Free GPS Guidance
Archive for the ‘GPS’ Category
Whether fishing is your profession, you pursue fishing as pure fun and relaxation or even if you compete in fishing tournaments with your local fishing club, make this activity more productive as well as safe with a GPS fishfinder combo. The use of this system makes fishing easier in many ways and at the same time makes it safer so you can enjoy a bigger haul and a hassle free fishing trip. If safety is a concern for you, then your answer lies in marine GPS technology.
These devices steer you safely back to your starting point in case you hit upon rain, fog or darkness. As soon as you start, you can mark your location by longitude and latitude, and your system keeps a record of your travel route. This allows you to return safely to your home point, in case of any confusion due to bad weather or visibility.
Also, if you are part of a fishing event where you work in a group you can send the coordinates of your location to your friends if you like. You can also use this system to increase your catch. In all probability, you will end up with a bigger haul than the next guy. Your GPS fishfinder will help you locate the fish easily. Once you catch fish at some particular spot you can mark the spot in the GPS device and collect locations of such points in the device. Use these coordinates for your next trip. You could also mark a circle using the point in the middle as center for deciding your fishing zone for future trips as there is maximum probability of catching fish in this zone.
So what are you waiting for? Invest a nominal amount on a GPS fishfinder combination and get a lot in return.
After talking to someone recently I got to thinking of an unusual and very rare situation that had never occurred to me before. Because we have raised guide pups in the past through Guiding Eyes for the Blind, six to be exact, I have a special place in my heart for those wonderful noble creatures and the people they love and take care of. Now here is the situation. Imagine someone who suddenly finds themselves in a new environment with their guide dog and no other friend with them to read a map or street signs. How would they find their way around this unfamiliar city with the most independence and in the shortest amount of time?
Well, I had to stop and think of the different versions of automotive GPS units, several of which are small enough to be handy to carry in your pocket, and some of which are voice activated and give directions by speaking also. Magic! Their loyal dog will keep them straight on the sidewalk, guiding them around any obstacles and watching for traffic at crossroads like always, and the automotive GPS navigation will give them the directions they need which they will ask their dog to execute for them. I imagine they would do well to just contact their favorite GPS store for some help in choosing an appropriate GPS device. Now that will really give them independence and freedom. Any other thoughts on that?
Believe it or not, as the beginning of fall approaches and I am getting out the cool weather clothes, I am beginning to feel, well, fat. I have been doing some serious thinking about getting out there and doing more walking, actually LOTS more walking. I don’t know about you, but I can get bored just walking the same old route day after day even though it is very pretty and close to home. I just get tired of the same old routine and find myself not doing as much walking as I meant to do. Well, there are lots of wilderness areas around here that I plan to access quick before hunting season hits. I have been thinking GPS watches and I guess it is time to dust off my Garmin Forerunner. Maybe I can avoid those dreaded holiday pounds this year if I get started now. Or maybe I can at least fight off that brain fog that has begun to set in with these cool mornings we have had lately. I’m tying on my sneaks and getting this body moving! Why don’t you join me?
Too funny. Recently our 15-year-old went camping with a friend of ours, trying to make the most of the end of summer. They really like to get together to hike and fish, have plenty of cookouts and just hang out together. Anyway, after one long day of tramping around in the wooded trails and cooking hotdogs on sticks over the fire pit they decided to relax out on the lake with fishing poles in hand. After a while of just floating around casting his line and reeling it in, our son started complaining that he caught a snag. They both worked a little to try to get it free when they finally managed to begin reeling the snag back toward the boat. I am thinking if they had bothered to bring the GPS fishfinder along they would have known that “snag” was one of the largest large mouth bass our friend had ever seen! Now there’s a fish story to remember, certainly a memory to last a lifetime.
Hey, I was just at a party and met some folks who had come quite a distance to be there. It is summer, and with summer comes lots of road work and detours and with that much confusion on unfamiliar roads. I overheard two of the guests who were comparing notes on their automotive GPS systems and their experiences on the trip. As one of them had just gotten her first automotive GPS unit, and this was her first experience it, it was fun to hear her new friend explaining the ins and outs of using their GPS units. The newbie missed a turn, and her unit told her so and suggested that she turn around and make that turn while the second person explained that their GPS navigation system recalculated for her when she was sent on a detour because of road construction. Explanations continued as to the fact that the GPS unit would calculate the fastest route or the most economical. It was just fun to hear people comparing notes and educating each other on the use of their automotive GPS systems. It is also really nice to see strangers find common ground and help each other out along the way. As ever, happy traveling!
Ahhh, the good old days. Reminiscing with an old friend recently about the good times we had when we were young, traveling around the US by car and all the adventures we had back then. Good times, exciting times, living in poverty or nearly so some of the time, but still enjoying life to the max. One of the memories was the challenge of folding the maps. You practically needed a college course to manage to fold a map and actually get it back anywhere near as compact and tidy as it was when you bought it. Then there were the times when you felt like you would be carsick if you were the copilot and trying to read the map, help with the road signs and not block the view of the driver while you were trying to hold the map so that you could actually read it, sometimes even having to pull over and lay that map out on the trunk of the car so that you could pour over it together, trying to figure out the best way to take to get where we were going. Of course, some folks never did master how to read a map. One of those friends and I actually traveled from Virginia to New York one time during which I fell asleep. Rather than wake me or stop for directions, and knowing he did not know how to read the map, he drove for over an hour in the wrong direction while I was asleep! Well, wasn’t that exciting!
Wow, how things have changed. Now there are even automotive GPS units that will talk you through your trip and even plan out the best way to go, even down to helping you avoid the bad traffic, road work or accidents along the way and recalculating for you if you take a wrong turn. Now that is really slick. With lots of features to choose from, budget to fancy options, and much smaller than most of those old maps we used to use, why would I even consider pulling out one of those old maps any more. Perhaps you lose some of the sense of adventure and self reliance we learned so early? Or, maybe not so much…
A common question that you hear is “is there a site that one can go to for a profile to fit a GPS to the person and needs?” Generally you can go to any of the major manufacturers’ web sites and find comparison charts on their models. Most manufacturers have comparison functionality on their web sites that could help determine what to look for. It looks pretty basic, and you may have already determined what you are looking for, now you just need to find the right unit. First you must decide what type of unit are you looking for – automotive GPS systems, motorcycle GPS, marine GPS chartplotter or fishfinder, handheld GPS units? I especially like Garmin’s site for doing comparisons of features. There you can pick your interests (basic handhelds, mapping handhelds or on the side there is a link to geocaching). You can learn a lot from their site, and they have a wonderful comparison feature. This would be a terrific place to start. If you like geocaching there are also sites such as geocaching.com which teach you a lot and are a lot of fun. I generally like helping you find answers to your questions, but at the same time a feature which makes great sense to one person will sound like a waste of time and money to someone else, so you really need to do the final homework yourself to be sure you really find the GPS unit which suits your needs and that you will love for some time to come. I hope this helps to simplify things a little for you.
Every day, we rely a little more on GPS satellites for both work and pleasure. Along with items like your car GPS navigation system, many items in Google Earth (such as ships or real-time air traffic or for emergency position indicating radio beacons – called EPIRBs or PLBs) require GPS to enable us to see their current location.
The U.S. Air Force has launched a new satellite, the first in a series of launches aimed at replacing all 24 existing satellites over the next 10 years. These new satellites offer a variety of enhancements over the existing ones. The most important part of this project is to simply replace them. Numerous reports are concerned that the existing network may begin to fail due to age. This will obviously remedy that.
In addition, these new satellites will provide a stronger, more accurate signal. Rather than the roughly 20 foot accuracy that you currently receive, the new ones will allow for accuracy down to about 3 feet. In addition, the stronger signal will help more GPS units to function properly indoors, which could be a big boost for various augmented reality tools that are beginning to find their way into the marketplace.
I couldn’t have said it better myself – the Garmin blog states;
Even though we’re sweating through the dog days of summer today, if you’re a hunter, you know the season is right around the corner (30 days by our count, but then, we get kind of giddy about these things). As the days get shorter, savvy hunters start hitting the woods and fields for some preseason scouting. This year they’ve got a new weapon in their arsenal.
The Oregon 550t is Garmin’s top-of-the-line outdoor handheld GPS receiver, and it comes jam-packed with features. Preloaded topo maps can give you the lay of the land, and loading eye-popping detailed BirdsEye Satellite Imagery can help hunters get a real-world perspective of their surroundings.
Even cooler is the onboard 3.2 megapixel waterproof digital camera that marks the precise location that each photo was taken. So instead of having to manually label each waypoint to make sense of things, the picture you took does all the work for you.
The Oregon 550t can help you become more successful and enjoy your time outdoors this fall.
The Oregon 550t For Pre-Season Scouting
Even though we’re sweating through the dog days of summer today, if you’re a hunter, you know the season is right around the corner (30 days by our count, but then, we get kind of giddy about these things). As the days get shorter, savvy hunters start hitting the woods and fields for some pre-season scouting. This year they’ve got a new weapon in their arsenal.
The Oregon 550t is Garmin’s top-of-the-line outdoor handheld, and it comes jam-packed with features. Preloaded topo maps can give you the lay of the land, and loading eye-poppingly detailed BirdsEye Satellite Imagery can help hunters get a real-world perspective of their surroundings.
Even cooler is the onboard 3.2 megapixel waterproof digital camera that marks the precise location that each photo was taken. So instead of having to manually label each waypoint to make sense of things, the picture you took does all the work for you.
The Oregon 550t can help you become more successful and enjoy your time outdoors this fall.
It is vacation time, camping time, again. Well, we wanted to find someplace new this year. We went looking for ideas of new campsites, wanted water for play and trails to wander. This is a new place, an out of the way sort of location I have never been before. Well, we packed our bags, packed the car, all piled in and started our trip by plugging in the exact address of the campground into our automotive GPS. A pretty drive and a lunch stop later we ended up in the most beautiful out of the way campground I have seen in ages. Wow, the view from our campsite is spectacular – right on the lake with mountains in the background. How much better can you get! Set up the tent, admittedly always taking longer than planned, and cooked our dinner over the outdoor fireplace. I moved the GPS unit over onto my GPS bike mount and took off on some back roads for an evening ride to discover some of our new area; that was fun. Ahhh, now it is time to rest by the fire. There will be time enough for wandering the trails with our trusty handheld GPS unit tomorrow.