map chip
Does the Mile Post, or a similar cometitor offer an SD card version that you would plug into your GPS or computer. I was looking at upgrading the radio in a truck I bought. There are lots of nice af...
Forum Discussion
I think at times the mapping supplied with the GPS unit is more of a problem than the actual operations of the unit. One of mine, may have been my Streets and Trips using the external dongle to receive the signal for the laptop, was showing Valdez to be on the wrong side of the bay. Even though I was at the time sitting at a picnic table at the campground next to the city boat harbor.
As we all know it takes a good signal from at least 3 satellites to get an accurate reading and if you have tall mountains or tall trees blocking one or more of the normally visible satellites being blocked, the GPS will not do well.
As sue mentioned, I too have a hand held Garmin Etrex GPS, mainly for hiking or fishing away from the roads. It works fine, most of the time. Even though all areas of the earth are supposed to receive adequate signals from the satellites, it would appear that locations closer to both sides of the equator get better signals than do the areas closer to both of the polar regions. I have read several articles explaining the technical reasons for this but they made no sense to me.
I made one trip using a Lawrence GPS unit that was fine in the lower 48 but when I got to Alaska and was going east-west, it couldn't handle the latitudes with good accuracy. It was running NavTec maps in it, but kept showing me to be about 100 meters north of the road I was driving on between GlennAllen and Palmer. (east west route) So it spent all it's time telling me to go back to the route and I finally had to turn it off as I was on the only road in that area.
The accuracy of individual GPS units also figures into the use of them. But of course I expect more from an aircraft GPS sold by Garmin that sells for over $15,000 than I do the $200 units I run in my RV. LOL
For fishing and staying within the regulations of Alaska, a GPS is great to have in your pocket. I also like to just have the info available when on the road as how far the next town is down the road and stuff like that. I run with two GPS units working and a third one in reserve just in case I need to replace one.
As we all know it takes a good signal from at least 3 satellites to get an accurate reading and if you have tall mountains or tall trees blocking one or more of the normally visible satellites being blocked, the GPS will not do well.
As sue mentioned, I too have a hand held Garmin Etrex GPS, mainly for hiking or fishing away from the roads. It works fine, most of the time. Even though all areas of the earth are supposed to receive adequate signals from the satellites, it would appear that locations closer to both sides of the equator get better signals than do the areas closer to both of the polar regions. I have read several articles explaining the technical reasons for this but they made no sense to me.
I made one trip using a Lawrence GPS unit that was fine in the lower 48 but when I got to Alaska and was going east-west, it couldn't handle the latitudes with good accuracy. It was running NavTec maps in it, but kept showing me to be about 100 meters north of the road I was driving on between GlennAllen and Palmer. (east west route) So it spent all it's time telling me to go back to the route and I finally had to turn it off as I was on the only road in that area.
The accuracy of individual GPS units also figures into the use of them. But of course I expect more from an aircraft GPS sold by Garmin that sells for over $15,000 than I do the $200 units I run in my RV. LOL
For fishing and staying within the regulations of Alaska, a GPS is great to have in your pocket. I also like to just have the info available when on the road as how far the next town is down the road and stuff like that. I run with two GPS units working and a third one in reserve just in case I need to replace one.
