I have a II Morrow Flybuddy 820 GPS in my C-150. The database is from the early 1990's.
Supposedly there is a data card that can be inserted to update the GPS, however I am not sure if my particular receiver has the right hardware to read the cards. When I remove the cover over the card slot, it doesn't really look like there is a read head for a card, but then, since I dont know what one looks like it is hard to say.
I'd like to update the database, but the cards from Garmin cost about $200. It hardly seems worth it. The unit works well and I am reluctant to pull it since it serves as a good backup to more modern yoke-mount GPS receivers.
Any suggestions about what to do with this old GPS?
I had the Apollo Flybuddy 820 Plus _LORAN_ unit in my plane for several years, the plane came with it already installed when I bought it.
I purchased a one-time database update for it from UPSAT a couple years before they sold out to Garmin. I was fortunate enough that they actually gave me the larger capacity card for free, even though it was normally an extra $100 fee above the $85 for the database data itself. My original card was too small capacity to hold the newer database becuase the data had grown over the years. I never updated the database again after that, since the LORAN is slow, and only marginally accurate. I've since pulled the Flybuddy LORAN out of the plane, and had an Airgizmo GPS panel dock installed to hold a Garmin 196/296/396/496 where the old LORAN used to reside, along with moving some of the other radios down the stack to make the extra room needed. I'm fortunate enough to have an A&P/IA who signed it off as a minor alteration, and the local FSDO actually agrees the Airgizmo dock is perfectly acceptable as a minor alteration, unlike in some parts of the US where the FSDOs really get their knickers in a bunch over the Airgizmo docks.
Since your particular FlyBuddy 820 is the GPS version and not a Loran, I believe it's an 8-channel receiver, and the user interface on these is so easy to operate, if it were mine and still working in good order, I'd probably be inclined to go ahead and spend a one-time $200 to get the newer style card with a fresh database on it, and keep it as a back-up. It might even be worth a once-a-year update as long as they don't hit you with the full $200 each time, since I think that probably includes the cost of the new larger capacity card for this purchase. Once you've got a large capacity card, I think they sell the database updates alone for much less (85-100?) and you just return your old card for credit as long as it's one of the high-capacity flash memory card, which are still used by the Apollo GPS 2001 and the later GX series too, so they can keep recycling those flash memory cards. They don't want the old low-capacity cards back since they're totally obsolete now.
I don't like flying X-C into places I've never been before with only one navigational system onboard, and it was nice to have both a portable GPS on board and a Loran, and now I just have a Garmin 196 in the Airgizmo dock, and I keep an older Garmin handheld in my flight bag with spare batteries in case the docked 196 quits during a flight.
