I sent a cashier's check to JA Avionics for the full amount to purchase a 396. Then I read Royson's post and others and bumped into a guy at an FBO who owned a 396. He said he wished he would have bought a 296. He didn't really fly in weather, thus the subscription for the weather was an expense he didn't need or want, He said the weather feature was neat for a while, but after a few days, he wasn't really using it. We have had a drought going on here and there really is little "weather" to justify the expense. This pilot also advised that it was a pain to hook up headsets and all the wires in order to listen to XM radio through the 396.
I quickly called JA Air Center and asked them to change my order to a 296. It arrived last week and I am totally impressed. I still have my 196 and might simply install it in the panel to display a different page than I'll have on the 296.
I suspect if I really need XM in my Cessna, I'll go to Circuit City and buy a radio for this purpose, but in actuality, I enjoy hearing my engine and listening to Flight Following... So, the 296 and 196 will fit the bill nicely for me.
I have two each King KLN-88 LORANS (the "Mother of All LORANS") and I'll probably install one of these in the panel too. A friend of mine (former pilot/Major at Dyess Air Force Base here in Texas) speculates (and I've heard this from more than one person) if we start popping bombs into North Korea and/or Iran, we could be looking at TGPSO (Temporary GPS Outage) much like a TFR, things are changing... So, a good old trusty LORAN can be a wonderful back-up to GPS. They won't scramble or curtail LORAN (radio waves) and everything I've read says LORAN is here to stay, despite the rumors it is a dead technology. (Do a Google search for KNL-88 and you can find some great reading about the future of LORAN...)
In the last couple of years, the feds have added two more LORAN broadcast stations and the US Coast Guard doesn't want LORAN to die. It is funded until 2011.
And I'll still always fly with current charts... Pilotage will never replace all the whistles and bells.
