It guides you through the air, across the land, or on the water
Garmin stunned the market five years ago with its GPSMap 195 handheld GPS, but in the computer world five years may as well be 100. It was time to freshen the product with new technology, such as faster processors, higher-resolution screens, and umpty zillion new software tricks. The result is the GPSMap 196, featuring a display that updates four times faster than a 195 yet offers twice the screen resolution. The 196 can guide you down the highway, airway, or waterway.
The unit's 3-by-2.25-inch screen comes only in black and white; the technology just isn't there for color. A color screen would eat through batteries at an alarming rate, wash out in sunlight, and carry a prohibitive retail price. As it is, the $1,000 unit (less on the street) with its highly readable screen is worth every penny. (The screen actually becomes more readable in direct sunlight, like shining more light on written text.) I flew with the 196 four times, including two flights dedicated solely to its operation, and drove with it through the suburbs of Washington, D.C. I could have sailed with the unit too — it happens to be waterproof and is based on the GPSMap 176 marine unit. (Yes, the 176 has a color map, but that map washes out in a bright cockpit.)
Drivers, pilots, hikers, and sailors have flocked to Garmin because its GPS products are the most intuitive to use of any on the market. We consumers hate to read the manual: You don't have to with the 196. Most of the features are found either on the Menu page, which you reach by hitting the Menu button twice, or on the Nearest/Find page, which you reach by hitting the Nrst/Find button. After that, anytime you get in trouble, no matter what screen you are on, hit the Menu button. Ninety percent of the time up pops a screen with exactly the feature you want. The other 10 percent? Well, there is the manual.
An automatic logbook records the date, departure and destination airports, the airplane's N number (from a database the pilot creates prior to the flight), and the duration of the flight. There's nothing to activate or turn on. Anytime you exceed 30 knots and gain more than 500 feet in altitude the automatic flight-recording feature kicks in. The nearest airport is recorded as your departure point, and any stop after that lasting longer than 10 minutes is recorded as the destination (thus, a touch and go at an en route airport would not be recorded as the destination). It even knows the time of day and sunrise/sunset and thus records whether it's a day or night flight. It's a handy feature for pilots making more than one flight per day, such as flight instructors flying in a variety of airplanes. Garmin has developed new FlightBook software, soon to be available on the Garmin Web site, that allows the data to be uploaded to a spreadsheet.
Runway extensions are another new feature of the 196. They appear as an elongated arrow, similar to those marking ILS localizers on terminal procedure charts (but without the feathers), and keep you on course to the correct runway — an especially helpful feature when the visibility is four miles in haze and the tower puts you on a five-mile final.
Pop-up boxes, referred to by Garmin as a highlighting function, eliminate a lot of button pushing. Just touch the cursor to icons for airports, VORs, and NDBs, and a box appears displaying the name, identifier, and frequency (if it is a navigation facility). You don't have to hit Enter or anything else to make the data appear. Just press the cursor-control button (the round one with four arrows on it) in the desired direction. The cursor suddenly appears on the screen and starts moving.
This WAAS-capable (for greater accuracy) receiver is not certified for IFR use, but offers GPS, RNAV, VOR, and ILS instrument approaches that can be easily loaded and flown for reference. Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) refers to two satellites, one over the Atlantic and one over the Pacific, that augment GPS accuracy. All this brings up what is perhaps the best gee-whiz feature of the Garmin 196: the GPS Panel page. With it, you can fly a localizer approach with surprising accuracy, as one pilot did while covered by a towel — serving as a hood — in VFR weather with a safety pilot in the other seat. (There is no glideslope information.) The Panel page includes GPS-derived data — presented on pictures of instruments — such as a groundspeed readout, an HSI (horizontal situation indicator) representation, a turn-and-bank indicator, an altimeter, and a vertical-speed indicator. It makes a great backup system in an emergency.
The 196 also has the weight-and-balance feature seen in earlier Garmin models. It comes in handy when an unexpected passenger shows up. The information is entered from the Aircraft page in the main menu. You can also enter an aircraft N number, cruising speed, and maximum speed plus fuel-burn information; enter as many aircraft as you like. Finally, the Track feature lets you record a flight, such as one made for instrument approach practice, and play it back to see how you did. Increase the speed to 250 knots and watch the airplane icon zip along the saved course.
My first flight test was to determine whether I could enter a route without looking at the owner's manual. I could. I entered a snakelike IFR route from Maryland to Maine that passed over New York, and I activated it in flight with no problems. A second trip, this one from Maryland to Oshkosh and back, revealed the value of the flight service frequencies found on the Nearest/Find page. Acting as copilot while dodging storm cells, I hit the Nrst/Find key, moved the cursor to select FSS, and up came not only the closest FSS, but also the correct frequencies for the area where we were flying.
The third flight, from Maryland to Roanoke, Virginia, was a test of all the 196's features, and the unit ended up saving the day. With Roanoke 47 nm ahead, I tuned in ATIS and the Roanoke Tower on the radio not in use. Distracted by a flight-following radio call from a controller, I then returned to tuning the ATIS, but did it on the radio in use. I tuned away Washington Center and couldn't remember the frequency. Putting the cursor on Roanoke, I hit Enter to bring up the Airport Information page, and moved the cursor to Comm. Up came a Roanoke approach frequency where I confessed the error, was forgiven, and was allowed to stay with the approach controller. I asked the controller for vectors to the ILS, explaining that I was testing the 196. I repeatedly hit Page until the Active Route page appeared, then pressed Menu once, highlighted Load Approach on the menu that appeared, and hit Enter; I selected the approach from a list. I then switched to the Panel page and flew a passable localizer-only approach to the runway.
On the ground, I got into the rental car, held the Page key down for a few seconds, and selected Land from the Aviation/Land/Water menu. It was then that I discovered (not having read the manual) that I did not have the detailed ground database for the Roanoke area on the data card — a card that is separate from the aviation database — and therefore could not navigate to an exact address. That requires the $299 auto kit that includes a 64-megabyte data card and a MapSource City Select CD-ROM. The pilot must load relevant maps from the CD to the data card before the flight. Boxes on the GPS screen show the areas covered. Even without the MapSource information loaded, I could at least navigate to an intersection near my destination using the general information included with the basic unit.
Once back in Maryland I was able to use the MapSource data loaded on the data card for the Washington, D.C., area, receiving turn-by-turn driving directions first to a location in Bethesda, Maryland, north of Washington, then to another in Virginia. I missed a turn or two, but the 196 didn't give up on me and simply replanned my route to the address. It took into account that I was in traffic and gave me an arrival time based on my average speed. I arrived within minutes of the prediction. After the test, I found myself grabbing the Garmin for other road trips in case I got lost. I trust the 196 to find tough destinations, and to signal me with beeps and warnings to prevent me from missing upcoming turns.
To sum it up, the unit's utility more than justifies its price — you won't want to leave home without it.
E-mail the author at [email protected].
For more information, contact Garmin International, telephone 800/800-1020 or 913/397-8200; or visit the Web site ( www.garmin.com).
