Gps selection

[Star152]

I just bought a Lowrance XOG. and the price was $179.00 with shipping from Crutchfields. I also found a site expertgps that touts loading topos google earth photos and alot of other stuff. I have not had a chance to join yet but I will soon. the XOG works fairly well on city streets. the manual is not very good and figuring out features takes some getting use to. you can also plug in SD cards pre loaded for lakes and marine info. (future buys) I will be using it on the delta Turkey day from what I have seen so far with will work fine.

 

[EdoHart]

Delorme GPS PN-40

I just got my first piece of junk mail for the new Delorme GPS PN-40 hand held GPS. It offers
- "Super high-sensitivity 32 channel Cartesio chipset ..." (supposed to acquire a GPS lock very fast).
- A fast (dual core) CPU.
- 500 MB of onboard flash memory (1 GB total) - That's a direct quote from the junk mail. I'm not sure what they mean by fleshing out the flash memory from the total.
- built in compass that supposedly works in which ever orientation the handheld is in (i.e. upside down, tilted left, up, etc.)
- built in barometric altimeter.

I'm guessing the later 2 additions will shorten the already short battery life of the PN-20's 2 hours.

It supports USB 2.0, which should make uploading/downloading maps, tracks, waypoints, etc. faster than with the PN-20 (which can be cumbersome). It comes bundled with their latest software - Topo USA 7.0 for the entire USA - and a 1GB SD card (for comparison I'm able to fit all of Santa Barbara County, CA plus a little around the edges down to 20 foot contour intervals on my PN-20 within less than 1/2 of a Gigabyte).

It's fairly pricey ($400 for the bundle) for someone who already has a GPS, but if you don't have one, the combination looks pretty cool.

 

[Brewery Meister]

Garmin Nuvi 760

I wasn't going to get one but decided to go for it for our camping trip to Montana. One of the best purchases I've made. The Garmin Nuvi 760 is a good, solid unit. Haven't had any problems. The longer I have it the better we like it. Definitely recommend this unit.

I've also downloaded every brewery in the United States onto it. That way wherever I am I know where the good beer is... If that doesn't make it worth it nothing will...

It's portable so we can put it into either my Tundra with the camper or into my girlfriend's 4Runner when we use her car... The battery lasts quite a while and it also is bluetooth ready so it will hook up to my cell phone.

 

[CAPTAIN COORS]

We have a Lowrance Baja 540. This is not a hand held unit but a nice big color screen. We love it!

 

[chnlisle]

Hey CC are you going to The Accenture? We're not far from you off Thornydale near Tangerine.

 

[chnlisle]

Has anyone here hooked up a GPS to your lap top? Specifically a mac?

 

[Rockjok]

A few years ago I picked up a program called Fugawi. I run it on a PC but I think they have Mac versions. I also got an external GPS antenna with a magnetic base that plugs into my laptop to use with this software. Basically you can import USGS topos and have a DIY moving map display. On my motorcycles I use a Garmin IQUE that will run this in a palm version.

The main reason I like this is that you can scan or import your own maps and easily geo-reference them by entering lat-long info for selected points. I do digital cartography as a semi-professional hobby and looked for years for a way to use the maps and images I made. Another product that is similar is called Pathaway which I also use on my laptop and handheld Garmin.

If anybody's interested, here's a link to an image I use as a terrain base map for quicky GPS overviews when I'm "wandering" western Montana. It also covers parts of Idaho and Yellowstone Park. The Fugawi software can use this as a bitmap background and will overlay the road and highway system on it as lines.

BE AWARE that this file is almost 950 KB in size.

http://www.imt.net/~rockjok/100_50-region-main.jpg

A couple more links to ~350 KB files show an oblique image of part of Southwest Montana and a geologic overview of the Bridger Range near Bozeman.

http://www.imt.net/~rockjok/50_50-crazy.jpg
http://www.imt.net/~rockjok/50_50-GEO.jpg

Rob

 

[Barko1]

Thanks alot, all this discussion led me to finally buy a GPS, went with the Garmin Zumo 550 so I can use it on the bike and pump XM to my ears as well. Those things still retail at $900 but can be had for $500 on the net.

 

[ScottBailey]

Where-the-fugawi?

 

[CAPTAIN COORS]

hey CHNLISLE, looks like we're neighbors, we live at Heritage Highlands CC, although the tournament is next door we will not be going, too many people, drop me a PM and we'll have a cold one down at the club