General Cycling Discussion - GPS follow up

I started a thread a while back re GPS devices for the bike. I finally bought one, mounted it on my bike and couldn't be happier.

I bought the Garmin Vista which has 24 megs built in. It came with two CDs of Western Europe maps at street level. I can load in most of the Netherlands with that 24 megs. This will be great during vacations over here whether we bike around unknown places or just for finding our way back to the car in big cities.

The features on this (and other similar) devices, boggle the mind. I bought a new bike recently (to replace a stolen one) and haven't gotten around to buying and installing a bike computer - well with this GPS device (which is the size of a typical mobile phone) I can see my speed and it also registers where I've traveled (and the distances) ... altimeter readings, atomic clock time ... you name it

This device is also water proof so it doesn't matter if it rains (at least for the device). For a little more money I could have bought a device that was larger and would give me instructions when and where to turn, but for my use, biking and walking around on vacations, it's excellent.

Combine this with a mobile phone and you can have a heart attack in the middle of nowhere and still tell the medical help exactly where you are.

You've got better mobile service than I do.

I have a garmin E trex (the one with altitude).
Where I go riding I need a short wave or HF radio or a satelite phone.
One of my stupid hobbies is to actually ride off into the wilderness , as far from civilisation as possible , set up a radio station and communicate to other stations using low power dx , power supplies usually consisting of handheld radio , cordless drill and mobile phone batteries.
I've found the GPS to be worth it's weight in gold. I still use topographic maps , but with GPS you can't go wrong.
If the ***** really hits the fan, out comes the EPIRB :D , But that's a last resort , don't switch that on until you know you're gonna die. :(
Happy travelling:)

<You got better mobile service than I do.>

Garmin offers units that use memory cards (up to 128 megs), but the cost of those cards is a bit too steep for my wallet.

The 24 megs of the Vista is more than adequate for my use. One nice feature, the MetroGuide Europe (2 CDs) came with the Vista unlocked. I can load all of those maps into my wife's laptop and bring a serial cable along on vacation and load any maps into its built in memory I wish. I have no idea why Garmin is marketing those MetroGuides and selling them unlocked. Had I known that, I would have bought just the unit itself and tried to get my hands on a copy of the MG Europe.

I've only gotten really lost a few times and this would have come in real handy. There's nothing worse than being dead tired, lost and know you're still at least a good hour away from your caravan.

Fortunately, my wife supports me in the expense of my new toy.
(I bought it from my Dutch and US tax return refunds.)

I got into difficulty once , I wasn't really lost but I ran out of water in very rugged wilderness and was dehydrated , I knew I had 4-5hours riding (or crawling) to get to my camp(water) , it was the worst , I started feeling sick and dizzy and had the shakes . I can see why people who are dehydrated become lost very easily , it actually felt like I was blind drunk , minus any happiness:(
I think I had the GPS on that little adventure too ;) I need a GPS with 24meg and 10 litres;)
My girlie doesn't help fund my hobbies/adventures but she's happy to participate :D

Where abouts do you go riding? I've planned on going to Europe , I will do some riding over there? One day:)

My riding tastes are rather simple. I simply like biking around various cities and towns while on vacation. Going into the wilderness would not be my first choice.

On a bike you can see much more of a city than by foot ... and getting lost in a city on a bike is not that big of a deal, you simply look for a church steeple and know you'll be close to the center.

We also like biking in the country between cities and villages, but knowing that a café will be pretty close by. I am not one to rough it in the true sense. :beer:

Originally posted by davehorne
My riding tastes are rather simple. I simply like biking around various cities and towns while on vacation. Going into the wilderness would not be my first choice.

On a bike you can see much more of a city than by foot ... and getting lost in a city on a bike is not that big of a deal, you simply look for a church steeple and know you'll be close to the center.

We also like biking in the country between cities and villages, but knowing that a café will be pretty close by. I am not one to rough it in the true sense. :beer:

Sounds like paradise.
Unfortunately down here (Australia) I feel safer riding in the wilderness than I do riding on the roads. Sometimes I'd rather take my chances with mother nature than mother in Ford or four wheel drive.
But I do the cafe/lunch cruise occasionally there are some good day rides around where I live.

Cheers

GPS is awesome, but useless without a map, so it's good you've got the CD's for yours.
In my area, the forest rangers have referred to GPS and cell phones as the two worst inventions in the hiking world. Every now and then, some yuppie with more dollars than sense will call the rangers because they realized that their brand new GPS gadget isn't magical. They end up having to stay on the phone with the ranger reading off longitudes and latitudes while ranger either sends out someone to get them or pulls out a map of their own and gives them step by step directions. I guess some people really should be restricted to sidewalks and starbucks. :D

Even though I'm very new to GPS, all of the units I've looked at came with a map. For more detailed maps you always have to buy a CD ROM, but with very crude map (the map that already loaded in), anyone should be able to find their way to a major road.

I still have to learn how to correctly read a paper map and use a compass. As long as the batteries hold out, I'm covered.

Originally posted by iamlucky13
GPS is awesome, but useless without a map...

I don't think it is useless without a map. The problem is many people forget to mark their starting points so they get out in the woods and have no reference of how to get back. They know where they are but not where they want to go. If you remember to always mark your starting positon before your hike or ride It is nearly impossible to get lost with a gps. You might not always take the best route back ( and a map certainly would help) but you will get back. Just my $.02.

I also agree, it is important to mark your beginning point! The model I have allows for 500 hundred marked points (waypoints) as well as leaving an electronic 'bread crumb trail' so you can very easily trace your way back. The slight drawback with that bread crumb trail is at some point it will start overwriting itself. It's a good idea to look once in while at that to see how much memory is left if you're going into very unfamiliar territory. (Of course, if you marked your start point, you can still find your way back, right?)

The features I can use are astounding. There's a built in compass and you can visually set it a point in the distance and it will lock onto that and keep you on the straight and narrow, as it were. That feature would have come in handy those times I got lost hiking when I lived in the US. The number of options that are already working without any additional help from the user is amazing.

(I can even jump out of a plane and track my decent and read it back later. This is a very new feature and is not in the owner's manual ... I just updated my gadget online.)

I highly recommend that anyone wishing to buy one of these units spend a great deal of time reading the owner's manual which can (at least Garmin, I know) be saved as a pdf file ahead of time. I went away for a few days and took my wife's laptop and read the manual while I was waiting for it be delivered. (I ordered from the UK which had much better prices than the Netherlands.)

These devices are a novelty now, but I feel this technology will be built into all mobile phones in the next ten years. You can use your Palm hand held PDA as a GPS navigation unit now. The Palms have a nice big screen and the one minor drawback, for use on a bike, is their lack of ruggedness.

The novelty has already worn off for me, but you can be sure I will always have it in my pocket (or mounted on my bike) when I am in unfamiliar territory.

One more thing, there are _many_ personal web sites where people like you and me have done all sorts of comparisons between different brands and different models within one brand. There is no shortage of free and abundant opinions.

I am certainly not an expert, but I have learned a great deal researching this over the last month or so. There are a few usenet 'news groups' dedicated to this technology and I've learned a lot there.

.... Dave

Dave,

I have the same unit as you and the functions are great. However 99% of the time I am in either in the navigate mode with the arrow or the trip statistics showing average speed and distance, but the other features are a lot of fun to check out.

Now that you have this unit you should check out www.geocaching.com if you haven't already. I spent last summer in Germany and did some geocaching in the Netherlands, along with Germany, Belgium and Luxemburg. I tend to combine the two activites of bicking and geocaching. I find that picking a cache I want to do within the distance I want to ride gives me great destinations to ride to. Doing the Geocaching thing I have found many cool places and parks close to my house that I never knew existed.

Have fun with the gps.

Steve

MI, I did my first geocache last weekend. Interesting how the language changes so quickly ... geocaching is now part of the language.

Originally posted by davehorne

These devices are a novelty now, but I feel this technology will be built into all mobile phones in the next ten years.

There are a couple of mobile phones with mapping GPS now (Garmin and Benefon are two current manufacturers). The original Garmin NavTalks were nothing more than an analog mobile with a GPS receiver glued on but the latest NavTalk is a GSM capable phone with fully integrated GPS mapping with features such as caller-plotting and location transmission.

There's a mandate from the FCC for all mobile/cellphone systems in the US to be compatible with the E911/A-GPS initiative within the end of the year. Actually the original deadline was end of 2002 but many carriers have filed for extensions to the phase II compliance mandate. This requirement states that any mobile handset must be locatable with 50-100 meters. To this end, many handset manufacturers are using embedded GPS chipsets that can transmit the location of the caller. Thus, the core technology (GPS receiver) is there... all one needs to do is throw in the ancillary stuff like the large display (already done for a lot of phones), mapping engine and integration logics (convergence features).

Excellent!!!!!

A GPS would have helped me yesterday. The UK OS map showed a bridleway but there was no sign of it in relation to other landmarks. It might have been obscured by trees but then again it might not exist at all anymore. If I had a GPS I could have compared my road position to the coords on the map and that would have placed me much closer to the expected point where it should have been. I wasn't lost for sure. But it bugged the heck out of me that I could not find the track.