gps on aircraft

Hi

I was playing with my pda based gps on a commercial flight recently and
found I was unable to get a fix when we were airborne using either TomTom or
Memory Map - I was sitting in a window seat and holding the device up to the
window. I was however able to get a fix on the runway - but of course you
have to turn off all electronic devices during take-off.

Is this perhaps because both TomTom and Memory Map assume they are at ground
level in order to work out their location? If so are there any little PDA
apps (free would be nice) that can work in aircraft?

Thanks
Jeff

Plenty of people have reported using their TT at 35k feet. May just have
been happenstance in the way the plane was aligned when flying, perhaps it
was just on the limits of seeing a signal on the ground and lost the last
satellite it needed after take off?


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On Fri, 1 Feb 2008 21:06:24 +0000, Jeff wrote


No. My Garmin handheld gps works perfectly normally at normal commercial
cruising altitude (around 35000 ft). It usually reports elevation, speed and
position quite accurately as far as I can tell. Sometimes it's been unable to
get a fix though. I assume this is because it can only see out of one window
(the one I'm sitting next to), and therefore has a rather restricted view of
the sky.

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Jeff wrote:


I have had moderate success in the past with an iPAQ and an HTC PDA. Tomtom
was perturbed because it assumes you're on a road, but I was able to
establish a track using VisualGPSce.

What would be nice would be to have the airlines publish the track followed
by the aircraft. That way fewer electronic devices would be used in flight
and we could have accurate tracks.

Bernard Higonnet

On Sat, 02 Feb 2008 07:59:01 +0100, Bernard Higonnet


I think it was quite common these days. American Airlines did this
y-e-a-r-s ago. Flick the LCD TV in front of you to some channel and
you got a map of the world with the aircraft on it, a red line stating
where it had been and a red dotted line with the suggested course. It
flipped to various views every 30 secs or so and also told you the
outside temperature, altitude, distrance travelled, journey time,
expected arrival time, etc.
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