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.