my old flight computer
my new flight computer
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The Sony is an old fashioned PALM OS PDA with the famous 33 MHz Dragonball processor.
I was running it with Afterburner OverClocking at 43 MHz which has been running fine up till this moment.
The separate GPS, PDS combination has the advantage that each subsystem can by used separately as a backup.
In other words, if the GPS goes down, you can still do calculations on the PDA
If the PDA goes down, you still have a running GPS.
I had built a little plexiglas contraption to mount the PDA and the GPS securely and close together with minimal wiring.
In the pictures below, you can see the serial connection between the PDA and the GPS and the telephone jack that I used for the power connection.
This whole assembly sits on my right knee, held down with an elastic velcro band.
I also built a custom power supply to power both the GPS and the PDA from any 12 volt source, all built into a small cigarette lighter plug.
This is also a safety feature.
The thinking behind this is to keep the batteries of both PDA and GPS full for emergency situations and run off a ship battery or another portable bulk battery for as long as possible.
This approach has worked very well for me for years.
Below a picture of all the parts.
My bulk battery was a rechargeble RC flight NiCd battery (7 cells)
Nowadays I just use an 8 pack AA Alkaline battery pack as backup if a 12 volt ship socket is not available.
