Anyone use GPS units?

I have been thinking about getting a GPS unit for 'wandering the wilderness'. I am curious if anyone finds them at all usefull. Usually I can find my way back to the some area that I liked. But occasionally I miss the mark. Sometimes when I am in the back country and night falls all of the little side roads can get confusing. So, one feature may be where it lays down a path on the screen as you travel. Then you follow it back as you leave. (the old electronic bread crumb )

I know their accuracy is not pinpoint. But, if I should find a nest or a bird hanging around a certain area then, I would like to be able to refind it.

Anyway just wanted some feedback on what people had and what features they like or dislike.

I'm not the best at finding my way anywhere . I fire up the GPS when driving back roads, so if I'm paying more attention to the Hawk I'm following, than the road, I can find my way back to the highway. Ditto for finding the car again after stumbling thru the woods.
Add the ability to mark a waypoint of a location I want to return to, and I'm sold!

I have and use the Garmin GPS V. I think it's one of the best out there. It is water resistant, and works equually well in the car as it does when hiking. One of th best things about this GPS is that eventhough it is portable and good for hiking, it can do routing. The biggest drawback is that the memory is not expandable, but the 12Mb that it some with gives you plenty of room to put in detailed maps for a bunch of counties.

I do find using a GPS useful for when going to areas that I am not very familiar with, or that I don't frequent that much. Usually after going somewhere a few times I don't need it anymore. But one thing to remember is that GPS units are not a foolproof way to navigate ANY terrain. They are just a useful tool!

-J

I use a Garmin eTrex just about every day for work and play for marking and relocating all sorts of things. The eTrex doesn't support maps but does allow you to save up to 500 waypoints plus "breadcrumb" tracks which can be retraced (usefull in whiteout or darkness), it is waterproof and relatively inexpensive.
As I have access to GIS software at work, I often mark photo locations or interesting spots with the gps, download to a computer, put them in my image database and can then create any map I like with the locations marked.
GPS is a usefull navigational aid, routinely accurate to 5m or less in open country, but should not be relied on solely. Batteries can go flat, trees can obscure the sky. Take a map and compass and know how to use them in difficult country.

I use my Garmin GPS72 for marking hard to find photo spots.

I use a Garmin eTrex Vista. I have used it several times to help find my way back to my truck after hiking around trying to chase the sunset. One useful feature on the Vista (not sure if the other eTrex models have it?) is sun & moon rise & set times as well as location, making it possible to estimate the location the sun or moon will rise, set etc. Also it has a digital compass that will still work even if you don't have satellite reception.
I will second jpons comment regarding not trusting your life to a GPS. I have been in canyons where it was impossible to get reception & batteries don't last indefinitely. Nothing beats a magnetic compass, a map, and a knowledge of how to use them.

Oh yea, the GPS 72 has the sun/moon rise/set mode which is very useful. Even tells where they rise/set.

I too use one...in the land of swamp, rolling hills and everything looking the same especially in winter it only takes 100 yards and you can miss town or the cabin or loose your ATV in the excitement of walking over a hill.

We also find it handy and accurate to spot areas where we see birds and other sites of interest.

I use a Garmin 12 map.

Practice before you leave home and head to the hills. In the panic of trying to find your way out of the bush is not the time to turn on the GPS first time. :roll:

Also very neccessary for GEOCACHING. See http://www.geocaching.com I use the gps guite often to locate all sorts of landmarks using coordinates on the topo maps.

I use my GPS a lot. It's a Garmin eTrex (the cheapest one). It has no fancy frills like topo maps or magnetic compass, but it's nice enough. It has a track log, which leaves a trail of breadcrumbs (stores about four hours of data at highway speed--probably longer at slower speeds), and can keep 500 labelled waypoints.

I had a problem a little while ago where my stored waypoints all seemed to be off by up to 800 m (a very large amount in relation to the accuracy of the unit). But when I actually decided to sit down and investigate the problem, I found the cause in about two minutes: the software I was using to transfer points from my computer to the GPS was set to a Tokyo datum instead of a more appropritate one like WGS84 or NAD27. All is fine now.

I wrote myself some software which can work with digitized topo maps to plot waypoints on the map, or even better, so I can click on the map and generate a waypoint. These points get stored in a database on my computer which I can then upload to the GPS. I find this a wonderful tool.

Recently I just started using the GPS to keep track of where I see moose in Elk Island National Park. It hasn't been long enough to see any patterns yet, but I'm hoping I'll be able to figure out if there are areas where I'm more likely to see them.

-Paul

I presently have two GPS Units and have tried both Magellan and Garmin. I have found the Garmin to be more accurate. I have a Garmin 2610 Street Pilot for my vehicle and a Garmin Map 76S Handheld. The 2610 speaks and is great for driving onroad and off. It uses a CF Card to store maps so with a 512MB CF Card I can store all the maps east of the Mississippi at one time. It also has a remote control so a person in the pack seat can operate it. It is also color and has excellent map detail.

The Map 76S is my handheld. It is Black and White, provides sunrise, sunset, tides, a compass as well as the ability to record waypoints. It also has a cable available that can be attached to the Nikon D1x to record the exact location a photo was taken.

You can't beat Garmin and if you enjoy nature photography, a GPS is a very valuable tool.

nelsonke wrote:It also has a cable available that can be attached to the Nikon D1x to record the exact location a photo was taken.

Cool. I often wondered if this was possible with any camera, although it would have to be canon to be usefull to me.

None of the Canon bodies support reading the location from a GPS via a serial link and embedding it in the files (although there is a standard EXIF/TIF tag to put this information into).

But I don't find that an issue. I'd hate to have yet another cable linking the GPS and the camera (whichever camera I was using at any instant). But if someone was going to equip both GPSes and cameras with Bluetooth for this that might be kinda cool...

I take advantage of the fact that the GPS will record a "breadcrumb trail" of points with timestamps, and each of the photos is timestamped. I wrote some tools that synchronise the time on all my cameras to that of the GPS, and then some software to align the timestamps on the photos and the trails and present likely approximate locations for each image. This happens in my image management database and I don't embed the data into the files themselves, but it's very useful!

I believe there is some Windows software available to do similar correlation of GPS data and images and that it adds the GPS location data to the EXIF tags, but can't recall the name of it off the top of my head.

Currently I'm using an old Garmin GPS II from 1997, but one day I'm going to update to a smaller modern 12-channel unit that is more sensitive and can record longer breadcrumb trails. I don't really care about lots of memory for fancy maps, but being able to store more than 768 breadcrumbs would be nice! As it is I often have to download the GPS data several times per day.

Thanks to everybody for your input. The comment that Garmin is more accurate was interesting. I was leaning toward Garmin anyway. In fact the eTrex Vista or the 76S are probably my two top choices. I like the fact that they have built in compass/altimeter in case you cannot get enough signals to determine that info.

I will drop a couple hints to Santa and see what 'she' brings her wonderful hubby for Christmas