Re: GPS Recommendations


Message posted by lone wolf on April 12, 2004 at 21:42:06 PST:

I'm lost regarding "notable". The Vista has a small display, but it is very high quality. It is handheld. Garmin makes dash mounted units, but you really need a handheld gps if you are going to do much exploring. The obsolete Emap that I have is slightly better in this regard in that the display is larger. Given a choice, I'd get the Vista since the emap doesn't have WAAS.

Maps are uploaded, as in you upload money to the vendor and get a CDROM. There is hacker software that allows "motivated" users to make their own maps for Garmin. I was never that motivated, though the instructions look quite a bit easier now. Somebody posted that the Magellan units have topos on 20ft contours, which is much better than Garmin. You should be able to find that post.

How do you define a best map? Many of the dirt roads are not on the usgs top maps, which is the basis for most map cdroms. Some roads, such as the one to the power line overlook, is not on any topo or terraserver image.

You can generate waypoints from terraserver images with various programs, such as expertgps, quakemap, and usaphotomaps. I haven't run usaphotomaps in a few years because it was just full of bugs, which lead me to purchase expertgps. However, I don't see any complaints lately on the net, so usaphotomaps may have improved. [Often the bugs are hard to find, such as problems at major UTM boundaries. The casual user doesn't see these bugs until you look at the right spot. ]


In Reply to: Re: GPS Recommendations posted by Slick on April 12, 2004 at 8:54:02 PST:

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