Travel Technology - New Garmin portable airplane GPS... get your backseat pilot on

http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/02/garmins-new-aera-series-gets-you-there-by-air-or-by-land/

Some cool new GPS coming out by Garmin for pilots. It would be fun to have one of these as you go across the country. Wish they were a little less expensive.

The problem with that is "your little buddy doubles as a $2,000 beast capable of safely guiding you cross-country at flight level 250." Safely is a relative thing.

I've flown planes with a G1000 in the panel whose backup to the backup is a G695, but I cannot imagine trying to maintain a decent scan while trying to stare into a 4" LCD at any kind (say, panel) distance.

The problem with that is "your little buddy doubles as a $2,000 beast capable of safely guiding you cross-country at flight level 250." Safely is a relative thing.

I've flown planes with a G1000 in the panel whose backup to the backup is a G695, but I cannot imagine trying to maintain a decent scan while trying to stare into a 4" LCD at any kind (say, panel) distance. I would pay a couple of hundred dollars for a GPS that simply tells where i am when flying commercial. My Garmin Nuvi 760 will do this but it is a job to change scales to see names of towns and to switch to other screens to see closest attractions, etc. It wants to navigate as if I am driving a car.

So just something made for frequent flyers to tell what the town is below, geographic POIs like the Grand Canyon and so forth. If it had multi-touch pinching for zooming in and out - ala iPhone - it would be great. The flight deck crew used to do a lot better job of this and occasionally a pilot will tell us when we are passing over something interesting but it is now rare.