Free GPS Guidance
Archive for August, 2010
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.