sopris Posted March 25, 2003 Share Posted March 25, 2003 I'm a new, one week old gps'r. I have a Garmin Vista with the Mapsource US Topo. So far, I've found 3 geocaches by using the waypoints. Geocaching if fun, but not my original purpose for buying the gps. With out doubt I will continue to geocache, finding and doing new caches. My gpsr is for off pavement use. So here's what I see with my gps and mapsource and what I want to do with my gps. I see with the Vista, if I always knew where I wanted to go before hand, it is theoretically possible to always plot my course. And from my reading of the Vista manual, more information is supplied on how to do this than anything else. Mapsource's degree of detail is also weak. I live in western Colorado (the mountains) and play very regularly in SE Utah (the desert). I'm used to using 7.5' maps which show the real contours of the areas I'm in. From what I've read, the National Geographic State series topos are the way to go, I'll be purchasing the Colorado and Utah maps soon. I mountain bike, snowshoe and kayak. I wanted my gps to mark my trails as I go. Not to premark waypoints as routes before I go. Some of the mountain bike trails are 'established' bike routes, some are patching multiple unknown trails together. The snowshoe routes are not pre-established routes at all, but ramblings through the mountains. I've tracked and downloaded one snowshoe route in Colorado and one mtn. bike route in Utah. The tracks showed elasped time per point, speed , elevation, total mileage, total elevation. When I map these all I can print are the points (or total route) and the elevation. Are the other data field options available on the map, navigation, altimeter trip computer pages not saved. Are they only visible 'at the moment' they occur? Your input please. How can you be lost, if you have no particular place to be? Quote Link to comment
+apersson850 Posted March 25, 2003 Share Posted March 25, 2003 You are right about what is saved in the tracks. Anders Quote Link to comment
+SpongeRob Posted March 25, 2003 Share Posted March 25, 2003 If youre used to topo maps you can download USAPhoto maps and plot the waypoints you want. You can also create custom maps (helps you after the fact) for areas that you plan to travel. I got into this as I also found the mapsource maps very weak. More information can be found here. USAPhotoMaps (has both ariel and topo maps) - Rob -- SpongeRob rwmech@keenpeople.com www.keenpeople.com WPWU826 Cache'n Retrievers Quote Link to comment
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