[pct-l] GPS Woes and benefits

[CHUCK CHELIN]

Good afternoon, all,

I will buck the trend of popular GPS opinion by continuing to use a small,
simple, light model such as the Garmin Geko-201.  Since I carry HalfMile’s
maps and the coordinates of all his waypoints I don’t need or want a GPS
receiver with in-chassis mapping capability – particularly color mapping --
but for the uninitiated a nice, full-featured, color mapping GPSs is an easy
slam-dunk up-sell.



I use my GPS regularly, but not with any great complexity:

1)      I want it to display my current location in UTM coordinates,

2)      I want to save the waypoint of a few hundred significant locations
in the GPS’s memory,

3)      I like the “GoTo” feature so I can more easily walk to a location on
the waypoint list or a location I enter while on the trail,

4)      I want to save the location of each of my campsites.



That’s it – utilizing about one fourth the features of the simplest GPs on
the market.



For that simplicity I gain:

1)      A GPS that weight less than 3.5 oz. including 2 common-as-gravel AAA
batteries; that’s about half of what the fancy ones weigh.

2)      A machine that costs about 20%-30% of what the fancy ones cost.

3)      If I worry about reliability, I can opt for the redundancy of two
totally separate Gekos for less than the weight and cost of one of the fancy
models.



Carrying the feature craze to another step, on the trail I would love to
have the use of a nice laptop computer with all my three-state TOPO!
7.5-minute maps and unlimited waypoints.  Cabled to it would be a GPS for
real-time track point capture.  Unfortunately, I’ve not yet found someone
else willing to carry the darn thing and all it’s batteries, and I certainly
won’t.



My GPS remains off except when I use it several times a day to verify where
I am and/or resolve some confusion.  Before sleep I save the waypoint of my
camp.  I arbitrarily change the two AAA batteries at each resupply point.  I
carry two extra batteries but I don’t remember having to change them during
a segment.  If I needed to heavily use the GPS, such as through 150-180
miles of Sierras in a heavy snow year, I would probably carry four extra
batteries.



Steel-Eye

Hiking the Pct since before it was the PCT – 1965

http://www.trailjournals.com/steel-eye

http://www.trailjournals.com/SteelEye09


On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 8:45 AM, Pat <krozby at zoominternet.net> wrote:

> On 6/28/2010 1:08 AM, martin hatton wrote:
> > Fellow Hikers and would be's.
> >
> > I bought a top of the range GARMIN OREGON 550i for this years thru hike.
>
> Hey I know exactly nothing about GPS has anyone ever heard or the Garmin
> GPSMAP 60CSX. Anything good to say about it.
>
> Pat
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