In the good old days of portable GPS-about 1996-when a half million pilots were still making do with panel-mount loran, every new product introduction ignited a feeding frenzy of buying. Garmin, IIMorrow, Lowrance, Magellan and Trimble (remember them?) had a field day pouring portables into a bottomless pit of demand. But staid Bendix/King, the ruler of all things panel mounted, was never a serious player. So the last thing we expected from the company at this years AirVenture was a new portable, never mind an entire line of three, two of which are high-dollar EFB products. (See sidebar on page 11 for a glimpse of those.)
The eye-catcher was the bottom of the line, the $749 AV8OR Handheld that sports a GPS moving map with weatherlink, touchscreen control, built-in ground navigation and MP3 and movie players, all in one compact package.
LOTS OF STUFF
As you might imagine, the box containing this thing has a bunch of parts and pieces, including the receiver itself, the power cabling, yoke mount, car mount, chargers, earbuds, a carrying case, plus all the stuff necessary for the XM-based weatherlink. That hardware, by the way, is a $450 add-on extra that brings the total price of the package to just shy of $1200 retail, but discount prices are lower. Even though some assembly is required, thats a lot of stuff and capability for not much money. In fact, it keeps pace with the Garmin GPSmap 496 for half the price, even if it might not do some things quite as well.
The basic unit itself is a purpose-built display/navigator/player that measures 5 by 3 1/2 inches and is less than an inch deep. Its kind of beefed up iPhone, with a display size of 3 by 2 3/16. Screen technology is backlighted TFT at 480 by 272 pixels-its sharp enough, but not super sharp. Unusual for this class of product is a removable lithium ion battery that snaps under a cover on the back, with an optional high capacity battery. But battery life is short-under three hours-so this thing should really run on ships or vehicle power. The controls are arrayed around the outer perimeter of the device and include a menu key, a volume knob and jacks for earbuds and USB/external audio. The AV8OR has an internal GPS with its own antenna and it also has an external puck-type antenna. We couldnt get the internal antenna to work correctly, but the puck performed well. Similarly, for XM datalink weather, it requires either a portable WxWorx REWX91D XM data receiver or Bendix/King KDR610 certified weatherlink box. The portable can connect via RS232 hardware or Bluetooth, but the weatherlink receivers needs its own antenna and power. Discounted, were seeing the bare AV8OR selling for $675 or $1135