Re: GPS thingy?

>>"Alex" wrote ...
>>What about GPS units that attach to handhelds?
>>Are they any good?

"Eric Edwards" wrote ...
> One issue is durability. Hand held GPS's are made to be used in the
> outdoors. They are highly shock and even water resistant. If you get
> caught in the rain or your hand held GPS goes flying, it will likely
> survive. A PDA won't.

Good thought. I was only thinking about the GPS half of the system.

In my falll last week, my etrex, following Newton's laws of motion, traveled
a ways down the street without me.
I was having some problems with the joystick button for a while, but
haven't since then.
It may be that it needed a good jolt to bounce some crud out of the switch.

Bill Fuhrmann wrote...
>>One advantage that a PDA unit would have is that you can stick the
>>receiver
>>on your helmet where it will pick up a better signal and still be able to
>>see the display.

> My last GPS was a Garmin GPS III. A bit large and heavy compared to an
> eTrex or a Gecko but it had one nifty feature. The antenna was
> detachable. A bit of scavenged velcro and a short length of RJ68 (aka
> 10base2) coaxial cable was all I need to mount the antenna on top of my
> helmet and keep the GPS receiver safely in the bag or in my hand.

That is the one thing that I wish the Etrex series had, a jack for an
external antenna. Until I decided to try (with great success) wearing the
GPS on the back of my helmet, I was considering trying something I saw on a
GPS web site. An inductively coupled external antenna.
A person who was annoyed by lack of reception in his car made up a small
circuit with a single transistor amplifier to get the signal from a standard
Garmin external antenna and drive a loop of wire that is wrapped around the
antenna area of the receiver.

I had also considered hacking into my GPS to find the antenna circuit and
wire in a connector for the external antenna.


.

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