Best GPS?

[portseven]

I might try geocaching when I get it, though I suspect that interest will wear off rapidly, to the tune of one cache.

Just starting having a go at this, it's quite addictive, though just using my iPhone at the moment with the geocaching.com app. May move to a 'propper' GPS device soon, as the iPhone can be a little inacurate (10 to 20m)

[mudskipper]

Just starting having a go at this, it's quite addictive, though just using my iPhone at the moment with the geocaching.com app. May move to a 'propper' GPS device soon, as the iPhone can be a little inacurate (10 to 20m)

It can be quite addictive - there's some great puzzles and multis out there. Been doing it for a few years - had a year or so where I did lots (mainly due to getting colleagues into it and going on lunchtime caching trips). Only done a dozen or so this year, but still get ridiculously pleased when I find that bit of tupperware. I like the stats and maps on geocaching.com - always good to tick off an extra country.

As far as phone apps go, c:geo is one of the better ones (and free).

[TimberWolf]

Just starting having a go at this, it's quite addictive, though just using my iPhone at the moment with the geocaching.com app. May move to a 'propper' GPS device soon, as the iPhone can be a little inacurate (10 to 20m)

I went to Geocaching - The Official Global GPS Cache Hunt Site and noted the co-ordinates of the first easy caches (very) near me.

The first took me to a nice little public garden just around the corner that I'd not noticed before. When I got there I could see that it would involve rummaging around in the bushes in public, so I put that down to a probable found.

The next one led me to an isolated tree in a park that I'd been suspecting was the spot from 100 metres away. Found it in a deep crook of the trunk.

Third took me to a patch of dense vegetation and after feeling like a weirdo as people passed, stopped looking. My noting down some of the clues might have helped in the latter two 'fails'.

I might well try a few more. My GPS claims accuracy under 10m usually (6m average I guess), and sometimes 4m. But when I compare way points I've made to the GPS location tapped into Google Earth or Maps, they seem spot on.


As far as connecting a DIY data cable goes, I've stuffed something in my serial COM port that I thought would work with enough fiddling, though less than ideally. But the software I downloaded says that it can't understand the data received. D'oh! So near yet so far...

[mudskipper]

I went to Geocaching - The Official Global GPS Cache Hunt Site and noted the co-ordinates of the first easy caches (very) near me.

The first took me to a nice little public garden just around the corner that I'd not noticed before. When I got there I could see that it would involve rummaging around in the bushes in public, so I put that down to a probable found.

The next one led me to an isolated tree in a park that I'd been suspecting was the spot from 100 metres away. Found it in a deep crook of the trunk.

Third took me to a patch of dense vegetation and after feeling like a weirdo as people passed, stopped looking. My noting down some of the clues might have helped in the latter two 'fails'.

I might well try a few more. My GPS claims accuracy under 10m usually (6m average I guess), and sometimes 4m. But when I compare way points I've made to the GPS location tapped into Google Earth or Maps, they seem spot on.


As far as connecting a DIY data cable goes, I've stuffed something in my serial COM port that I thought would work with enough fiddling, though less than ideally. But the software I downloaded says that it can't understand the data received. D'oh! So near yet so far...

You very quickly develop 'cacher's eye' and spot the oddly piled twigs or loose stones a mile off. Know what you mean about looking suspicious rummaging around in bushes. I think a dog or small child helps.

[TimberWolf]

Woo hoo!

Got data transfer working using my dodgy DIY cable!

[Waldorf]

Avoid NavMan - what a load of rubbish

[TimberWolf]

I'm content with my bottom of the range Garmin etrex, especially now that I can up/download tracks and routes from Google Maps using my flaky DIY data transfer cable. I don't need minuscule maps, it works accurately even in the pocket and could serve as a basic Sat Nav if required (it's easy to create routes in Google Maps/Earth). And no extras for maps or perpetual internet data connection needed.

[chineseJohn]

I have a Garmin Oregon 450t. I have the O/S maps for it and they're pretty good. But the main point is you can download OpenStreetMaps and use them on this GPS.

I've used the GPS in a lot of countries with OSM.

P/S I'm a big geocacher and this unit is pretty good for this.,

[TimberWolf]

Lol

The wonders of modern gadgets. And free software.

I took my GPS with me on holiday (or it took me) and not only did it log everywhere I went like a spider on hallucinogenics (or caffeine), but I switched it on on the aeroplane and recorded the flight too. It was interesting to watch journey's progress on the GPS screen, and not less so when later uploaded into Google Earth (my dodgy DIY serial cable connection still works) to be viewed in three dimensions. The return leg was close to the outward leg direction wise, with no more than 20 km separating the routes projected on flatland, though height profiles differed quite significantly. Unfortunately we crashed according to my stored flight path (this looking more dramatic in the 3D view, not shown below), must remember to set sample rate to more often for take-offs and landings, rather than stick to a default setting that's perhaps more ideally suited to hiking and walking rather than landing a 737-800. I didn't record the take-off.


The red line is the height with its scale on the left, blue line speed with its scale to right. The spike near the right is probably when I put my GPS in my pocket when the seat belt sign came on and a data point or two went missing.


I got busted in my hammock abode in the forest on my last morning. I had just alighting out of 'bed', which had involved wriggling like a spastic from cocoon of sleeping bag, inner sleeping bag liner and bivvie (it had been a cool and windy night), always being mindful not get impatient and break something, to emerge to a fresh day, at which point two ladies emerged from some bushes, walking past grinning. Took me a bit by surprise so after the requisite expletive I greeted them good morning before remembering that they were foreigners and might have preferred Johnny foreigner talk. I was a bit late up that morning (sunrise usually), but even so 8 a.m. is a bit of an ungodly hour to be creeping around in the woods. A nutter with a dog is more what I would expect at that time of the moring. Seems a bit of a coincidence that they emerged just as I did too. Maybe they had been watching the emergence and were wondering whether I would make it out or whether a butterfly would emerge. Anyway, I did emerge fully dressed that morning...

[Paddy]

I got busted in my hammock abode in the forest on my last morning. I had just alighting out of 'bed', which had involved wriggling like a spastic from cocoon of sleeping bag, inner sleeping bag liner and bivvie (it had been a cool and windy night), always being mindful not get impatient and break something, to emerge to a fresh day, at which point two ladies emerged from some bushes, walking past grinning. Took me a bit by surprise so after the requisite expletive I greeted them good morning before remembering that they were foreigners and might have preferred Johnny foreigner talk. I was a bit late up that morning (sunrise usually), but even so 8 a.m. is a bit of an ungodly hour to be creeping around in the woods. A nutter with a dog is more what I would expect at that time of the moring. Seems a bit of a coincidence that they emerged just as I did too. Maybe they had been watching the emergence and were wondering whether I would make it out or whether a butterfly would emerge. Anyway, I did emerge fully dressed that morning...

Had you tried that in the UK anyone spotting you would had alerted the police and you would have been raided.

I get enough bother from the plod if I try a kip in the car for a few hours on a long journey yet on the continent it is taken to be quite normal.