GPS recommendation for hiking

I have a Magellan 315 that I have been using for the past 7 years. The
display is going bad and it is time to replace it. My primary use is
hiking and geocaching. I have also used it with a laptop for car
navigation.

I am looking for recommendation on a replacement. Is it a good idea
to stick with a simple model and use it the way I do with the Magellan
or should I buy a model with built in maps that can be used for both
hiking and car navigation?

For hiking what features do people find useful? What models should I
be comparing? For geocaching I would be nice to have all the text for
clues given. Is this practical? Ditto for a car navigation unit?

Thanks

Ray

For combined geocaching and car navigation (e.g.: to the cache), the
Garmin GPSMAP 60Cx is ideal. It has a feature adapted to geocaching,
namely puts caches in a specific category separate from waypoints in
general, and it files found and not yet found caches in separate lists.
Sorry, no descriptive text other than the "GC" number.

The advantages of the 60Cx over the earlier 60C are two fold: 1) the 60C
had only 56 MB of memory for maps; the 60Cx will take a micro SD card.
Using 1.6 GB of a 2 GB card stores the maps for the entire U.S. and
Canada. 2) The receiver is (my guess) about ten times as sensitive as
the one in the previous model. The older GPS units really crap out under
heavy tree foliage, and may not give a fix better than 60 feet. The new
one is pretty solid; it even gives a good fix inside my house.

I would not bother paying extra for the model with an electronic compass
and altimeter. The altimeter is not all that accurate unless it is
compensated for the sea-level barometric pressure. The electronic
compasses and not very accurate, and you can get a really good hand-held
magnetic compass for $20.

Units like the 60Cx are pretty good for car navigation, but it takes a
bit of practice and experience for them not to be a hazardous
distraction. The machine only beeps before an upcoming turn. Trying to
actually read the map while driving is nuts. What I found best is to use
the birds-eye view which shows only the road you are on. Its value is to
see well in advance whether the next turn will be to the right or left.
One can configure the data panels in various ways, and the numbers in
them are very large. I chose car speed, ETA at destination, distance to
destination, and (very important) distance to next turn.

I can't say anything about topo maps, because I haven't seen a sample of
them. If they don't actually show trails, I wouldn't consider them very
useful.

Hope this is of help.

Herb

--
To send me email, replace deadspam.com by acm.org

Herbert Kanner wrote:


I agree with your recommendation as far as the 60/76 "x" series models
being the best for all around use. But I find my 76Cx to be just as
good for street navigation as I do the StreetPilot 2610 and 2620 that I
own.

I don't get the bigger picture and voice prompts but if I use the 76Cx's
Turn Preview page as the main page for display I get all the info I need
at a glance and in a larger, easily read, format. I think many people
that consider the handhelds as a poor choice for use in a car have not
made good use of the right pages.

The Turn Preview and Active Route pages only appear if you have them
chosen to be displayed in the Page Sequence menu. And they only appear
when you are navigating Follow Road routes.

I have my page sequence set up so that the Turn preview page is in front
of the Map page and the Active Route page is after the Map page. So if
I want more details, I can use taps on the Page and Quit buttons to
change pages quickly.

The Map page is a very poor choice to use for navigating in a car
because it only displays the upcoming turn info momentarily and it is
generally distracting to try to get much info from it quickly. Take a
Follow Road trip using the Turn Preview page and you'll probably never
use the Map page as your primary page again.


For the United States the U.S. Topo package will show the trails that
would be seen on the USGS 1:100,000 topo maps. That, and the terrain
contours and other details, are certainly helpful when you get off the
beaten track and are doing things like trying to get from point A to
point B and want to estimate the nature and difficulty of navigating the
intervening terrain on foot.

There is also 24K Topo product that has more trails on it but only for
selected National Parks.

Having U.S. Topo on a handheld and a compass and USGS 1:24,000 paper map
in hand will satisfy the needs of hikers in even the most aggressive
terrain I'd think.

Discounting all the brain candy features, if you want to use one GPS
receiver for everything, nothing is as capable as the "x" series
handhelds.

Jack

--
Jack Erbes in Ellsworth, Maine, USA - jackerbes at adelphia dot net
(also receiving email at jacker at midmaine.com)

Jack Erbes wrote:

You ain't lyin'.



Again, agreed. I actually use the "Active Route" as my main
page and have the "Turn Preview" popup when I approach the
turn. Don't get no better than that. I also agree that the
map page is basically useless when traveling unless you want
to know the name of a lake or something that you're passing.


Of course they show known trails. Now, if someone cuts
their own it ain't gonna handle that unless you track it. ;-)
As usual Jack, you're right on. I wouldn't trade my 76CSx
for any other unit goin'. Keep those suckers that talk to
you, I'd throw those suckers right out the window! ;-)

--
Steve

Steve Calvin wrote:

I don't need them either. And I really don't understand the lemming
like rush to have voice prompts. In the average car you're probably
going to radios, road noise, other people, and various other audible
inputs to contend with. So adding voice prompts sounds like nothing
more than an annoyance to me.

Then factor in the confusion that would be caused by a software driven,
computer generated, voice trying to pronounce the names of millions of
streets and roads in a manner that does not create more confusion than
it absolves.

My 2610 and 2620 do a pretty good job on describing the basic turning
maneuvers in mainstream English. But I have those turn off or down
enough to be barely nearly all the time. The muted mumblings in the
background are my reminder that I may need to glance at the upcoming
turn instructions to see what coming up.

Can you imagine that the regional pronunciations are all honored? Of
being in Europe and trying to decipher or make any useful sense of the
pronunciations of foreign names?

Voice prompts on a handheld? You have to be kidding! What next, an mp3
player and photo viewer?

Jack

--
Jack Erbes in Ellsworth, Maine, USA - jackerbes at adelphia dot net
(also receiving email at jacker at midmaine.com)