
memory is long-gone, but I left it outside for half-an-hour and it
acquired six satellites and now has an "almanac" of them, probably
meaning the next fire-up won't take so long to acquire. Like every GPS
I've ever used, it eats batteries, although this could be because its
-3 C today and I left it in the backyard to mull things over for 30
minutes. Now it's working fine.

My little tale ends with this query...should I use this in my boat? It
looks professional and solid, if big and somewhat "user-unfriendly" in
operation, but it's got "bigger characters" than most handhelds.

On the other hand, it has about the same feature-set as my two
Magellans, circa 1999 and 2001, but it does have an external antenna I
can mount on a hatch and probably do faster acquires. I suspect the
thick instruction manual will tell me more. I do have doubt that it
could cope with the slow speeds of sailing, but I rarely need more
than lat/lon co-ords..

Does anyone (including pilots who sail) have any comments? The unit
looks mint, and unlike the crappy plastic mounts I have for the
Magellans, I thought this baby would make a great nav station unit,
because of its very solid mounting bracket.

I don't require it to interface with anything, but it appears to have
a stock nine-pin serial connector, so I guess I could connect it to an
old laptop if its NMEA 183.

Do I have a winner?

R.

On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 23:20:22 GMT, Rich Hampel
wrote:

there was a general 'roll-over' for GPS receivers just after Y2K that
required sofware / e-prom, etc. changes to keep them 100% compatible
with the international system. You should ckeck to see if this was
done (or not) on this unit. If not then the unit would not be totally
realiable with the worldwide system upgrade.

=====================================

That's true but for me the real issue would be lack of WAAS
capability. WAAS has increased average accuracy of GPS positions from
+/- 100 yards down to about 15 yards. That is a REALLY significant
improvement, and is now frequently more accurate than the charts. If
you doubt the significance, take a look at the number of channels and
inlets that are less than 200 yards wide, or take a close look at your
visible range in heavy fog or rain.

Wayne.B wrote:

On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 23:20:22 GMT, Rich Hampel
wrote:

there was a general 'roll-over' for GPS receivers just after Y2K that
required sofware / e-prom, etc. changes to keep them 100% compatible
with the international system. You should ckeck to see if this was
done (or not) on this unit.

There was the 1024-week rollover of GPS time which happened in August
of 1999. But the unit in question locked onto satellites and
apparently came up with the correct position and date/time, in which
case it handled the roll-over correctly.

If not then the unit would not be totally
realiable with the worldwide system upgrade.

If it gave correct position and date/time when it locked on then
the rollover was handled correctly and there shouldn't be any
concern about that issue.

That's true but for me the real issue would be lack of WAAS
capability. WAAS has increased average accuracy of GPS positions from
+/- 100 yards down to about 15 yards.

No, accuracy had already improved from a nominal 100m to 15m when
Selective Availability was turned off in May, 2000. Actual measurements
have shown the 95% accuracy to be closer to 7m without WAAS capability.

WAAS further improved the 95% accuracy in areas that are covered to
about 3m.

That is a REALLY significant
improvement, and is now frequently more accurate than the charts.

Even without WAAS the accuracy is frequently better than that of the
charts, so WAAS is mainly of benefit when going back to a place
where you've already taken (or been given) GPS positions.

If
you doubt the significance, take a look at the number of channels and
inlets that are less than 200 yards wide, or take a close look at your
visible range in heavy fog or rain.

My perceptions of WAAS, turned off selective availability, etc. is
that you in many cases are still using and co-relating to charts that
were constructed using hand thrown lead lines and surveying instruments
(sometimes on a pitching deck). Especially when using vector charts the
magnification possible with such charts completely overwhelms the
'resolution' accuracy .... and can very quickly put yourself firmly
onto a reef, rock, or channel berm. Jeeze, most of the coastal charts
used in the USA are based on the NAD27/29 data (many of which were
simply transcibed from pre-colonial charts .... and were NOT verified
by 'modern' means).

Running an unfamiliar channel, close approach to a hazzard, etc. by the
sole means of GPS (even with WAAS etc.) is GOING to 'catch you'.

On Fri, 25 Feb 2005 17:38:51 GMT, Rich Hampel
wrote:

My perceptions of WAAS, turned off selective availability, etc. is
that you in many cases are still using and co-relating to charts that
were constructed using hand thrown lead lines and surveying instruments
(sometimes on a pitching deck). Especially when using vector charts the
magnification possible with such charts completely overwhelms the
'resolution' accuracy .... and can very quickly put yourself firmly
onto a reef, rock, or channel berm. Jeeze, most of the coastal charts
used in the USA are based on the NAD27/29 data (many of which were
simply transcibed from pre-colonial charts .... and were NOT verified
by 'modern' means).

Running an unfamiliar channel, close approach to a hazzard, etc. by the
sole means of GPS (even with WAAS etc.) is GOING to 'catch you'.

Charts in areas of heavy commercial use, like NY, Boston, and Portland
harbors are mch more recent, and waas is really good. Jonesport is
more like prerevolution Admiralty charts. However, the locations of
Nav Aids are checked by DGPS every time they are serviced.

NAD 27/29 is not common in the Northeast.



Rodney Myrvaagnes NYC J36 Gjo/a


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