AnyWhere Map Reviews?

gprellwitz

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Grant Prellwitz
I have a friend who's considering an AnyWhere Map as an Electronic Flight Bag to reduce all the clutter. He moves between planes regularly, and this would mainly be used in the part 135 and flight training operations in the King Air C90, Cessna 210 and 182, and occasionally a light jet, e.g. a Citation.

I'm pretty sure that the iPaq model would be unusable on an instrument approach, and the 8" screen version may also suffer that problem. At over $4000 for the 12" screen version, plus the fact that their return policy is somewhat complex (http://www.anywheremap.com/pages/Returns.aspx) and there would be a $600+ restocking fee:hairraise:, he obviously wants to be sure! I recommended that he view the unit at Oshkosh next year to see if it meets his needs.

Does anyone here have actual experience with the units?
 
Dave Taylor (Let'sGoFlying) is an Anywhere Map user (iPaq-based). He seems satisfied with it, FWIW.

I'd ring his bell.
 
It is a good device but I would not want to be moving it from plane to plane all the time. You can use it on approaches but not for approaches. If you have time. Usually I just set it up 30 miles out and use the zoom feature to make sure I am where I am supposed to be, and for terrain/obstacle awareness.
 
I had an Anywhere Map, and did not care for it. I would only suggest that computer-savvy people get them. The bluetooth communication between the three boxes was not very good.

I am much happier with the robust architecture of an all-in-one unit-- the 496.

Wells
 
I bought an AnywhereWX PDA solution, about 11 minutes before the Garmin 396 was announced. The boxes had a tendency to stop talking to each other, requiring frequent reboots. The wxworx box was flimsy, and the system presented too many boxes with too many cables, even with bluetooth. The PDA and GPS had internal batteries, but the wxworx box did not, so potentially no weather updates if the alternator fails (though, these days, you can buy a battery accessory to attach to that box). The software's user interface was peculiar, and I found the touch-screen difficult to use in turbulence, as compared to a dedicated unit with "real" buttons (I think with better software, this could have been made useable, though). The graphic representation of chart and weather data was okay, but not very good.

That was a few years ago, so current versions may be better, and it may be better on a tablet, as compared to a PDA. In any case, life got much better when I replaced it with a 396. Seeing all this stuff implemented competently made me realize that what I had been using was sub-par. When I bought my PDA setup, there was nothing cheap about it, but since the 396 came out, AnywhereMap had to slash their prices and become the "economical" choice, so there may be a few dollars to save with that approach.
-harry
 
I have an IPAQ version of anywherewx. For weather capability, it is a great tool, although as others have said, it loses communications frequently, takes a long time to "find you" with its internal GPS device, has a conflagration of wires, and is a bit of a problem if you have no external power adapter in the plane. I do find it nice to go from airplane to airplane, though, as there are not weather products in all of the airplanes I fly. It is usable, though, and I certainly find it more useful than eyeballs.
An all in one unit would be less cumbersome, and likely be more integrated.
 
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