Garmin aera 760

When I first read about the aera 760 I couldn’t quite figure out who’d be buying one, and by the time I got my hands on an actual unit I still hadn’t managed to answer the question. It seemed to me that it did less than an iPad, while costing more. Maybe a couple of weeks of flying with the aera would change my mind… 

The aera weighs in at over half a kilo (561gm), and is almost an inch thick (2.3cm), so physically it’s quite a chunky unit, despite being smaller overall than an iPad mini. Not only is its screen smaller, but the resolution’s lower too. And since you didn’t ask, no, it doesn’t do email or movies, but it does have Bluetooth, WiFi and pdf document storage (which I tested by loading a PDF of both the interception procedures (useful) and an issue of FLYER (very useful, but perhaps not in flight!).

If you are at all familiar with the Garmin Pilot app, anything from the GTN series of panel mounts or this unit’s predecessor, the aera 660, the interface will be very familiar. If this is your first time with recent(ish) Garmin kit, the top level menu stuff that most of us would use most of the time is pretty intuitive, and it’s only when deep diving into some of the more technical menus that you might want to reach for the manual or tech support. Most will do just fine after a spell of armchair flying to get the hang of things, but a canter though the user manual (which is also stored as a PDF on the unit) will give a fuller understanding. 

Out of the box the aera comes with Garmin’s base and terrain map, Jeppesen’s navigation data and Garmin’s ‘flitecharts’, which are essentially the charts provided by individual countries. 

The base map is a vector chart, drawn dynamically so you can pinch to zoom, change between portrait or landscape, or even do something really weird and look at your map in ‘North Up’ mode and you’ll still be able to read everything the right way up all of the time! If you haven’t yet managed to drag yourself away from the comfort blanket of digitised versions of paper charts, you can buy and install those produced by NATS (the ones most people still call the CAA half-mil) for $79 a year. While we’re talking about optional additional costs, if this is going to be your main way of navigating around the UK’s complex airspace, I strongly suggest a regular airspace database update, which’ll set you back an additional $179.99 a year. If you want the full European mix of VFR and IFR digitised charts, then expect to spend almost $700, although you’ll be relieved to know that you can buy individual countries, which just makes it expensive – as supposed to plain silly.

Create waypoints

Planning a flight is done through a pretty simple text interface. If you’re routing between and over-known waypoints points then it’s all very easy, but if you want to rubber band your route around something, you’ll have to dip into the ‘Graphically Edit Flight Plan’ option in the menu, which enables you to grab legs of your route via the touch screen, and create waypoints at your new turning point. The loaded Jepp data comes with terminal procedure information, so when building your flight plan you can add instrument departures, arrivals and instrument approaches into your flight plan. You can also incorporate vertical navigation, which will set the unit up to give you descent or climb cues.

All of this is overkill for a bit of local hand flying, but surprisingly useful for a flight that might incorporate an approach, or one where you need to be at a given altitude in order to vertically avoid airspace. For airfields without an instrument approach, as with the GTN series, you can load and activate a visual approach which will give you pseudo instrument guidance to a visual runway.

No, it’s not meant to be used as a pop-up instrument approach, it’s not meant to be used in IMC, but it’s useful if you’ve ever had trouble seeing the runway in some conditions (or at night).

Before finishing your flight planning and heading for the airfield, if the aera is connected to WiFi, it’ll download weather for you, giving you TAFs and METARs, plus composite radar. In the US, with the correct ADS-B In equipment fitted, you can also get weather and traffic when airborne, but no such luck in the UK, well not yet, but who knows…

It’s important to note that you are not able to view Notam, which is really what’s stopping the aera from being a full pre-flight planning device. While I was testing the aera, I sat outside with my iPad and aera side by side and planned the same route, noting the lack of Notam in the aera, I picked up my iPad to take a scroll through the essential information about a light bulb being missing from a mast somewhere in Libya (Notams are serious kids, even if there is a lot of guff in there…Ed), only to find a message about it having switched itself off because it was too hot! Advantage aera…

In addition to the moving map that we’re all (I assume) used to, there’s a screen called 3D Vision that gives you synthetic vision over which is overlaid a pseudo HSI (it has no magnetometer, so only provides GPS track info) and tapes for speed, altitude and vertical speed, as well as vertical guidance when using VNAV. If you are connected (via Garmin’s Connext system) to something in your avionics stack that has a compatible attitude source, you will also see attitude information.

Easy to read

So how about in flight? I’ve already said that it is both smaller and lower resolution than an iPad, even an iPad mini, but in the cockpit the aera screen is bright and easily readable. With backlight set to 80% it is supposed to be good for four hours (not tested), but there’s a handy USB-C port through which you can power it in flight. I didn’t exactly throw it around the cockpit, nor drop it from a great (or even not-so-great) height, so I can’t guarantee its toughness, but with a rubberised back, and a tough looking and feeling exterior, my bet is that inadvertent damage to the aera is less likely than to the iPad. Used loose in the cockpit, it didn’t lose the GPS signal, even when put on the floor, but I got more out of it when on its yoke mount (which will probably require an additional purchase). I’ve got quite a bit of Garmin kit in my aeroplane (see FLYER Summer 2020), and by connecting it to Garmin’s network via Connext I was able to use the aera to amend and upload flight plans to the GTN, receive traffic information and use the aera as a dedicated traffic screen.

So, have I now figured out who’s going to buy one of these? Maybe. If you currently have nothing, and you are looking at buying your first moving map for flying, you should go and buy an iPad (or other suitable tablet) and a planning/navigation app. It’ll do more and cost less.

If you’ve already got an iPad, and you’re looking for a back-up, or an easily readable screen, or you want to guard against your iPad/tablet taking a break when it gets too hot, then an aera’s a great, if expensive, addition. It’s perhaps more compelling if you already have other Garmin equipment and a Connext network. But it really comes into its own if you’re thinking of using it in a Permit aircraft where the flight plan, including its vertical navigation element, can be used to drive Garmin’s experimental version of the brilliant GFC500 autopilot. Linked to the right radios you can select frequencies, and if it has access to gyro info you’ve got a mini removable glass cockpit in your aeroplane for a lot less than a permanently installed one would cost. 

FLYER Club member? Watch extra video content on the aera 760 screens in the FLYER Club online