ianboag

I now have it all loaded properly on 4.3" and a 7" el cheapo Chinese machines. Brightness is not an issue - I can read the 4.3 one just as easy as the 7. The 7 has a more contrasty and "TV-like" screen. If I set them both up with the same map image at the same zoom and hold it at arms length there is no difference in readability. If anything I prefer the 4.3 screen. Go figure.

For what it's worth I have a contact here in Auckland that will scan A1 maps at about $5 each. That's how I got my digital maps here in NZ as they were not available commercially. Ironically - Airways NZ (that's our version of AirServices) is just (finally) about to start releasing digital VNCs at last. My understanding is that they will get Maptrax to do it. Go figure .... If you want scanned maps, have a dig round in the yellow pages. Initial price for an A1 scan may be quoted at $25+ - just offer $5 each for a number of scans -explain that you don't need colour fixing or scratch removal etc. Someone will bite. Product works fine. 200 dpi is enough. Scans become 6 MB JPGs. Needs minor polishing (straighten and crop) in a PhotoShop-type product

the el cheapo GPS thing I got a 7" one. All reflective, dark, low light, shirt reflection showing etc etc. First I pulled the protective plastic off the screen which helped. Then I fired up the road GPS app. It had an option for "night"or "day". Turned it to "day" and suddenly the screen looked a lot more readable. I admit I haven't tried it in a plane or in a car on a really bright day, but it didn't look too awful. I found the backlight button in "settings" and turned it up to max. That helped some more. So I loaded up OziCE. The "world" map looked fine, but my scanned VNCs were a bit dull and didn't have enough contrast. So I put the map JPGs through Paint Shop Pro and tweaked the histogram a bit. It's looking a lot better - I haven't entirely got there yet, but I think I can see the day when I have eminently readable moving-map VNCs on a 7" screen that is totally cockpit friendly. Progress - two steps forward and one back .... it's like walking up a pile of gravel :-) IB IB

I have been mucking round with the el cheapo 4.3's on the ground and can see what you mean about bright light washout. However. It surely can't be beyond human ingenuity to make a sunshade out of a black plastic folder. One sees commercial ones advertised for $30+ so a homebrew one should be possible for a tenth of that? Tomorrow I get to try it all out on a 7" one .... I like the idea of a GPS that enables one to locate a chart position instantly ... my other fiddle is that I scanned the NZ VNCs and made up a "road atlas" that one can actually use in the cockpit. CAA of course have all sorts of reasons why it's inappropriate but I've just figured that I need to say on the front page that "this is not be used for navigational purposes" ..... :-)

Haven't got as far as "air" yet .... Still georefing NZ VNCs and making up waypoint lists and all that. IB

Some of them even let you find the Windows folder and you can specify explorer.exe or shell.exe as the "nav" program. Wahoo. Too easy. :-) Who needs unlocking when there's an already open door? Cheers IB

el cheapo Chinese GPS's Could be that I'm trying to teach my granny to suck eggs here Ross. :-) There's a lot of good stuff round about "unlocking" various models of these. I seem to have found a real simple way to run OziEzplorerCE with minimal drama (no unlocking sequence) so I'll pass it on ... When the ecCGPS fires up it has a menu with GPS - bluetooth - music - video - massage your feet - whatever. There is an entry in this menu (twoards the end) called "setup" or "settings" - shows as two gears on the both the (otherwise quite different) units I have played with. If you select this entry and follow your nose you get to an item called "nav path". It shows something like \SDMMC\AMIGO\AMIGO.exe or something like it. This is the normal "street etc" GPS stuff. Assuming that your GPS has a SD card of some sort, load OziExplorerCE on to it in a folder called OziCE (or whatever name takes your fancy). This will involve ActiveSync or something similar and is well documented elsewhere. The OziExplorer page is as good a place as any. When you have done this, take the GPS to the Select>Nav path place, press the arrow to the right of the AMIGO etc program name, then scroll into the OziCE on the SC card folder and select OziExplorerCE.exe. Press the floppy disk symbol at the top RH of the screen to confirm the selection. The navigation app name should now show as \SDMMC\OziCE\OxiExplorerCE.EXE. Press "x" to go back to the main GPS menu. Now when you select "Navigation" you get OziExplorerCE. All the other functions are still available too. If you need it for driving, just go to Setup>Nav path, select the orginal AMIGO or whatever and it's back how it was. Cheers IB

If you're reasonably brave ..... Got to Barnstormers.com. Buy a basic second-hand King txpdr (KT-76 or 79) for about $US600. Make sure you get the mounting tray as well. You might get an encoder in that price, but encoders new in Oz are only about $100. If you're lucky you might get the encoder/txpdr wiring loom as well. Ditto for antenna. Send it to a local avionics shop and ask them to do a wiring harness (if it didn't already come with one) for the txpdr/encoder connection and to calibrate is (maybe $600 or so all up). Then just bolt it in to your plane wherever you can find a place that fits. Mine went under the bottom edge of the dash above my knees. The only things it connects to are power and static pressure (for the encoder). IB

sorry mate - that was my development site - I moved the final version to http://www.pemet.com.au Cheers IB

Sorry guys. A wire fell out. Fixed.

I bought some for my 3300 (price is $US) from .... was about half the local price 12-DR9EIX $9.45ea $113.40 Shipping $25.00 Total $138.40

To be more specific ... the end of my cable would be described as "bottom of the firewall" ie "top of the bottom of the cockpit" if that makes sense. In behind my toes like. Just so I can get a lead on to it. The exhaust pipe works fine as an earth point for me.

That would have to be TWO busted U/C legs methinks ....

Another way Go to Supercheap and buy a length of battery cable (it's about 1 m) that will stretch from the battery, +ve down the firewall to under the cockpit. Attach it with cable ties. You will have to drill a few holes in the front cockpit floor. Then you can put the charger (or jumper lead) +ve on the end of this lead and the -ve on the exhaust pipe. No special plugs required. Works for me. Photo could be arranged if description unclear. IB

Oops. Slap me someone. If I'd looked a bit harder I would have seen this has all been done already ...... :-(

I just bought an el-cheapo noname GPS. It runs Amigo 160 and works fine for car use - all the "turn right in 100 metres" and 3-D depiction of track and all that. Unlocking it was dead easy. After unlocking one could see that it's really just a handheld computer running Windows CE. That's what the new Garmin Aera is too. Anyway - Ozi Explorer CE runs on it no sweat and I'm thinking about making it all into a flying GPS. The GPS unit was a whole $200, Ozi Explorer is about the same and then one just scans in and calibrates some maps. Color moving map for under $500 ........ Has anyone done this? Any opinions about whether it's good, bad or indifferent? Strong points? Weak points? IB

http://www.pemet.com.au?

Sorry. My bad. ifbwrk was (as the name suggests) IFB's work site. Once I put up pemet I should have killed it and advised of the move. I'm a bit new at all this ......

Sorry guys ...... pemet (plain english met) .com.au was always going to be the one that was for real. Even works on a phone ......

Hurricane ....... METAR TTF SPECI Oops. I don't think I'd seen a METAR that was also a TTF and a SPECI before, so the program started decoding one group too early and figured that the UTC time was actually a wind :-( ..... note that it did correctly decode the wind group that followed. Sorry about all that - will fix sometime soon. IB

If you look at the jabiru engines group on Yahoo groups, you'l find a couple of threads about the Mocal filter.

These people Sandwich Plate have one that is a replacement for the normal oil filter sandwich plate. No complex plumbing involved. I tried one - it seemed to work OK - then I went back to the tape-over-the-cooler approach for no particular reason.

What's the "NZ weather coming soon" all about ......?

In looking at this last reported problem I discovered that the last area requested was being listed twice with the second time including some error messages. Fixed ..... My problem with finding bugs on this site is that the weather I look up for me is of course the Kiwi stuff - I just check this one occasionally, so I depend on people pointing out bugs to me. IB

Whatever. I don't mind. It's a bit more of a mission for me to reply to stuff here rather than in my normal email what with login/navigate to forum etc. Hardly a deal breaker though. For what it's worth, anyone notifying a bug (and I welcome such notifications) should paste in the original and the error as soon as it crops up so I can look at the problem before the forecast changes. Ian (the other one)