Handheld NAV/COM Help

pilot2100

pilot2100

Filing Flight Plan
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steve
Hello Fellow Pilots,

I m in the market for a Nav/Com for preflight planning and mostly just for backup just in case I lose communications/nav in the aircraft. I fly mostly IFR so nav is a must.

I have looked at the Sporty's SP-400 seems kind of bulky and outdated


Yaesu FTA 750L seems really good for the price and has great features.

Has anyone used either one and what pro's and con's. Or any recommendations
 
I have the Vertex Standard (now Yaesu) 700. Frankly, in 35 years of flying the number of times I've needed to use a handheld COM
in the air you can count on ONE FINGER and that time wasn't even in my aircraft.

It gets more use around the airpark and other time on the ground.

I can tell you that handheld "NAV" is pretty near pointless especially for IFR. Get a portable GPS and you've got much more functionality. Use the handheld radio for COM.
 
If you're getting it to use as an emergency back-up in your plane then get one that's powered by conventional alkaline batteries.

If you're getting it to regularly play with on the ground, then get one with a rechargeable battery pack.

Mine is for emergencies and stays in the glove box. It and the flashlights get new batteries every year at annual. A few of the used batteries stay in the plane for the headsets. The rest come home to be used in cameras and cordless mice. I never buy AAs except other than that once a year at annual.

Like Ron, I've never had to use the handheld. Mine is a Sporty's that I've had for quite some time. I think it's an SP200 maybe. I turn it on once a year at annual to make sure it still works...it still works.
 
If you plan to use a portable in the airplane,it's a good idea to mount an antennae .
 
Check out Icom, too.

I have an Icom, and have used Sporty's (older models), and Vertex. Our glider club uses them pretty heavily, so I've had some reasonable experience with each.

As was already pointed out - the NAV on a handheld does work, but not as easily or as well as you would hope. Save the bucks by getting a COM only, then spend the extra on a GPS. (And if you don't want to spend too much, you can get a Nexus 7 and add AvAre or Garmin Pilot had have a pretty good setup.)

All three of those brands give you:
1 - good TX power (I think they are all the same max output)
2 - good RX clarity. Sound volume does differ, though. Some will have a higher volume capability that will make a difference on a noisy ramp when the radio is clipped to your belt.
3 - solidly built. They are all very sturdy.
4 - wx resistant (not necessarily waterproof, but I wouldn't worry too much about getting splashed with rain for a few seconds.)

The biggest difference: User interface. Yes, you will have to scroll through menus to configure settings. The Vertex requires several menu page navigations to set the squelch, and the Icom has a knob (for example). Setting frequency presets is very convenient to allow simple scrolling through the freqs using a knob, but each radio has different ways to do that.

My recommendation - they are all equally capable of TX/RX. They are all equally solidly built. The difference is in the user interface, and the only way you can see which one you like best is to try each. Maybe someone at your airport has one or the other and can let you play for a couple minutes. Or, you can download the user manuals for each and read through them so you can see what you are getting into.
 
I have the Icom with the NAV function, and as far as nav goes, it requires a lot of button pushing and fiddling so I never use that. The com is rock stable and has pretty good xmit power Sometimes I use it for AWOS, ATIS kind of stuff, and I've had a few com problems, so I've used it to talk once in a while and it's pretty good.

I would not recommend a handheld for any nav reliability. The service volume is quite small, and I think they don't provide much useful info except 'xxx - from'. But - others may have done more than me.
 
I opted for the sportys 400 unit and have not needed it in an emergency and only used in practice emergencies or around the airport but can provide a little feed back if it helps:dunno:

I opted for the alkaline battery pack so I can add spares if needed (cant remember to charge regulary) but found that I need to keep a little plastic post it note in between the contacts for the battery pack and radio otherwise the batteries will go dead in 2 months. I dont know if this is from getting bumped on in my flight bag or the radio will just drain them?

The nav feature is a little gimmicky but it does work and I have practiced ILS approaches under the hood using only the radio and it will work in a pinch. So If my GPS, IPAD, and handheld Backup GPS all go out then I have something that would work. But I would probably choose an alternate if conditions were below MVFR.

The radio is easy to use and dont think I have picked up the manual more than the 15 minutes when I got it, but can us all the features so it is pretty intuitive.

The screen is nice and big, if you can see it in bright sunlight (they need to put a better contrast adjustment).

Compared to the Icoms I have used functionally seem the same (except for the nav) but the sportys model does feel bigger and more like a radio shack walkie talkie of the 70's.

Dont love it, dont hate it, and really dont use it much but feel it will work if I need it.......
 
I also have an Icom nav/com model as well. I've finally had to replace the battery in it. Warning if you have one of these and need to replace the battery - Sporty's hosed me. I bought an aftermarket lithium ion battery to replace the original nicad pack. What showed up was a metal hydride. Better than the nicad, but no lithium ion.
 
I have one, and it is sufficiently old and I've used it sufficiently little that I don't even remember what it is. Whatever I've got, it'll hit the airport from 5 miles out, which is all I need it to do. All I really do with it is listen to traffic at Oshcosh.
 
I bought a Sporty's handheld a few years back. It was crap, really cheap construction. It failed after a year.

Get an Icom or a Yaesu, run away from Sporty's radios!
 
I have a Yaesu 310. It is built like a brick, receives great, but is next to useless on the transmit side. It is a great airpark/soloing a student radio as a transmitter. It is great for hearing ATC if your ship's radio goes out. ATC could only hear static when I transmitted, even when flying directly over the field. I have not tried it with it connected to the external antenna. That should help, but I don't know how much.

I bought it with a total of two rechargable batteries, a AA adapter, a wall charger and a ships power (cigar lighter) adapter. Plus the usual stuff to allow you to plug your headphones into it.

Jim
 
Kiddo's Driver said:
I have a Yaesu 310. It is built like a brick, receives great, but is next to useless on the transmit side.
Click to expand...


Most solid-state radios have what is called a "VSWR Protection CIrcuit" which looks at the antenna, and if not reasonably matched, shuts the transmitter down as a function of how badly it is mis-matched.

A rubber duckie could be replaced with a strand of wet spaghetti inside of a copper septic tank and be a better antenna.

Get a real antenna and find out how good that transmitter really is.

Jim
 
I got a Yaesu 750L about a week ago. For simple stuff it looks simple to use. For the GPS it appears clunky. I need to see if there's a good way to actually load waypoints to it with their software(and maybe find a good way to make a useful waypoint list) of course it's fairly restrictive with only 200 waypoints.. I do want to try an practice ILS with it one of these days to see how it does. I primarily use my handheld for ATIS and picking up clearances before engine start.
 
If you plan to use it in the airplane, an external, properly mounted antenna is a must. With one, they work very well. Yes, the alkaline battery model is the one, no nav. I've used them in three lsa, work well. Sportys. Can't remember the model.....i0 60 maybe?
 
frfly172 said:
For better transmission to ground. With my 172 we mounted the antennae on the belly. Never had a problem.
Click to expand...

Yes, but the radio can only use one antenna at a time. Why would you put more than one on. Hint ... see if you can find a plural where a singular would be appropriate.

Jim

.
.
 
I hit my airport from 5 miles out with the radio's own antenna. Good enough for me.
 
timwinters said:
If you're getting it to use as an emergency back-up in your plane then get one that's powered by conventional alkaline batteries.
Click to expand...

Agreed. Trying to fly someone else's plane NORDO into Dulles was the result of him not having a charged battery and no Alky's in the radio. It was particularly bad back in the NiCad days as they will self discharge pretty quickly. The LiIon ones aren't quite as bad, but alky's will hold their charge forever (just don't buy the @#*$&@* UTILITECH crap from Lowe's).
 
The guy who did my panel years ago just looped the com antenna wire down to the bottom of the panel and put a plug and socket there. I can reach up, disconnect the antenna from the panel com's and connect it to the handheld if I need to. There are fancier solutions but this one is simple, cheap, and reliable.
 
Matthew said:
Check out Icom, too.

I have an Icom, and have used Sporty's (older models), and Vertex. Our glider club uses them pretty heavily, so I've had some reasonable experience with each.

As was already pointed out - the NAV on a handheld does work, but not as easily or as well as you would hope. Save the bucks by getting a COM only, then spend the extra on a GPS. (And if you don't want to spend too much, you can get a Nexus 7 and add AvAre or Garmin Pilot had have a pretty good setup.)

All three of those brands give you:
1 - good TX power (I think they are all the same max output)
2 - good RX clarity. Sound volume does differ, though. Some will have a higher volume capability that will make a difference on a noisy ramp when the radio is clipped to your belt.
3 - solidly built. They are all very sturdy.
4 - wx resistant (not necessarily waterproof, but I wouldn't worry too much about getting splashed with rain for a few seconds.)

The biggest difference: User interface. Yes, you will have to scroll through menus to configure settings. The Vertex requires several menu page navigations to set the squelch, and the Icom has a knob (for example). Setting frequency presets is very convenient to allow simple scrolling through the freqs using a knob, but each radio has different ways to do that.

My recommendation - they are all equally capable of TX/RX. They are all equally solidly built. The difference is in the user interface, and the only way you can see which one you like best is to try each. Maybe someone at your airport has one or the other and can let you play for a couple minutes. Or, you can download the user manuals for each and read through them so you can see what you are getting into.
Click to expand...


thank you I will check it out
 
flyingron said:
Agreed. Trying to fly someone else's plane NORDO into Dulles was the result of him not having a charged battery and no Alky's in the radio. It was particularly bad back in the NiCad days as they will self discharge pretty quickly. The LiIon ones aren't quite as bad, but alky's will hold their charge forever (just don't buy the @#*$&@* UTILITECH crap from Lowe's).
Click to expand...


agree the ones i was looking such as the Yaesu FTA 750L has the alkline battery tray which I really like
 
chartbundle said:
I got a Yaesu 750L about a week ago. For simple stuff it looks simple to use. For the GPS it appears clunky. I need to see if there's a good way to actually load waypoints to it with their software(and maybe find a good way to make a useful waypoint list) of course it's fairly restrictive with only 200 waypoints.. I do want to try an practice ILS with it one of these days to see how it does. I primarily use my handheld for ATIS and picking up clearances before engine start.
Click to expand...


please keep me updated on your findings. I really want it for the backup for ILS
 
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