drgwentzel
Pre-takeoff checklist
Flyers,
I thought I’d put my two-cents in on the review of the Garmin 696 since I now own one since Christmas. I really don’t know where to begin and there’s so much to discuss, but I will keep it as brief as I can.
The unit is large, but it does indeed fit nicely on the yoke with the included yoke mount. It in no way interferes with the yoke’s fore, aft and rotational movements. I would assume this might vary by pilot height and how one adjusts their seat vertical height. I’m 5’9 ½” tall, my seat adjustment is about 2/3 the way up vertically and I have room to keep my leather bound three-ring binder in my lap with enough clearance from the bottom of the 696 to read it easily and move the yoke. That being said, it IS less room than the 396 or 496 affords and now when I turn the pages I have to bend the page a little to clear the GPS.
One of the things I worried about when I took it out of the box and saw it’s size was how many more instruments would this unit block than my current 396 does. The happy answer is that it doesn’t block ANY more instruments! I fly a Cardinal RG and the 396 blocked the engine and fuel gauges and so does the 696. It’s no problem, I just have to lean two inches forward and I can see the gauges as always.
The yoke mount is VERY easy to install and uninstall for those who rent or need to take it home after each flight. It comes off and on the yoke easier than the 396 with less turns of the attachment clamp. No tools necessary. Six or seven spins of the knob and it’s on or off.
The screen is obviously large and it’s VERY bright. The colors are crisp, clear and update fast. There’s nothing like real estate.
Now for the big selling feature. I hope Garmin realizes that this was *my* idea. I sent them an email back when the 496 first came out and pleaded for the next generation x96 to have the same control knob as the G1000. I hated the “D-pad”!! Now I’m sure some low level secretary was the only one to read my email, but dang-it! THAT WAS MY IDEA!! This knob makes entering a route or anything else a snap as anyone could guess. God bless you Garmin.
They did something else with the knob too that’s great. If you want to go to the first or last page in the list, you only have to give the knob a healthy aggressive spin left or right to get there. IOW, when you get to the far left page with more spins then is required, it doesn’t jump back to the first page and visa versa. This simple little thought makes navigation of the pages *much* easier.
Here’s another one: no matter how deep you’re into the pages or lost you are on the GPS pages, just press and hold the CLR button and it will immediately jump to the map page. I love it. It’s like the Cirrus’s pilot panic button for aircraft recovery.
And yet another super-human Garmin epiphany: How many times have we brought the cursor to a point on the map that we want to get some info on (i.e. a VOR on the airport field) and the GPS highlights the airport instead. Then we screw around for a solid 30 or 40 seconds trying to get the cursor to highlight the dang VOR. We zoom in and in and in and FINALLY it hightlights…….THE AIRPACE…..UGH!! Well, now if there is more than one thing under the cursor, Garmin ingeniously makes a list that the user can scroll through to pick the object that he or she wants. THANK YOU!
I NEVER EVEN OPENED THE MANUAL! That’s how intuitive this unit is. I was able to take it out of the box, plug it in and start doing everything I wanted with little to no fumbling. That is real testimony to Garmin’s software engineers being on the ball. And I’m talking about complicated stuff, like entering IFR routes, bring up approach plates, sudden changes in IFR clearances, saving routes, user waypoints, updating the firmware, etc. (add an Al Toolman salute here)
Garmin obviously learned a lesson from the design of the x96 power cord jacks. They re-designed the 696’s terminal end to be metal and not the plastic piece of junk that broke more regularly than our Cardinal gear actuator rod-ends. Bravo!
Selling features for me: (in no order)
1) The Knob!
2) The terrain page with the profile section
3) The IFR low-altitude page with airways and MEA’s
4) Safe-Taxi
5) e-Charts (STARS, DP, Airport Diagrams and Approach Plates)
6) Satellite View (was a selling feature, now an irritant)
7) Dedicated Flight Plan (FPL) button
8) Always available Panel Button from the Map Page
The minor irritants:
1) The buttons are stiffer than before and sometimes I have to press them two and three times to get them to work. I guess I just have to get used to the stiffness and learn to press harder.
2) As you may all know the new G1000 knob can be rotated, pushed up, down, right, left and lastly it can be pushed straight in like a button. Ok, OMG, I can’t tell you how many times I am using the knob to rotate an airport identifier in and it just seems intuitive that to enter it into the GPS that you would press the knob in like the Enter button. BUT NO! That will cause your entire entry to completely disappear. Ugh! You have to take your hand off the knob and go down to the Enter button and press it.
3) The audio jack on the left side of the unit is recessed and has a ledge over top of it. What this means is that 50% of all 1/8 plugs will not fit in the jack because the ledge blocks those with relatively thick diameter terminal ends.
Major Irritants:
1) Disabling the e-Charts (not the name brand) after 6 months
2) The Satellite View. OMG, I was thinking that flying at night and fearing an engine failure was over. With the satellite view I could bring up a Google Earthlike view of exactly what that big, dark, flat spot was! Was it a farmer’s field, a lake, a stand of trees, an airplane eating bunch of spires and boulders with sharp edges, what? Now I would know, right!? Or would I? The Satellite view will only come up after you are in the 20NM zoom and all you can see is …. Well … NOTHING! Just green goo. How is that helpful? Wait, I can answer that: It’s helpful to Garmin’s marketing and bottom line by luring in suckers like me.
3) No more auto navigation. Oh man, I’m gonna miss that, because after I fly to a new destination I usually rent a car or take the airport courtesy car somewhere. It was nice to pop out the 396, put it in it’s cradle and plunk it on the car’s dash for easy road navigation with Points of Interest, restaurant search, turn-by-turn directions, etc.
What do I want in the next unit:
1) Initial approach fixes or full approaches depicted
2) Airway entry for routes
3) Touch screen (maybe…the knob really works for me, but if they do the touch screen right I would want that. Forget the turbulence argument that some give me on this. It’s just as hard to press a real button as a soft button in turbulence. So that’s a push {no pun intended})
4) Come on, if you don’t give us #1, then at least put the little GPS derived airplane on the approach chart plan view and profile view when we bring up the approach plate
5) Let's make the Satellite View functional and usable. Contract with Google Earth for the satellite views so we can at least find a safe field at night should we have an engine failure.
6) Automobile Navigation...PLEASE!
In closing, I give the unit a big thumbs up for the price.
Kobra
