darryl ramm’s blog

I’ve posted most of this in the past to some newsgroups, but people keep asking about the PDA mounts I have in my DG-303 so here we go.. after experimenting with different options I settled on the mounting arrangement shown in the photos above and I really like how they work.

I use HP iPAQ hx4700 PDAs, these are relatively high end PDAs that are no longer in production but may still be available, at least used ones. The hx4705 was the same PDA sold through different channels. The hx4700 have 4″ diagonal transflective VGA resolution (640×480 pixel) screens. I run SeeYou Mobile so the processor power of the hx4700 is useful but the PDAs are not perfect, more on that below. I have the 3600 mAh extended Li-ion battery packsinstaled that allow the PDAs to operate with a CF card GPS for something like 6-8 hours — providing a backup navigation system if everything else fails in the glider. Failing that I’ve got a compass and sectional charts and I’m not afraid to use them.

Although I’m using hx4700s many of the comments below will apply to all PDAs.

Almost all color PDAs use transflective displays, these do not work well in sunlight. The best thing to do is to get the PDA close to your face and pretty vertical looking straight at you. You don’t want to be looking down at a PDA angled partially up at the sky as it will reflect a lot of light back off the screen. I tried the PDAs with bare screens and with the Boxwave ClearTouch Anti-Glare screen protectors which do improve visibility in daylight a little. Make sure you get the ClearTouch Anti-Glare not ClearTouch Crystal screen protectors.

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Naviter has released improved resolution Landsat imaging for for their SeeYou soaring planning and analysis software. A nice improvement in resolution as you can see from the screen shots on the left. These screen shots show part of a flight I made last year from Minden Douglas Airport (KMEV) in Nevada. The 38th north parallel runs through KEMV. In these screen shots you see the new higher resolution imaging south of the 38th parallel and the previous resolution imaging to the north.

The release of improved resolution terrain imagery for SeeYou is likely a slow (there is no reason to hurry) response to Sierra SkyWare releasing WinPilot 3D to compete with SeeYou. One of the leading benefit claims Sierra SkyWare was making for Winpilot 3D was its 3D visualization and imaging resolution. 3D visualization is one of the sexier features of SeeYou so this was pretty much a frontal assault on SeeYou.

A frontal assault on the dominant market leader, including where when there are already other vendors (StrePla) in a market segment just does not sound like good strategy for me. You can run up to the castle and pound on the gates and not many people will care. But if you manage to annoy the owner of the castle enough they pour a little boiling oil over you, and you either die or you leave, a lot worse for wear…