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Is My Sportrak Pro A Marine?


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I happened to notice recently that the map on my Sportrak Pro seems a bit skewed towards the water... on a trip down Route 101 in OR and northern CA I saw all of the buoys and obstructions, but no highway info. I hit "about" and the basemap installed is "Marine". Is this a mistake on Magellan's part, or does this map come standard for both the Pro and Marine units? I've read that some folks install/uninstall whichever basemap fits their needs, and assume that I can do the same, but is there any reason to? And what could I screw up by trying to change basemaps and failing?

 

-p

 

[edited spelling mitskae ;) ]

Edited by Team GeoSpeedy
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There is a point in the setup menu for my sportrak map that asks whether the unit will be used for marine or land use.

 

You might need to go into setup and find and correct this.

Thanks for the replies! I'll look through the menus tonight and see if perhaps I've been a bit thick headed. I did remember to get the basemap version from the "about" menu , though:

 

BASEMAP: NA Marine - 1.05

Size 9.48meg

Detail Map: Ver 1.

 

Any thoughts?

 

-p

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I just bought a used Sportrak Pro and it has the N.A.Marine-1.05 basemap, just like Team GeoSpeedy describes. Rather than me retracing all the steps of investigation, can you tell me, GeoSpeedy, did you find an answer or solution to the problem? Is the problem a configuration or setup issue that we can change in the Setup menu (it's not that easy, right?)? Does the fix require downloading a terrestrial basemap? Where do we get it? Can it be obtained at no cost? Thanks.

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There's nothing in Magellan's advertising to indicate the Sportrak Pro has a marine map. In fact, everything about its presentation suggests a land map. Here's from the website, and I submit that nothing in that language suggests a marine map. On the contrary, almost all of it suggests a terrestrial map, and a mostly terrestrial use:

 

"the SporTrak Pro features a 9 MB mapping database (North America), 23 MB free memory for downloading street-level maps."

 

"Your SporTrak Pro GPS receiver is an indispensable navigation companion when hiking, biking, boating, hunting, fishing or on any outdoor adventure."

Magellan Sportrak Pro

 

And if that isn't enough, making two products, Pro and Pro Marine, further suggests that the Pro is not intended for marine use and therefor is unlikely to come with a marine map.

 

If what you say is correct, and I certainly am not disputing you, then I wonder if you can point me to any Magellan material that says the marine map is what comes with the Sportrak Pro.

 

What would be the point in a marine map? This receiver is pitched directly at geocachers, and recreational users, all of whom do most of their thing on land. In all of history and myth, I can think of only one person who might be interested in geocaching on water, but then, He predates the GPS system by a couple of thousand years, and probably knows where all the caches are anyway.

 

My questions: can I replace the marine map with a useful terrestrial map? can I do so at little cost? where do I find the map and instructions?

 

Thanks very much.

Edited by Gare Du Nord
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... can I replace the marine map with a useful terrestrial map? can I do so at little cost? where do I find the map and instructions?

 

Yes and no.

 

Technically, you can replace the basemap in your SporTrak Pro with any of the basemaps from the 330, Merdian, or SporTrak lines. The MAGUP software included with the GPS (and with every version of MapSend) lets you do this.

 

BUT ... Magellan USED to make the basemaps available for download, and you phone them and ask for a firmware CD that had a library of all the available basemaps. Buit they stopped that a couple of years ago. They also contacted websites and vendors who had the basemaps available for download and made them stop - citing copyright reasons. So the basemaps are hard to find.

 

The next quibble is the word "USEFUL." The "marine" basemap in the SporTrak Pro is no more or less useful than some supposed "terrestrial" basemap. For a given size of basemap, you're going to get about the same amount of land detail - which is not very much. Major roads, railways, cities, and landmarks. That's about it for ANY of Magellan's basemaps.

 

If you want USEFUL detail (the little streets in your hometown), you have to buy MapSend in some version and make detailed maps of your specific area.

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