by Larry Anglisano
Weve come to realize that the days of being blown away by a new portable GPS model are gone, at least for now. We hate to say that weve seen it all, but clearly the standard has been set-largely by Garmin- by which all modern aviation portables should be measured.
While there’s still a lively replacement market for owners of older models wishing to upgrade, feeding-frenzy buying is rare in the aviation portable market. So whats left to sell? Mostly niche products that find some sales through either low price or some features. In such a saturated field, any new portable must cover some important bases if it stands a chance of survival.
Itll need a bright display-color is an obvious preference-thats easy to read at a glance with or without sunglasses, easy and straightforward operating logic, a good fit for the control yoke and durability sufficient to live in the mean insides of a flightbag. And that, more than anything, seems to be the thinking behind Lowrances latest aviation portable offering, the $499 AirMap 600C. In the Lowrance tradition, it delivers an advanced featureset at an absolute bargain price.
Nice DisplayThe 600Cs display is what we wished for when we reviewed the lower-end AirMap 500 portable, but at its under-$400 street price, we couldnt complain. And there should be no complaints about the color screen on the 600C, either. Its a bright 2.83-inch diagonal TFT in 256 colors. Resolution totals 76,800 pixels, impressive specs for a budget portable. Backlighting is good, thanks to its white LED screen. Keep in mind that the 600C is a small unit, measuring 5.6 inches high by 2.5 inches wide by 1.2 inches deep and weighing 8.7 ounces. A color screen that measures just shy of 3 inches is a brilliant achievement on such a small chassis.
Power to the screen is provided by two AA batteries for 3 volts of DC input. Lowrance cautions that the provided cigar lighter power adapter has a stepdown converter for regulating the input voltage down to 3 volts, so if a custom, do-it-yourself hard-wire job is in order, don’t hack the plug off the adapter and connect the bare wires to the ship bus. If you do, you’ll send 12 volts flowing into the 600C, soon to be followed by smoke signals.
Still, as with any of these color portables, ships power is the way to go for full screen brightness, so we suggest plugging it in to the aircraft. Two AAs have a 12-hour endurance, says Lowrance, not nearly as good as the Garmin 96C, but more than enough endurance to get you back on safe ground in an emergency or for use in the car.
Performance, ErgonomicsBased on price, physical size and display type, the 600C is, in our view, a competitor to the Garmin GPSMAP 96C (street-priced at $699). When the 600C arrived, we unpacked it and set it up in the usual know-it-all manner. Never mind the instruction manual. As we loaded in the batteries, we initially thought the unit had an insubstantial case-well stop short of calling it cheap, but it doesnt compare favorably to a Garmin GPSMAP 96 or anything Garmin makes.
Garmin sets the standard in portable unit ergonomics, in our view, so any other brand has big shoes to fill. We fought with the battery compartment, unable to secure the cover and we thought we had broken it. We eventually got it to stay shut after reloading the batteries a few times. In the bottom of the battery case lives the 512MB storage card that contains Lowrances exclusive terrain awareness, obstruction data and what Lowrance calls Safe Flight 21, which is airport taxiway mapping data. Jeppesens Americas database includes airports, VORs, NDBs, intersections and approach control and FSS frequencies.
For initial lock-on, we placed the unit on our standard satellite acquisition test range: the edge of our back deck nestled in dense woods. By the time we stepped inside to fetch a cold one, the unit was locked on and ready in less than a minute. This is impressive and so is the 600Cs GPS engine, a 16-parallel channel GPS/WAAS with internal antenna. A remote active antenna is standard equipment. We found that the unit locked inside a building, inside a vehicle and inside an airplane cabin without a remote antenna attached to it. It only takes three satellites to obtain a 2D fix position without GPS altitude, so these lock-on habits arent unusual for a modern portable. But we think that the 600Cs GPS performance is exceptional, perhaps better than any unit weve tested to date.
The 600Cs keypad, like many of its features, is identical to that of the lower cost AirMap 500. To recap, the PWR/LIGHT serves double duty for on/off and commanding the display backlighting. However, we struggled with turning the backlight back on after it timed out. The power button is recessed into the plastic case to avoid inadvertently powering off, so its awkward to get at it. You could, of course, set backlighting on constantly, but that would eat up batteries in no time.
The PAGES button simplifies aviation operating modes such as position status, navigation and map page. MENU pulls up a menu for each page displayed.
A center rocker pad with arrow nomenclature is used for moving around menus while the Lowrance trademark ZOUT/ZIN is for map zooming in and out all the way to 4000 miles.
The ENTER/SAVE executes menu commands and saves waypoints. EXIT will back out of menus, clear data or return to a previously viewed screen. A main menu is accessed from any page simply by pressing the MENU key twice where a variety of system settings and options can be accessed.