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GPS & Travelling Overseas


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Hi all,

 

I'm very new to geocaching, but I have quickly become addicted! I am from Australia, and I am going to be travelling to the States in May to go on a storm chasing tour. I would love to do a bit of geocaching while on the road, but am trying to work out what the best plan of attack will be. I currently just use an app on my Galaxy to look for caches, but I will be taking an iPhone 4 with me to the states (it's my old phone and it's unlocked for any network so I know I can get a US sim while I'm over there - I've used t-mobile in the past and will probably do that again this year).

 

I am looking at buying a GPS before I go over there (probably the Garmin eTrex 20 after looking at a lot of reviews) - I would love to wait to buy one once I'm in the States because they're so cheap, but I worry that I won't be able to get the knack of it as quick as I want. It seems smarter to buy one in Australia so I have a few weeks to play around with it and just deal with the price difference. I might be able to claim duty-free on my way out of the country anyway, I think?

 

My main concern is that, seeing we'll be chasing storms as and when/where they pop up, we won't have any pre-defined routes planned so I can't really load any caches onto my GPS so it might end up being a bit of a waste. I think I'll only be able to use it when we stop at hotels with wifi, load it up with some nearby caches, and just try to grab any nearby ones before we load up and head off again. In this respect, I imagine my phone will be the best, but I know that t-mobile reception out in the midwest/plains can be pretty cruddy (unfortunately, no other phone networks seem to have plans like t-mobile that are good for people only visiting for a couple of weeks - if you know differently, please let me know! I have a weekend in OKC to sort out my SIM card etc before the tour starts on a Monday.).

 

I don't really know what my question here is... I think I'd just like to hear from people who may have gone on similar trips and might be able to help me out with a plan of attack. I don't know much about GPSes as yet seeing I don't have one so I don't know if there's something I'm missing. Can I load on any caches on-the-go? Or will my best bet be just when I find wi-fi in an area, load them up from my laptop onto my GPS?

 

Thanks for any help (or just reading through my rambling!) :)

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I have a weekend in OKC to sort out my SIM card etc before the tour starts on a Monday.).

 

I don't really know what my question here is... I think I'd just like to hear from people who may have gone on similar trips and might be able to help me out with a plan of attack. I don't know much about GPSes as yet seeing I don't have one so I don't know if there's something I'm missing. Can I load on any caches on-the-go? Or will my best bet be just when I find wi-fi in an area, load them up from my laptop onto my GPS?

 

Thanks for any help (or just reading through my rambling!) :)

Let me get this straight. You are planning to deliberately travel to the middle of Oklahoma (OKC) in the first week of May to try to find a tornado? And they have tours for that now? Sounds like you need a larger routable map on a PC laptop than you will get with any pocketable GPS device.

 

May I suggest that you purchase and download a copy of Delorme Street Atlas 2013 (USA) through the Delorme dot com Tech Support menu? The gps routing will not work in Australia, but will work in the USA when you arrive if you have a compatable GPSr to plug into the USB port of the laptop. Street Atlas will also handily support routing to waypoints (geocaches). Good luck with your trip and any other gps devices that you may purchase as well.

 

http://support.delorme.com/questions.php?questionid=19

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If you can GET cellular coverage (or find WiFi hotspots), your iPhone 4 is still your best bet for on-the-go geocaching.

 

For mapping/routing without cellular coverage, I'd recommend an app like TomTom to Navigon. Once these are loaded, you can get the entire road network loaded and have turn-by-turn navigation without any network connection. You can also get USGS topographical maps loaded offline, there are several programs available for this.. Phil Endecott's "Topo Maps" has been around the longest and works very well, but there are a lot of inexpensive options in that area.

 

As for T-Mobile's coverage being poor in that area, there's a little known trick you can do with an unlocked iPhone to use it inexpensively on AT&T's network. By loading the correct kind of mobile configuration profile, you can trick AT&T's cellular network into treating it like an iPad for data use only. Then you can buy data bundles as you need them; $15/mo for 500MB or $30 for 3GB. More about this kind of configuration can be found at Unlockit.co.nz.

 

Of course, I don't know if AT&T's coverage is any better than T-Mobile, I just wanted to let you know there are other options.

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I think you need to do some homework, a mobile phone is sometimes useless a tornado is nearby.

A Gps might be useless due to heavy clouds and once you are storm chasing you need a GOOD Gps with as good as possible reception

and the best maps available, preferably on a computer and Gps.

 

I always suggest OSM maps and free Android app's, but in this case, I strongly suggest 1 good working Gps you can work with with your eyes closed, not something you fiddled around with for some hours.

 

If for any reason your reception, Gps and Cell fails and you're not sure where to go, you are a danger for the people who have to save you,

making the the possibility for downloading the Pq's the least of the problems.

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It will be 12 years next month since I was in Eastern Oklahoma for the tornado season. My memories of the event were as follows:

 

1) While trying to watch a National Basketball Association playoff game on TV, I called the local TV station and asked if they would please remove the tornado warning overlay on the screen because the diminished size of the display on the screen was getting annoying. The TV station phone answerer stated that they were required by regulation to post the radar reports constantly.

 

2) The next day, as I drove to Dallas, I did pass through an area less than 100 miles south that had been hit by a twister, but I did not stop to ogle as the turnpike was not seriously affected.

 

3) As to topographic maps for the Oklahoma City area, they won't be of much use because the plains are essentially flat. I therefore suggested the cheaper Delorme Street Atlas version over Topo. Even so, the conventional wisdom is that is is better NOT to hide in bar ditches, creek beds, and highway underpasses due to the vortex effect of the wind blowing through what is essentially a nozzle throat.

 

Good luck with the tour from downunder OZ. Incidentally Dorothy and Toto got blown away from Kansas, which is North of Oklahoma as I recall. As to the naming of the Drama, according to one legend when the author had finished writing "The Wizard of OZ" he wondered what the name should be. Thereupon he gazed at his bookshelf and saw a volume of an Encyclopedia set with the range of "O to Z".

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Thanks so much for the replies! I wasn't aware that I could plug in a GPSr into my computer, effectively making it a larger GPS. Is this is a feature that is easy to find in a GPSr? Is there some kind of particular wording in the specs that I need to be looking out for to know that it will be compatible?

 

To elaborate on the storm chasing bit - I won't be using my devices to navigate through storms etc. Mine will be purely for fun, while we have a group of highly experienced chasers guiding us using their own equipment. I get to just sit in the van and watch out the window while they do all the hard stuff! :) If anyone's interested, the company is called Tempest Tours (http://www.tempesttours.com) and I've chased twice with them previously. They're very professional and safety is always their number 1 concern - there will be no driving directly into tornados on our tour. ;)

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