Re: Mapping for Explorist 210
- From: Jack Erbes <jackerbes@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 01 Mar 2006 11:40:46 -0500
rv6fly@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
< snip>
I would like to keep things as simple as possible. IOW, I don't really want to buy a PDA. (Being a retired guy, don't have any need for one, although they're cool.)
Okay, I thought maybe that was something needed for a business or occupational things. I pretty much use my iPAQ PDA's for displays for GPS nav programs and nothing much else. I'm not the power user doing email and and browsing the net on a 2" square screen. I tried that and found it to be nothing more th an a PITA.
I have a friend who has a GPS with topo features. To me, it just clutters up the screen. We generally have contour paper maps with us. The GPS is more for finding camp after dark, whiteout or marking (hopefully) easier paths to our destination. Some of the places we go to fish have no trails and on several occasions, we picked poor country to travel, i.e. giant boulder fields. We found a good alternate route to one lake but didn't have a GPS to mark the new route so we could travel that way again. I guess this would be the primary use to me for a GPS.
I like paper maps too. If I wanted to travel light with the best info, a USGS 1:24k topo and a compass would be my first choice. The Topo 3D detail on my Magellan Meridians is probably equivalent to having about a 1:40K topo map. More contours and detail than the 1:50k but less than the 1:24K.
I think the thing I enjoy the most out in using the Topo 3D package is the birds eye view I get when I'm out on lakes where the shoreline is hard to read from the water level. Nearly every lake of any size is found on the topo maps. No soundings or much detail but I'm in a small boat and like to figure all that out for myself anyway. And they are great for finding landings and fire roads and trails into the lakes.
You might try using your 210 to record tracks in the Auto Detailed track mode and punch in occasional waypoints for significant places and features. If you can save the tracks and waypoints to a file keyed to a location or something like that it could be very useful. I'm assuming the 210 can save tracks and waypoints to the available free memory, 22mb will store a lot of track and waypoint data. The models with SD cards will do much better than that or course.
The eXplorists don't have SD cards until you get to the 400 model and up. But you would probably find that very useful if you use yours regularly. For example, if you had saved a track of the trail in to the lake you mention above, you could load that track again later and then just follow it in again. Or you can use it to get yourself vectored in to the same locations from other approaches.
Although the Meridians are now discontinued I think that model will be around and very popular for a long time to come. They were the first consumer grade GPS receivers to provide user's with unlimited storage and they did it in a manner that makes them very flexible in use. For patient shoppers on eBay, used Meridians with monochrome displays can be found for <$100 and you can find the Color model for $200 or less.
I pretty much lost interest in the eXplorist line because the more I learn about them the less attractive them are to me. They have simplified the software on those quite a bit and in some ways they are arguably less capable than the older models. So you get better receivers, antennas, etc., etc., but in a dumber package with a much less versatile power system.
Thanks again Jack for giving me some ideas and places to look at.
You're welcome and good luck with that!
Jack
--
Jack Erbes in Ellsworth, Maine, USA - jackerbes at adelphia dot net
(also receiving email at jacker at midmaine.com)
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- Re: Mapping for Explorist 210
- From: rv6fly
- Re: Mapping for Explorist 210
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