Airplane use

I love this topic, very interesting.

Miss Poi

Here's a list of which airlines which OFFICIALLY APPROVE the use of GPS receivers during CRUISE and which OFFICIALLY DO NOT APPROVE the use of GPS receivers at ANY time during flight.

This actually means pilot discretion in all cases.

http://gpsinformation.net/airgps/airgps.htm

But yes, if you use it, it shows you moving very fast. You'll probably want to zoom way out. I've seen screeshots of upwards of 600 mph on a GPSr used on a plane flight. Note, that I haven't done it myself yet.

Geared to the Nuvi350 a discussion that covered this. Look here...

And, as Motorcycle Mama notes, check the list to see if the airline approves, but to be sure, I'd ask the pilot.

Thanks MM and KCH. I love that list!!! I am flying US Airways on Monday and will report what it looks like. Hopefully with the new siRF III chipset, I will get a good signal. I really want to see how fast I move across the map...lol.

Your presence will be missed.

I just did this on a US Airways flight to Cancun and back using a 660. My "Max" speed on the trip detail page is now set at 587 mph. I refuse to reset it.

It is pretty cool to use since many times you see major roads, rivers, lakes, cities, etc. and wonder what they are - not know the flight pattern - and this helps greatly. We were flying at 42,000 feet -based on the GPS - so thngs may not match up exactly to the maps perspective. I did not zoom in, but I bet that would look pretty interesting as you say.

BTW - I used the route planner (set to direct path) just to see how the flight pattern compared to the direct line route. Have fun!!

Actually any flight crew member can ask you to turn it off, put it away, etc. Not complying is a federal offense, no matter what the published policy.

Absolutely!

is route planner the same as putting in a destination and following the GPSr or can you actually decide which routes to take?

Man!!! you ruined my fun for the trip, now I know what is going to happen...lol. I can't wait to see it for myself. I am going to zoom in and see if the GPSr can keep up with the plane on the map at a zoom of 800 ft.

Heck, I didn't mean to take away the fun. I will be interested to hear what you see when zoomed in. I only used it from a pretty far zoomed out spot to identify what I was looking at. Still fun to watch the progression. I didn't try anything as far as route planning other than selecting the destination airport and making sure that the "navigation preference" was for "direct route" or "off road". I can't remember what the actual selection is on the 660.

I was also lucky enough to have a window seat. I am sure the people in my neighboring seats thought I was a true geek.

You have to be somewhat a geek to use your gpsr that is used for hwys in an airplane...lol

First let me recommend the airport and VOR POIs here at POI Factory. They will enhance your viewing experience a lot. VORs are navigational radio stations and you may even notice your plane flying between them -- they are part of the airway system.

Sometimes pilots even announce the names of VORs so if you are following along on your GPS and they do that would be very, very cool.

Another fun game is "find the runway". So if you load the Airport POI and your GPS shows an airport on your side of the plane, and you have a view of the ground, see if you can see the runway(s). This can be very fun. I do that even without a GPS -- I look especially around the smaller cities and it is amazing how many airports you can spot if you know what to look for. If it is at night look for a green and white rotating beacon for an airport and a green, amber, and white rotating beacon for a heliport -- usually a hospital.

Have fun!

Whats neat, and I had until yesterday when I reset my Mio and deleted everything on it, is that I had plotted the track back feature flying to Dallas, so I got the whole bread crumb trail at 30,000 feet!

Pretty cool to export that then import into Google Earth.

OMG you are a geek...lol. But that is ok, cause I am going to do as you say...lol. So that makes me one too. But who cares, it is fun, right? I never knew what a VOR was, thanks!

Asianfire, without a doubt, if there ever were a doubt, you are now officially and for all time, a GEEK!

BTW, VHF Omnidirectional Range = VOR -- in case you want to impress your geeky friends, lol.

I'll ask the attendant and see if she/he knows what I am talking about, make it sound like I am very knowledgable.......or a geek.....lol

Rather than look for the VORs you could always look for the TACAN units:

http://www.afmc.af.mil/shared/media/photodb/photos/060908-F-...

They are more fun to try and spot... VORTACs are too easy to spot...

a military geek kaiserb!

I had to google for this, but here is a pic of a typical VOR (actually a VORTAC) so everyone knows what to look for.

http://archive.dispatcher.org/quiz/quiz402.html

No, that is not a national monument to the sport of bowling, he he.

Y'all have good eyes if you can spot the actual VOR from 30,000 ft, that's for sure. However when you know what to look for and where, you may see one while driving down the road someday.

I think the neatest and easiest spotted VOR is at DFW. If you've seen it, you know what I mean.

Gosh, so many new terms, my head hurts! or is that the beer. Anyways, I am going to bed!!!!!

Thats so amazing!! I never even thought of bringing my GPS on my flight to see where exactly it was going! Im going to do this on my next flight!

Wow, I just checked back on this thread since my last post and I guess I am not so Geeky as I thought. Or I am in good company.

When traveling at night I always look out to try and spot the small airports. Good idea on the POI file so That I will now be able to identify them.

You are just in good company...lol.

I flew to Las Vegas on Saturday and tried to use my C340. I had a signal on the ground, but once we took off, I lost reception and it could not re-acquire the satellite. I was near the back of the plane. I'll try it again from another part of the plane. I really want that high "Max Speed"! lol

On another forum people reported better luck with a window seat using their GPSr on a plane.

all flights are window seats, they better keep it that way for me.

I was in an aisle seat and my wife had a window. We tried it in both spots with no luck. I'll try it from a different seat the next time.

What chipset do you have?

I have the Streetpilot c340 with the 12 channel receiver. It doesn't have the SiRF receiver, but I got such a good deal on it, I couldn't pass it up.

Well we will see if the new chipset is any better in a plane.

I was flying to El Paso with a friend and as we were descending for a landing the pilot started speaking on the intercom. My friend was telling a story and there was no stopping him and as a result I could barely hear the pilot - something about turning around and going back to Houston.

Since I knew we were DESENDING for a landing in El Paso, I thought this was some kind of Southwest Airlines joke. So I turned on my gps and sure enough we were heading AWAY from El Paso. An ice storm in El Paso had shut down the airport!

Good thing I had my gps so I didn't have to bug the stewardess with a question. But then again, once we determined we were going back to Houston, we both ordered beers to drown out our sadness and had to bug the stewardess anyway.

To finish the story, if you are interested:
We flew all the way back to Houston and as soon as we got off the plane, we boarded another flight to El Paso and flew back across Texas and finally landed. We drove in an icestorm to Guadalupe Mountains National Park and camped in the worst snowstorm they had had in 10 years.

Here is our tent the next morning:
http://rzerr.smugmug.com/photos/124746534-M.jpg

Good grief, what a trip, need to add it to the stories...lol. I dont find camping in snow to be a lot of fun, then again, I never have tried.

That's priceless. Just glad you had a safe flight and glad your GPS was there to keep you company!

One of the reasons I made sure to get SirfStarIII was that my son took a flight from Chicago to Sacramento on Southwest and used his Nuvi 350 to track the flight. That was the first I heard of his new GPS in fact. So at least I know it can work.

My next flight is on JetBlue and they are on the GPS "no-no" list. Still, I imagine that between the DirecTV and the XM radio I'll be able to keep myself amused.

JetBlue (my favorite airline, even though they had a rough time last month) has GPS on board. You can see the speed, alitude and where you are relative to the earth. It is on one of the channels of the DirectTv. It is pretty cool.

I recall watching the videos provided in 1st class (yes once in a while on the company or frequent flyer miles), seeing the altitude/speed/projected arrival time with an icon of the plane going over land mass... WIth my GPS that would truly be fun.

I have used my Magellan Meridian many times on planes. Used it all the way to Brazil one time!

I need to be in a window seat, because the sat reception is marginal due to the plane. I've never had a crew person ask me to turn it off - and I only use it when they say you can use electronics.

When flying in the US, it helps me pass the time when I can identify roads, towns, rivers, and I get an estimate of arrival time too. And when they turn to gueue up for an hour due to air traffic control issues - you can tell exactly where you are and what you are doing.

Again, I've done it a lot and enjoy it while passing the time in a small seat waiting to get where I'm going.

I've taken my old eTrex Vista on the plane several times. If they allow the use, I'll fire it up. Funny to have the speed show around 500mph.

Neat to bring it home and load it on GoogleEarth to view the route.

One guy ( can't remember and too lazy now to look) said that he refuses to erase the max speed now. I think that is great! But I have to use the max speed so I probably will erease it.

One could always take a picture of it, either by camera or screen shot function if capable.

I tried using my nuvi 660 on three scheduled flights in the last few months (one transatlantic flight and two across Europe) and I could never lock on to enough satellites to make it work. Will try again on my next flight in a few weeks and report back.

Just took a trip to Chicago and turned on the Nuvi 680. I was in a window seat and it worked perfect, with one exception. I put in a destination and touched the "GO" button. This just doesn't work at 38,000 feet and 550 mph! Poor Karen would just constantly say "recalulating" over and over again.

It was fun to watch out the window and try and make out the landmarks on the ground that showed on my GPS. My boss was pretty impressed especially after the Nuvi guided us around Chicago without any problems.

Stan

Yeah I was wondering it the GPSr could keep up going that fast and continueously recalculating! That is funny.

As you can see from the image on the left, I either drive really fast or I have been able to get my GPS to work on a plane. (actually, the 2 statements are not exclusive!)
I have had both my i3 and my Nuvi 360 work while flying, and had no hassles from the attendants.
Both will take significantly longer than normal to acquire satellite signals, and I think it's because of 2 reasons.

1. The airplane's metal body blocks any signals not coming through a window, so a good portion of the sky is not visible to the antennae. While acquiring the signal, keep it close to the window.
2. The second reason is due to the nature of GPS. The satellites send a time code that the receiver matches to a database and determines position. When you move a great distance from the last reading, the receiver needs to do more work and takes longer to figure out the position. They use the previous location to find the new one, and in an airplane traveling several miles per minute, the computation can overload some systems and stretch out the acquisition time. But once you get the lock, they will keep it.

The one thing you should not do once you have the system synced with the sky is set in your destination as though you were driving. If you make that mistake, your unit will continually be "recalculating" as it continually crosses roads and highways, and you need to break into that cycle to stop it.
On my last flight from Florida to Toronto, I had the 360 on my tray table the whole time running with either the map or one of the 2 info pages showing, while using the built in MP3 player. The battery was fine, and used only about a quarter of capacity on the 3 hour flight. I put it away before landing and haven't had any problems with the crews on Air Canada, United or American. I will grab one of the aviation POIs and load that for the next flight!

I've asked the pilot if I could use my GPSr while in flight, and he said, "Sure, shouldn't be a problem."

A different time I asked the flight attendent, she said no, then came back just before take-off and said would be fine.

No problem getting a sat lock, even with my old Lowrance.

Ok, I am now in MA. I got a great signal in the first plane, at a max speed of 530 mph. However, I wasn't able to get a signal at the airport (PA) nor the 2nd flight. Thought something was wrong because I got such a great signal in the first, and I was on an aisle seat. In the 2nd flight, I was at the window and didn't get anything. I am going to try it again on Thurs.

The maps were able to keep up, even at 300 yards. I was a bit surprised. it was sorta cool knowing exactly where I was.

THanks for keeping us posted.. I will be tring this when I take my family to disney world in fl.

Gotta Love your GPS !!! Dont leave hopme without it!

Works fine with a c550 if you dont try to let it figure a route.... I hate that Garmin won't allow direct legs on these units.... It also seems to be happier using the Garmin Topo maps I put on SD card, but I toggle between them, kinda neat to figure which mountain you are over....

Paul

I flew USAir down to Disney World, FL from NY last week.
I was sitting at the aisle seat and my Nuvi 350 didn't get any signal at all.
Maybe I will try to get a window seat next time when I travel.

hummm.. What i seem to be reading is that some Garmins will work whiles other do not.. I have a C530 with new tech to be able to get a sat. where the older ones can not.. I hope I am correct on that. I did buy the C530 for that reason, it had newer tech. to use sat.s pos. What u think?

I agree with your reason for buying the c530. In many cases i.e in the cities, people report problems with the c3xx that we don't have with the c530. However, note asianfire's comments above about receiving the signal on one airplane and not on another. He has the c530 also.