Re: gps software for walking

JRS wrote:

http://www.gpsw.co.uk/details/prod3429.html

I have seen these go 2nd hand for not much more than £50

Yeah, but the RRP is £250. Bloody good deal though!

and national
parks on anquet can be had for £20

But that's not GPS mapping, which is I was referring to.

I would call it basic compared to this:

http://www.gpsw.co.uk/details/prod3041.html

which is what I use.

I've got the 60CS myself, which is virtually the same thing.

I can only speak for Anquet on an Ipaq but in terms of it navigation
abilities and facilities its functionality (route / waypont
management, etc) is limited alongside a dedicated GPS unit as well as
being fragile with poor battery life and the need for a seperate
receiver as mentioned. I don't use it any more. Following your
position on an O/S map on screen looks pretty for a while but I
didn't find it a very effective navigational tool. perhaps spending a
bit more time on it would have helped but the 60csx was so much
easier to use.

Yeah. Once the novelty wears off you don't find yourself walking around
staring at the GPS screen all the time, it's just something you check now
and again. If you have some preloaded waypoints it's simply a matter of
looking at the map or compass screen to check which direction you should be
walking in and how far it is to the next waypoint.

I didn't use it long enough to identify accuracy issues but I have
noticed that when I draw a route on a road in anquet it does not
always lie exactly on the road that the 60csx has in its memory. The
60csx is very accurate in this respect and when I stand on the road
it shows me on the road whereas my line from the o/s mapping may be
slightly off. I put this down to not drawing accurately at high
enough zoom but sometimed however accurately I draw a route on a
footpath the GPS will occasionally show me off course even though I'm
on the footpath. This happens even with an excellent signal.

It's not a problem with inaccurate drawing, the GPS is spot on. It's the OS
maps that are inaccurate. We've discussed this many times in the past. The
features drawn on OS maps are often positioned relatively rather than
absolutely. Few positions on an OS are spot on. Naturally trig points are
(or should be). The thing with roads is that they're usually drawn wider
than they really are, to make reading the map easier, but when you widen a
road, that can push other features out of position, including other roads.
Hence the relative positioning I mentioned.

If a lot of details, say a road, a river, a footpath and a line of trees all
occur in close proximity, some will get pushed out of the way. Relatively
speaking, the map looks correct, but in absolute terms, it's wrong. Nobody
ever noticed this until GPS came along, but now we usually have better
accuracy that the maps, reception permitting. Obviously GPS doesn't
understand relative positioning! ;-) If there's a difference between the
map and the GPS, then provided reception is good, trust the GPS not the map.

I only use routes and waypoints downloaded to my 60csx from anquet in
conjunction with european street level mapping (metroguide v8 almost
whole of europe on 2gb SD card) - I occasionally like to check
position with a road or know how close I am to one if anything goes
wrong. Its also useful if I am trying to drive to the start of a
walk.

Indeed. With some country lanes I've had more trouble navigating to the
start of the walk than during the walk itself!

My mate has the garmin topo s/ware and it lacks detail for me -
particulalry with respect to footpaths. Jon

I find it strange that you should say that. It obviously gives you more
detail than you'd have without it, yet you complain that it's not detailed
enough!

A lot of people have complained about the lack of footpaths, but what about
the superbly detailed contours and streams? I think they are far more
important IMO. But then, I'm not a great fan of following footpaths anyway.
Besides, if you want to follow footpaths you can always trace them and
upload them as saved tracks. Or create detailed routes.

If you don't have contours, why not download the free ones? They're not as
detailed and accurate as the Garmin ones, but they're infinitely better than
nothing at all. I find them to be extremely useful and are often all I need
to help pick my way across trackless terrain.

Paul
--
http://www.wilderness-wales.co.uk


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