Thread: GPS: What are you using?

Think I'm gonna try and ask Santa for a GPS this year, but have no clue what to look for. Really just want something that will capture accurate elevation profiles, work with Topo! software, and be user friendly. With a lot of long and big tours lined up I would like something that will assist in finding the way home at the end of the day. I'm tired of second-guessing maps and messing around with compasses. What do you use/recommend?

I've got a Magellan Meridian that has everything I need. Their new flagship range seems to be the eXplorist. Probably worth checking out.

I have a forerunner and a and a Garmin GPS V, looking to get an explorist next

Originally Posted by Toby

Their new flagship range seems to be the eXplorist. Probably worth checking out.

I've had and eXplorist 100, now have an eXplorist 500. The 100 is basic - too basic. The 500 is sweet - color screen, SD card memory expansion, USB cable, LION rechargeable battery - nice unit.

Garmin e-trex legend. good peice of equipment.

Garmin Legend here, but I have my eye on the new Edge, mainly for the lower profile on my bike and RECHARGABLE batteries. Anybody seen it or used it?

Garmin Legend with TopoCanada. Having the map in the GPS is oh so sweet. Batteries last around 12 hours so I have 12V charger in the truck for camping. No elevation profiles in the Legend and the profiles in the MapSource software is so-so. You can see the profile for a track log BUT the track gets fragmented -- in the trees every time you loose and regain the satellite signal a new track log is started. There's no way to merge these fragments back together.

i've got the vista and will echo the fragmented tracks issue

I had the old Garmin etrex Vista (black and white screen), and liked it a lot. Then I convinced myself I needed the Garmin GPSMAP 60CS, and I'm glad I switched. Better reception, a lot better screen, USB connection, better battery mileage, and twice the memory for storing maps. And the buttons on the 60CS are much easier to use than the ones on the eTrex.

Garmin GPSmap 76 CS. This has the capability to store and display color topos, has numerous navigation options, compass, barometric altitude, tide charts, etc. Twice the memory of the 60CS and about $50 more. The 76 and 60 CS are probably the most capable backcounty units out there. Keep in mind that the topos displayed on a GPS are 1:100,000 scale, not the 1:24,000 you get with a 7.5 minute quad. As a result, contours are 40 meter in much of the west which is not dense enough to identify cliffs and other important terrain features that don't show up at that scale. There is plenty of detail to navigate cross country to trail intersections, lakes, roads and other waypoints you can set.

Originally Posted by Cirquerider

Garmin GPSmap 76 CS. This has the capability to store and display color topos, has numerous navigation options, compass, barometric altitude, tide charts, etc. Twice the memory of the 60CS and about $50 more. The 76 and 60 CS are probably the most capable backcounty units out there. Keep in mind that the topos displayed on a GPS are 1:100,000 scale, not the 1:24,000 you get with a 7.5 minute quad. As a result, contours are 40 meter in much of the west which is not dense enough to identify cliffs and other important terrain features that don't show up at that scale. There is plenty of detail to navigate cross country to trail intersections, lakes, roads and other waypoints you can set.

I've got the same one. TONS of memory, features, and great color display. I can always store all the maps I need for a trip on it with room to spare. Two complaints are that the unit is a little big/bulky and the garmin trip manager software (on the PC, not the GPS) is a bit limited.

Thanks for the helpful information everyone! Much appreciated. Think I'll print this thread out and slip it into my wife's day planner .

Garmin GPS III. Old model, got it for free ("busted" -- all it needed was a glob of solder). Works fine for interstate car/plane/boat navigation using native coarse basemaps. Fine at obtaining and remembering position coordinates; will plot a basic map of your waypoints when you're "between features" on the basemap (thus useful for skiing, kayaking, etc).

Can't beat the price.

So my wife bought me a GPS for my B-day, and I upgraded it to the Garmin Rino 520, which just came out this month. It hasn't arrived yet, but I'm eagerly waiting. It has a 5 watt GMRS radio (comparable power to patrol and SAR units) for bc emergencies (need a licence to operate it legally), 0.5 watt FRS radio for local communication (doesn't require a licence), 56mb memory for maps, 176x220 color screen. The antenna is a quad-helix, which is supposedly better than the flat antennae used in smaller units. If you expect to be in really deep forest, an external repeater antenna can be used to extend range.

The GPS-loadable topo software (Garmin's proprietary) is extra, and as Cirquerider mentions, 100K scale, so it's best to carry a 24K paper map anyway to cross-correlate (and besides, paper maps and compasses don't run on batteries). You can still use the NG Topo! or Google Earth software, for loading waypoints to/from the GPS to the computer, but maps are not transferable to the GPS (there is a way around this, but it is time-intensive).

The Rino is pricey, but considering its versatility, may be worthwhile.

I use the Magellan Explorist 600, It's sweet for skiing, geocaching, hiking, everything. You should buy it too. www.tigergps.com is the best site I found to buy them.

Originally Posted by Tri-Ungulate

So my wife bought me a GPS for my B-day, and I upgraded it to the Garmin Rino 520, which just came out this month. It hasn't arrived yet, but I'm eagerly waiting. It has a 5 watt GMRS radio (comparable power to patrol and SAR units) for bc emergencies (need a licence to operate it legally), 0.5 watt FRS radio for local communication (doesn't require a licence), 56mb memory for maps, 176x220 color screen. The antenna is a quad-helix, which is supposedly better than the flat antennae used in smaller units. If you expect to be in really deep forest, an external repeater antenna can be used to extend range.

The GPS-loadable topo software (Garmin's proprietary) is extra, and as Cirquerider mentions, 100K scale, so it's best to carry a 24K paper map anyway to cross-correlate (and besides, paper maps and compasses don't run on batteries). You can still use the NG Topo! or Google Earth software, for loading waypoints to/from the GPS to the computer, but maps are not transferable to the GPS (there is a way around this, but it is time-intensive).

The Rino is pricey, but considering its versatility, may be worthwhile.

Looks nice -- what do those go for at street price? Froogle hints at $375ish, but I didn't follow through all the links.

Originally Posted by El Chupacabra

Looks nice -- what do those go for at street price? Froogle hints at $375ish, but I didn't follow through all the links.

Cheapest I could find was ~ $350 shipped from Page Computers. They say 'in stock' but hadn't sent it out as of this AM I had to pester them to get a tracking #, so I assume it's on its way.

I should add that you can get 1:24K maps from Garmin that'll download onto the Rinos as well as the GPSmap series, but that the maps only cover certain national parks, and of course, cost more $.

The other drawback is that the unit is a bit bulky. But I've been meaning to get a good BC radio for awhile, and the combo unit makes for something quite tidy after all is taken into consideration.

I'm something of a GMRS JONG, though, and am wondering what 'trollers or SAR-ers know about:

1) Necessity of having a FCC licence if you only expect to use the 462.675 or 467.675 frequencies for emergencies only.
2) How common ridgetop GMRS repeaters are in the BC, either here in Ootah or other places where I might conceivably use the unit (Cascades, Sierras, CO).

I should probably start a new thread for those questions, though.

Originally Posted by Snow Dog

Garmin Legend with TopoCanada. Having the map in the GPS is oh so sweet. Batteries last around 12 hours so I have 12V charger in the truck for camping. No elevation profiles in the Legend and the profiles in the MapSource software is so-so. You can see the profile for a track log BUT the track gets fragmented -- in the trees every time you loose and regain the satellite signal a new track log is started. There's no way to merge these fragments back together.

Actually there is a way to merge Garmin's track fragments. Look at some tracks in MapSource, then Select a track > Right click > Track Properties > Select one or more of the track points > click Copy > Open another track's properties > Click somewhere in the list of track points (not in the name field) > Click paste.

You can also delete individual track points this way, too.

So now that NF has bumped this thread, I should update that I've been super happy with the Rino 520 - it does everything I wanted it to, and I've used both the GPS with built-in map and the radio to good effect. After Summit's helpful reply to my question on radios in the BC, it seems a ham would be more useful than GMRS, but still, it's better than nuthin'.

Kinda pricey, but in my mind well worth it. The size really isn't a problem.

One potentially very important thing:

At very close proximity (say 1m or so), it confuses my Pieps. This could be bad, but I think that since it only occurs at close range, that it's prolly not such a big deal - I do need to remember to turn the GPS off, if, heaven forbid, I have to do a real search. Perhaps the Pieps firmware upgrade will address this. It didn't seem to have too much of an effect on my friend's Barryvox, though when you put them next to each other the 'Vox could 'hear' the GPS 'pinging'.

Really you should have both your GPS and your cell phone turned off anytime you're traveling in Avy terrain because the can distort the signal from your beacon. Turn it on, take a waypoint, then turn it back off. Batteries will last longer, and do you really need to know the exact the path you took? I definitely wouldn't leave mine on while skiing BC.

I was going to call BS on teh GPS / Beacon interference, but I just turned a beacon onto receive and turned on the GPS. Sure enough I got a lot of noise in when the two were in close proximity. It was just noise when the devices were within 2-feet of each other, and not a directional signal. I'd be curious to know how much this EM interference actually disrupts a beacon signal or search.

I think you'll potentially have that effect with any device that receives RF signals, which a GPS is and does. It's called the oscillator signal, (IIRC, but it's been years), which in an RF receiver generates a very weak internal signal to use to compare to the main RF signal you intend to receive. And there's something or other about local RF signal mixing, too.

I forgot a lot of this, maybe someone who's actually an EE can explain in layman's terms.

Originally Posted by Nobody Famous

Actually there is a way to merge Garmin's track fragments. Look at some tracks in MapSource, then Select a track > Right click > Track Properties > Select one or more of the track points > click Copy > Open another track's properties > Click somewhere in the list of track points (not in the name field) > Click paste.

You can also delete individual track points this way, too.

True enough but it's tedious when you have dozens to hundreds of track fragments. It's probably easier to hack the track log file and merge them in a seperate program.

Originally Posted by Snow Dog

True enough but it's tedious when you have dozens to hundreds of track fragments. It's probably easier to hack the track log file and merge them in a seperate program.

Reopening this thread to report Garmin has updated their MapSource program. One of the new features is a tool to join tracks. Get the update and enable the Track Edit toolbar in Mapsource, and it's all quit easy now. Played with it to join a bunch of broken tracks from past adventures, it works well.

does anybody know if there are updated maps by Garmin?