Do You Use Your Gps For Work?

[+Milbank]

I have started to use my gps for work.

I do appliance repair and refrigeration work and have been finding it very hand when I get out in the rural area's.

 

Do you use your gps for work?

What kind of work?

[Overland1]

Not for my full-time job, but as an EMT with the local FD/EMS agency, it has come in handy. Several years ago (when I had an ICOM GP-2), I responded to a motorcycle vs. pickup truck crash. On arrival, I handed the GPS to one of the other guys so he could relay its lat/long reading to dispatch. Back then, it took several minutes to get a solid reading; by the time the first assessment and IV's were in place, he had spoken with dispatch and the helicopter had coordinates for a landing zone.

[+GOT GPS?]

would not help me to find wich aisle to put the Hunt's Tomato Sauce, or what aisle to put The garbage bags and Reynolds Wrap.

[Bobthearch]

Yes. While a professional archaeologist I used the GPS often to plot newly-found archaeological sites.

 

-Bob

[+Timpat]

Yes. I work in the GIS (Geographic Information Sytem) and surveying fields and use my Garmin Map60C, and Legend, to do all sorts of GPS tasks. For example in GIS I record track logs to create maps of bike/hike trails, or to roughly determine extents of areas of interest. In surveying I locate USGS benchmarks or other control points I need to set my instrument on. I've actually located several dozen sanitary sewer manholes under a foot of snow in winter in upstate New York using my 60C for an engineering study. This helped immensely in saving time and moved the project ahead by 3 days.

[+Crystal Sound]

I use my GPS with MS Streets & Trips for navigation to some of my employers utility substations, as most are located in very out-of-the-way locations. (The utility covers multiple states, and I'm often traveling to remote areas.)

 

We also use GPS receivers to sync the time of day clocks of various equipment. Some of which assists in very precise measurement of power flows. Not as much fun as geocaching, admittedly.

[+TotemLake]

I use mine to help find my customers in neighborhoods I'm not familiar with. Also used it to find some obscure vendors for specialized equipment.

[+Lazyboy & Mitey Mite]

I suppose I could use it to find dive sites.

 

But it wouldn't work underwater

[+Timpat]

Edit: Sorry, missed cued.

Edited November 2, 2004 by Timpat

[tholt4]

Working at a bank, I use the area calculation feature of my Legend to get an idea of how large a piece of property is when doing in-house appraisals. It's amazing what some people think an acre is.

[CenTexDodger]

I use mine to find the best routes and driving directions to my employees areas. I use it so much like this that I should have gotten a quest, but I wanted one for outdoor use as well so I got the 60cs

[+mtnbiker1096]

I use my legend to land life flight helicopters, locate lost people, find back country places, map accident scene's and train P.O's (probationary officers) on orientation to the county.

[+ZackJones]

I only get to use mine for work related tasks when traveling to other corporate offices. Afterall I need to know how to get from the airport to the office. If there happens to be a cache along the way that's a nice bonus

 

Zack

[+JT & PJ Cole]

I have started using my GPS to determine distance, bearing and elevation in setting up wireless networking sites thousands of feet apart. This helps get the high gain directional antennas pointed at each other.

[BilgeRat]

Sure do! I run the engine room on a towboat on the Lower Mississippi. We do our crew changes by van, and we keep a database of about 65 waypoints (growing) of boat ramps and fleet offices between New Orleans and Cairo, Illinois. This one is not untypical- N34.25783, W90.83836 (Fair Landing)It saves a lot of backtracking and searching on dirt roads and cotton fields in the rural South. I recently purchased a 60c; I also use it with an external antenna to see exactly where we are. Happiness is never having to ask the pilothouse where we are---

Tom

[+NightPilot]

I don't usually use mine, but I use one of my employer's all the time. We use IFR-certified GPS receivers installed in our helicopters for navigation offshore, and over land. We used LORAN before the GPS system was installed, but have been using GPS for years now, even before SA was turned off.

[+Milbank]

Very interesting jobs you people have...

[+True Grid]

Yep! Nearly every day. I work for a surveying and engineering company and I'm the one that goes out to find control sites, etc. before we send out a crew.

Sometimes the Pacific Northwet weather is rather damp, but the GPS keeps working even when I don't feel like working.

[+we3dements]

Yes I do, I work part time for Domino's Pizza as a driver and I use my Garmin GPSMap 60CS with City Select v6 to autoroute to the address.

[BilgeRat]

NightPilot,

Do you fly to oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico?

Tom

Edited November 3, 2004 by BilgeRat

[tom45123]

I suppose I could use it to find dive sites.

 

But it wouldn't work underwater

yes i do i am a scuba instructor i use my magellan platium for logging dive site in lake erie. it is very useful in finding a wreck out in themiddle of the water with no land marks to go by.

[+Renegade Knight]

Recently I've just figured out that the ability to make a custom map to show the boundary of a project or tract of land would be a gret boon at times in my job.

 

Time to dig up those old threads on how to make cutom Garmin maps.

[+NightPilot]

NightPilot,

Do you fly to oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico?

Guilty. Don't tell anybody, though. My mother thinks I'm a piano player in a bordello on Bourbon Street.

[+Bruce V.]

I work for a telephone company in colorado. I use my GPS V to autoroute my way to unknown customer locations. This is the main reason I bought the GPS.

 

Bruce V.

[BilgeRat]

HMMM, I just finished up two weeks in town. Came back to work at Harahan to a boat in the shipyard with broke gearboxes--- Spent two weeks almost under Huey Long Bridge.

Tom

[+spoggle]

I use mine to find customers when treveling to a new location.

 

Occasionally I use it to find my place of work after a heavy night on the town

[+csims723]

I use my Garmin III plus daily at the Fire Department to land Life Flight Heli's and out side of work to make custom maps of area covered on missing persons searches with my K-9 partner Kylie. How did we do this before GPS's. Boy how we get spoiled quickly.

[+Wadcutter]

Law enforcement. We use GPS everyday. We have GPS mounted in all our squads which is hooked into our in-car computers. All our crash reports are located using lat/long instead of addresses, street names, and mile markers. For manhunts, etc, GPS works great as it gives us the officer's exact location.

[Team Dragoon]

Yep.....Military models hooked right into our Tanks............my sportrack is only out 1 meter compared to the plugger.

[+wolves shepherd]

Hooah!

 

I take my trust GPS12 with me to the field to help me find units, track marches, find my way back to my vehicle, report wildfires in the training area. (Yeah, you call range control and give them a 10-digit grid on a fire and they are impressed!)

 

Someday I hope I'll get a vehicle with a plugger or blueofrce tracker, but for now, and even then, I'll have my handy Garmin with me wherever the mission takes me.

[snowpeke]

I use mine for laying out mechanical logging jobs. First I drive on the exiting roads and mark waypoints for landings [a place that you drag logs to load them] then I walk and mark with flags the middle of the area between the landings. I use a garmin 60c and I like the distance feature of the waypoints always trying to keep the distance under .25 miles. With out the gps you only be guessing the distance.

Scott