Firefyter-Emt

OK, this may be "common knowledge" but I just found this out..

My Garmin V has a "Tracks" feature.. I never used it, but it was turned on. This will basically make roads in your GPS when there is no road loaded in it. Like the time I drove to CT to get the control arms, and forgot to load the maps.. I was able to follow the "new road" out. But here is to cool part, I can save 10 tracks and then it starts to overwrite them. So, I was playing with it and found yesterdays tri, if it is left on, it tracks the entire days driving.. So, thinking here, I uploaded my track log, and deleted all but yesterday, now I have a trail map.. (Hmmm.. With Topo software, I bet I can make a nice map!

So now I am going to turn it on just for off road use and save my "track" at the end of the day.. Then I can down load them along with any way points to trail heads and I will be all set with trail maps.. Cool Huh???

Keep in mind... I mostly use this GPS to find street addresses, not for hiking use.. I am sure this is a feature used more by other types of GPS's a lot more.. I just never play with half the option..

But I sure do like it now that I played with it..

Robinhood150

Which software are you using? I've got the garmin metroguide and the topo and I didn't know that you can delete portions of the track.

On my garmin legend I can save multiple tracks, but I haven't really played with that yet.

Oh, and I always use the track feature, it helps me find my way back whenever I drive somewhere new.

Firefyter-Emt

I have the MapSource from Garmin.. I don't need the tracking on the road. I just tell her to take my home, and she does just that.. (Yea, its a girl gps.. always telling me I am off course, I missed a turn, go this way..) I can not delete portions of te daily track, but I can turn it on at a trail head and create a map.. and turn it off when I leave.. But it really does not matter, even if I have this big route it will not really show over the roads, just the "new ones" which is cool.. Now I have to play to see if I can leave the feature on all the time, but at a trail head create a "Track" and end it at the end of the trail..

Anyone know?? (please, Garmin V / III only..) they are diffrent in the way they do things..

atarinaper

how much to GPS units run?

im lookin it to getting one for my runner.

Firefyter-Emt

Here is a great write up

I think the best GPS for the money spent is the Garmin V..
I have put 40,000 miles on mine, I just got it last June too..

Take a look at that page, a ton of info on their site.

PS.. the Garmin V will run you about $400.. and worth every penny and I am cheap, and I would spend more on it right now..

midiwall

You can spend under $100 or well over $500, it all depends on what you're looking for.

The one that Lee has is pretty top-of-the-line in its class, it's color, has turn-by-turn navigation and a lot of waypoint memory. fwiw, I have this one: http://www.magellangps.com/en/produc....asp?PRODID=90


The best thing to to may be to immerse yourself in the units that are available, try to decipher the options that you want, and then go shopping. When shopping, don't forget about eBay. A lot of folks get a GPS, find that the "new toy" syndrome wore off, and then sell them used.


You might want to start here, on the sites of the two larger handheld GPS manufacturers:

• http://www.garmin.com/
• http://www.magellangps.com/en/

Don't skip over the latest thing in GPS's from Garmin, the Rino. These are two-way radios with built-in GPS technology. The radio link uses a sub-channel to pass to coordinates of one radio to another so that each knows where the other one is.

Great for hiking, playing cat and mouse, or if you're a coder, having fun with the protocol to get data out of the radio.

Firefyter-Emt

PS.. I don't have color.. that is the $700 Street Pliot III My Boss has one and he likes the Garmin V better.. One thing to note is that the SP III is huge!! Takes up way too much space on the dash.. and a few features were removed.. However the color is nice, and the voice is way cool..

As for having one and getting board with it.. I think that would apply more to the ones that don't navigate streets for you.. The street navigation is soooo nice it is not funny.. when evre I head home I always let it track me home.. It is nice to know the minute when I will arrive and I have found so many short cuts home!! Some roads I never knew were there...

midiwall

Sorry on the presumption, I thought the V was the color one.

Bored wise... I got into GPSs through the "gotta have it gadget" thing and being intrigued with GeoCaching. I know a couple of folks around here that did the same thing, but didn't hike, GeoCaching didn't stick with them, and found using their boxes in the car was distracting. So that's the angle I was shooting from.

Personally, I don't like the turn-by-turn trackers. I enjoy the challenge of trying to figure out where the heck I am and how do I get to where I wanna be! I think that comes with doing caching

I use mine in the car along with a Radio Shack multi-purpose holder that's made for cell phones. When I head out to somewhere I've never been, I jam the address into MapBlast, drop the resulting coords into the box as a GoTo location and go.


Anyway... I think this is a good example of how there's not one GPS for everyone. There're so many options out there!

Firefyter-Emt

That is also a very nice feature with the V.. It comes with all the dash mount brackets, power cables ect.. As for the turn by turn.. For road driving, It is amazing.. and very accureate... Here is a few screen shots...







Here is a "off road" mode view

atarinaper

^^^^^^^^^^

how much does one of those cost?

Firefyter-Emt

The one I have can be bought for $400 all day long... I have used the kind that are a fancy compass.. and there is no compairison between them...

fpkelly

My dad who is into land and timber acquisition has his Garmin setup on his Foreman and he can scout out a prospective piece, running boundaries and roads and mark waypoints. Back in the office he uploads them to his PC and overlays them onto the topos on his computer and it basically makes a perfect map of the tract that he's interested in.

Vegas4Runner

When you decide to save your track internally, it will only store 250 points. I think it does some type of interpolation to remove points it doesn't think are necessary. So, you get 10 tracks, with 250 points each. The max that the Active Track (so called when you download it using MapSource) is 10,000 points. I usually save the track internally, and also keep the active track going. I use the defaults track log setting since I find it to be a good compromise. I can cover about 800 miles before the track log starts overwriting itself. Remember, everytime you turn the unit on and off, it puts in a new checkpoint in the active track log. When you download tracks from the GPS into MapSource, you'll see something like "Active Track", "Active Track-01-01-2003 12:00PM", etc. The ones that have dates and/or times are checkpointed.

You may also want to check to see if you are running the latest software for your GPS and for MapSource. Check Garmin's site for more info. I think I'm running the latest beta on my GPS. It's crashed a couple of times, but it's no big deal.

Making pretty maps with the data is a pain. I make maps for a living (GIS Analyst) and the output formats you get aren't very nice. I'll probably write my own app to be able to output much nicer maps in the near future...I just need to find time!

-Robert