GPS receivers and cables

Choosing the right GPS receiver

Recommend going for black and white displays as:

• Colour displays are hard to read and have less battery life
• Colour (TFT) displays need a backlight to read them in daylight, kills battery life

Also consider:

• how much active logging memory it has
• how frequently it logs a point
• whether you want a map
• does it record height as well as position, some old units don't

We like the following GPS receivers for hang gliding:

• Basic Garmin Etrex if just starting out, no maps and limited to 2 hours flight logging but cheap at around £50 on Ebay
• Black and White Garmin Etrex Vista if want a map, around £130 on Ebay. Unfortunately you can't move to the next waypoint on the route without physically going through it - not good.

Suggestions for mounting GPS on hang glider:

• On basebar using gps bike holder and longer screw (note, the garmin thread is not metric but imperial) - not good if towing
• Modify a car kit to fix to your existing vario if a large old one like mine

Cabling

Manufacturer's cables are expensive, it's where they make profit margins. You can get cheap equivalents from pfranc 'open source' hardware suppliers here

Tips

• Watch out when saving tracks on some units. The Garmin Etrex series remove the altitude from traces when 'save' to internal memory. Just leave everything in active memory.