[mixturerich]

Hi Folks,

I am considering buying a GPS unit and was leaning towards the Garmin Aera 500. However, I came across an article lately about the Skydemon Mobile GPS and it seems like a very good unit (same price bracket as the Aera 500).

I was wondering if anyone on the forum had any experience of the Skydemon and what they thought of it regarding good features / downside etc.

Thanks in advance

Mixturerich

[flymo]

Check it out on the ipad before buying a standalone unit. Used it recently on overseas trip fantastic, you can also buy a Bluetooth receiver for about 100e. If you buy a stand alone sky demon unit that's all you have, whereas the ipad you can use for other things. Annual sub initial approx 120e reduces to 80e after that could not fault the system on the ipad absolutely fantastic for flight planning, up to date wx, elevation profiles, inflight warnings and up to date charts Garmin are no longer in the game with this piece of kit IMHO

[aviatorsguide]

Skydemon on the iPad is really good, but if I was using it as my primary I'd need to have an external gps aerial. Perhaps not so easy to use on a bad day, and when flying on a long trip recently I had the 495/iPad/695 all on the go. I wouldn't give a damn for the 695, its too fidly and the software on this unit kept blanking out, losing position and yes it did have an external aerial. If you could have aircraft power/aerial then I think Skydemon is pretty awesome and on long trips i'm using it more and more. Being able to drag the course onto waypoints is just so handy. The only fault I find its the handy wind feature drops offline too often.

Second to that If you could get a 495/496 with the up to date database, its probably the most stable, capable and easiest to use. The 296 is almost as good and should not be overlooked.

[toddy]

The iPad internal GPS is the most reliable in populated areas with data turned on. It uses assisted GPS which maintains a position by way of a cell tower triangulation/MAC lookup(data bit). Same way your iPad gets a location indoors. Over water or very remote areas, clear view of the sky/external GPS is better.