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Whats A Good Gps To Buy


JG.270

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+1 or the old super rugged garmin 60. CSX is not much more in price from memory

+2 a great unit!

Load it up with shonky maps (for free) and you're good to go.

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G'day,

I bought a garmin Etrex vista Cx second hand on eBay $90 from usa & works a treat. This model is superseded by the vista HCx now. Heaps of features easy to use too. Bought garmin topo maps Australia & New Zealand from a guy in Europe via eBay $69 genuine product. Only thing I had to do to was upgrade the gps software via garmin site (free) to use the maps in the micro sd. Not much goes wrong with garmin. It pays to shop around and compare if you have the time I could have spent $400 plus.

Cheers

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anyone have the garmin gpsmap62 or 62s?

the only difference i can see between them, apart from $80, is that the 62s accepts external storage cards... i cant see that being too much of a benefit. if i want to put something on the 1.7gb internal ill do it via usb... surely.

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I have a gpsmap62 loaded with shonkymaps. It's all you need.

It is fair enough to speak for yourself, but it does not mean you should claim to know what others might or might not need.

My GPS has custom maps installed, Google images, Vic Fire maps, NSW Gov SixViewer images, Vic DPI deer hunting area maps, images of Natmap maps, Images of CMA Mps, all geo-referenced and available at different times for different hunts. I am already up to 1.3 gig and I can see plenty of other maps I might want to load yet and I know people who think I am lagging behind in wht I can find useful in my GPS.

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It is fair enough to speak for yourself, but it does not mean you should claim to know what others might or might not need.

My GPS has custom maps installed, Google images, Vic Fire maps, NSW Gov SixViewer images, Vic DPI deer hunting area maps, images of Natmap maps, Images of CMA Mps, all geo-referenced and available at different times for different hunts. I am already up to 1.3 gig and I can see plenty of other maps I might want to load yet and I know people who think I am lagging behind in wht I can find useful in my GPS.

Actually all you need is a map and a compass. The other crap is just nice to have. ;) in my opinion.

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A basic Garmin GPS with good battery life will be more than enough to get you home safe. Most GPS users will not be able to use them at the level that Jindydiver does anyway. Andyblue has a good point also , It does not hurt to know how to use a paper map and compass. Batteries go flat , electronics break down and satellites can be turned off!

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Well if you can get all those maps into 1.3gb then I don't reckon ill ever need more than that.

I would like a GPS for a couple of reasons:

An additional layer of safety in the remote outback,

The novelty (let's be honest, gadgets are cool)

And to createour own maps when we get back to town. The area we ho isn't particularly well mapped so this will help add detail to them

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Well if you can get all those maps into 1.3gb then I don't reckon ill ever need more than that.

I would like a GPS for a couple of reasons:

An additional layer of safety in the remote outback,

The novelty (let's be honest, gadgets are cool)

And to createour own maps when we get back to town. The area we ho isn't particularly well mapped so this will help add detail to them

The really good thing is that a GPS allows you to concentrate more on the hunting / stalking whatever , compared to using a compass and paper map. With a compass we all know how easy it is to slip to the side of a course and in thick bush miss our target . with the GPS it tells you when you are off course and even steers you back if you overshoot a target. The first time I took a GPS out I was over the moon with the whole no pressure navigation situation it made the day far more enjoyable .

Edited by Happy Jack
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Well if you can get all those maps into 1.3gb then I don't reckon ill ever need more than that.

It doesn't have all the maps available for all those editions, so far it is just the places I have hunted. As I go I keep adding more and more and in a couple of years I imagine I will easily have over 2gb installed. I leave them loaded, they don't slow down the unit at all and I don't want to fiddle every time I go hunting, I only want to adapt and load maps for new areas. All of them are available to view on the Garmin software and it is good to be able to learn as much about an area as I can before I visit it for the first time.

I would like a GPS for a couple of reasons:

An additional layer of safety in the remote outback,

The novelty (let's be honest, gadgets are cool)

And to createour own maps when we get back to town. The area we ho isn't particularly well mapped so this will help add detail to them

When I go to remote areas (the Cape and Aust Alps) it is great to be able to view sat images and make plans on the go. The ability to add custom maps is a big plus for the newer units. If you hunt in NSW the Six Images latest aerial pics are great and detailed enough in some areas to pick out bushes only as big as a couple of foot across.

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with the whole no pressure navigation situation it made the day far more enjoyable .

That is the beauty of them. They are super reliable these days and you just have a spare set of batteries in the bottom of your pack and you are pretty unlikely to not be able to use it to find a way home.

My GPS has saved me hours of hunting time over the last couple of years. If I whack a deer across a steep and bushy gully and I want to find it quicker I take a bearing to the animals with the electronic compass and project a waypoint (knowing the distance with my rangefinder) and just take whatever easier route I need to to get to the deer. I have used the same technique to find arrows shot up cliffs and whatnot.

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That is the beauty of them. They are super reliable these days and you just have a spare set of batteries in the bottom of your pack and you are pretty unlikely to not be able to use it to find a way home.

My GPS has saved me hours of hunting time over the last couple of years. If I whack a deer across a steep and bushy gully and I want to find it quicker I take a bearing to the animals with the electronic compass and project a waypoint (knowing the distance with my rangefinder) and just take whatever easier route I need to to get to the deer. I have used the same technique to find arrows shot up cliffs and whatnot.

Projecting a waypoint is a real handy feature . I have not used it much but I know how to do it. I can see that it would be very handy to find fallen game across a rugged valley floor or something like that . I might get some lessons of you Jindy on geotagging as I need to learn that . I know it is about using coordinates to tag an image but exactly how that works I am not sure . Is Geo tagging the same as Geo referencing ?

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Is Geo tagging the same as Geo referencing ?

Nope

I don't geotag anything, it is a case of never needed to. It is when you say take a photo of something and you tag the photo with a waypoint. It is used by people who want to go back through their tracks and keep a log of the things they have seen. I know some US guys who use the camera in their GPS and they tag pics of scrapes and beds and whatnot so that they can add them to a map for friends. People who spray weeds will often use it too to mark weeds they see and produce maps that have lots of extra info in them so they can plan weed programs. You see examples of it on Google Earth when you click on a waypoint someone has posted and a pic comes up.

Goereferencing is where you have an image that is a map and you add a file to it that tells the GPS where the map is on Earth so you can use it. There are programs like OziExplorer that allow you to (within your PC) scan maps from anywhere and reference them using waypoints you create so that you can then reference the image to any other map of the same area. It is used to turn aerial images into maps for instance. Other programs can work in conjunction with this (like Mapc2mapc) and creat custom garmin images out of the pictures so they can be viewed on your GPS while you are in the field.

This allows hunters (and others of course) to use any map they can find to help them on the ground. Any time I am hunting in Vic I can access on my GPS the shonkymaps image or I can use the VicFire map of the same spot, or if I am worried about crossing in to a no-hunting area (like a park or scientific reserve) I can bring up the DSE map and check I am still in legal ground.

I have used this sort of tech for years (at a fairly basic level really) to create maps I can view on my PC from old aerial photos of the Snowy Mountains and I can create waypoints for interesting locations and visit them. I spent a lot of time diving on the old townships flooded by the Snowy Scheme and the only way to find the locations was to use a gps (all the locations being under many meters of water now. Nowadays I can load the maps directly on my GPS and plan on the run.

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Ok , so to get an image of a map or sat photo to come up in the right place on the GPS screen it is Geo referencing I need to study .

I saw something about the extra file you refer too a " world file " I think they called it.

Thanks that points me in the right direction pardon the pun.

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For programs on the PC like OziExplorer you have a separate file called a .map file that holds all the referencing (between 4 and 9) waypoints and the pixels on the picture where those waypoints are found and having a path to where the image file can be found. Your Garmin uses .kmz that is referenced in UTM or Lat/Long (depending on your firmware) and the kmz file contains the image and all the referencing info.

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Not wanting to "redirect" this thread but I learnt this week at the Gatta hunt that there are a number of GPS's that don't show topo maps. I had assumed this was a basic feature but apparently not.

If you're doing any serious walking then I'd avoid these like the plague! Unless of course you just enjoy doing lots of pointless hill climbing. If you can't see topo lines and the GPS is only giving you point-to-point references then you won't see opportunities for contouring or features like rivers, cliffs, etc.

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My GPS is an "old" non-mapping GPS. It shows my track, any routes I've programmed and waypoints I've saved.

If I need to find the EASY way, I look at the UTM grid reference and transfer that onto a paper map. From there I can do all the planning I want without wasting precious battery power like on the newer GPS's with colour screens and every gadget under the sun draining power.

I have the Garmin GPS60. Batteries last for ever and I'm forced to use a real map, something that may save my life if I have an electronics failure.

That being said, I am thinking about upgrading to a newer GPS with mapping in order to overlay non standard maps like the DSE deer maps etc.

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To get the basemap - software plug your gps into your laptop via the USB cable, goto garmin webpage and go to basemap download & follow the instructions. It's easy but needs to verify you have a garmin product that's why you need it plugged in !

Cheers

Edited by Waza
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