Mon Dec  7 19:33:47 PST 1998

I have a GPS III Pilot now.  Here are my wishes/bugs/questions.
No particular order.

HARDWARE

1) Fix the RS232C spec of the serial port.  Spec is -3V to +3V minimum.
   Actual is 0V to 6V.  Or spec the port as NMEA, not RS-232.

2) beeper, color screen, compact-flash port for maps and tracks

SOFTWARE

1) Determine Time Zone offset from map.  DST how?  Also, have some way
   to identify what state you're in (or at least what a border is between,
   or at least put names on borders).

   I suppose timezone could be an external app.  Plot point on map, see
   what zone you end up in.

2) NiMH Battery type.

3) Depression angle rings on map, as in xephem for LEO objects.

   Useful when flying at altitude for identifying things.  15, 30, 45,
   60, 75, 90
   degree rings.  90 is horizon.  Useful if altitude not great.  Will
   need to interpolate altitudes of nearby airports to get mean ground
   elevation.

4) Waypoint on HSI page.  It _does_ appear in Big Numbers mode.
   Can be set as one of the four fields.  Never mind.

5) Rocker up/down or left/right select Big/Normal numbers on HSI page.  
   Zoom changes CDI scale.

6) Moon rise/set times.  Sun and Moon on satellite page.

7) Battery timer figures out when batteries changed?

8) Day-of-week.  Sheesh, GPS is _based_ on weeks + seconds.  Divide
   seconds by 86400 after biasing for timezone and index into table.

9) Indication of fix quality (2D, 3D, diff) on Position page.  GPS-90
   did not indicate altitude epsilon of 2D fix, GPS-III Pilot has none,
   obscuring fix type.  Best I can do is watch altitude excursions.

10) Altitude had uncertainty on GPS-90 (+/- nnn ft)

11) Routes.  GPS-90 would give up on a route waypoint and proceed to the
    next if you weren't approaching it.  The III Pilot will not.
    Re-eveluating and double-inverting a route don't fix this.
    If you're closer to the
    FROM waypoint on a route leg than to the TO, GPS III Pilot stubbornly
    navigates to the FROM waypoint.   This might be a BUG.

    Make four waypoints in a line A, B, C, D.  Make a route A C B D.
    Travel from A to D and see if your route ever points at D.
    Steep Turn Ahead.

    Perhaps a function to order the waypoints in a route in the shortest,
    straighest route possible.

12) Searchable City database.  It's in there, but cannot be searched.

13) !#$&*^#@$ modal popups!  Excusable if "Poor GPS Coverage" goes away
    when the fix returns (it does).  But still--seeing something like
    Approaching WAYPNT over the position page and the time-of-day is
    frozen is something less than I expected.  (Perhaps this can be
    configurable?)

14) Zoom in or out on waypoint list show map, please?
    i.e. if I'm in the waypoint list and I hit a zoom button, display
    the map  (shorcut for  Menu->Show Map).

15) Initial nagging screen not presented if unit off < 1hr (or so).
    Use existing timers... i.e. don't nag me more often than once
    an hour (or some configurable time?).  They do go away by themselves
    in about 30 seconds.

16) Drop the leading zero on the hours in 12-hour mode. This appears to
    be a case of always using the same subroutine to display a two-digit
    quantity with leading zeros.  (This would be related to #8 above.)
    Same for day-of-month.

16a) I believe there's a wish on your list that asks for local time in
     the comment of a user waypoint upon creation.  I want that to remain
     in UTC, or at least mark it as local in the comment.  Previous
     Garmins always used UTC for this, and it would be too confusing to
     mix the two types without some indication...  On the IIIP it's in
     the same mode as the machine.

17) Upon first fix G3P goes to Map page.  Older units go to Position
    page.  I'd like Position (or configurable).

18) And what else can you do with waypoint icons besides delete by icon?
    Can I set by icon type whether to display on the map?  Ignore this
    waypoint type in any route (but don't forget its place in the route)?
    Nearest waypoints [not] of this type?

19) Some indication in the waypoint comment that the fix was differentially
    corrected.

20) If we're in Search The Sky mode and have a DGPS connected, we can
    know which satellites are visible--try them first.  DGPSIP screws
    this up.

21) Search for SUA by name, etc.

BUGS

1)  Pan around Alaska at the 200mi scale.  The aspect ratio changes
    between the upper and lower borders of the area.  This change happens
    as the unit moves between adjacent maps, and the more northerly maps
    have a different horizontal scale but the display doesn't accomodate.
    Same thing around Greenland.  I think I'll call this the Greenland
    effect.

2)  In the Nearest User Waypoints list, some six-character waypoints are
    spelled with the widest letters in the font, leaving only room to
    display five characters.  REPORTED.

3)  Occasionally the graphic route display will show [the left or back]
    half of the ground as all black, when you're not looking in the
    direction of any route segment.  Need to confirm.

4)  Map pointer legend absent from landscape map (but not portrait) if
    data fields are off.  This may be a feature.

5)  Stored Data Lost...

6)  No DGPS Position  and  No RTCM Input  in Simulator Mode???

QUESTIONS

1)  What is  Aviation Data  on the Interface page?  I uploaded a Jeppesen
    update using GARMIN mode, not  Aviation Data  mode.

2)  Nearest airspaces only listed if alarms are set for them?  Yes, page 53.

3)  Bearing/distance to VOR for intersections.  GPS-90 did this.