The age of the Big GPS unearthed an annoying truth: They don’t fit in the cockpit. Now that weve evolved to the Really Big GPS, things have only gotten worse, so any attempt to mount a portable navigator can only be called a varying degree of compromise. But compromise we must, so we recently set out to review a range of gadgets designed to mount a portable navigator in the cockpit in such a way that makes it actually useful. Most of these are from RAM Mount Products, but there are others as well, including stock offerings from the GPS makers. For this article, we’ll concentrate mostly on RAMs offerings.
The Yoke Problem
At the outset, we’ll declare a bias from the start. We don’t much care for yoke mounts, except for the smaller navigators, which doesnt describe many of them these days. The reason for this loathing is several fold. Large GPS units can obscure the primary instruments, or at least portions of them and this compromises a cockpit ergonomic climate thats not all that great to begin with.
The larger the GPS is, the more weight it represents on a control that was never designed or intended to have stuff clamped to it. Yes, we know, you get used to it, but a heavy GPS on the yoke changes the control feel and can cause interference at times, which is something we simply don’t want.
Last, the wires, in all their stinking tangliness. This has improved with the advent of Bluetooth technology, but its still a nuisance, in our view. For example, in Garmins GPSMAP 696, there’s a fat power cable in and a skinnier XM antenna out. The good thing is that these wires are a little stiffer and fatter, so theyre not as prone to tangling as they once were. The bad news is theyre still there.