Why take a GPS?
 

'How can I simplify and how can I minimize' are the two questions I ask myself when planning for a trip.

I went to purchase a GPS yesterday, however Amazon won't deliver to my address. While searching for a website that will deliver to a military address, I got to thinking.

Why take a GPS?

Most travelers will have papermaps. Getting lost and serendipity are part of the fun. You can ask locals for offroad tracks and fun routes to ride.

You really don't even need a GPS to geotag. One can manually embed photos and be almost as accurate for epic pictures.

The only draw backs are if you use lat/long coordinates provided by other people for repair shops, hotels, camp sites and if you use the GPS for distance/altitude. I suppose geocaching would be more difficult, but adventurers may enjoy the added challenge.

So now, I see a GPS as a $300 hunk of plastic w/ a $50 mount just waiting to get stolen or broken.

What made you decide to take a GPS? Was it because all the ride reports mentioned a GPS or because you truely need a GPS?

There are about a million threads on the GPS vs No GPS debate..

The end result is usually that a GPS is a handy tool to suppliment a good map/compass combo but never a replacement.

I use my GPS all the time and I have no shame about that... I don't like being lost and stressed in foreign cities.. Riding around in circles for hours in the baking heat. For that it's BRILLIANT.

Do you NEED a GPS !! No, of course you don't..

Does it make life easier, less stressful and give you a sense of security ! Yes it does !

Now, a GPS is only as good as it's maps, and if you're travelling outside of Europe, you will have to "aquire" or pay for these and they still will be NO WAY as good or accurate as the western maps.


Get on ebay and look for an older unit. I use a Garmin 2610 which cost £100 and has lasted many overland trips. Crashed, smashed and still gets me where Im going. It does everything a modern Unit does apart from 3D mapping and bluetooth, mp3 etc ! Gimmicky crap anyway.

It will show me hotels,hostels nearby and also petrol stations, toll bridges etc etc. It shows me how far iv come, how far I have to go. It tell me my altitude and detailed long/lat. Very cool to know when you are sitting on the equator..

http://www.touringted.com/_gallery_/...serialNumber=2

My GPS saved my ass when I got lost in Patagonia. I only had enough fuel to get to the next fuel station with no margin for error. When the road forked into 3 tracks which wern't on the map.. It pointed me in the right direction. I can't read a map like a Bomber Command Navigator nor can I be bothered learning (My own failing I know) so it really helps me.

The truth is you don't need a GPS or it's flashy upstart sibling, Sat Nav. Neither do you need a bike - people have been using donkeys for travel for years and if push came to shove you could ditch the computer and use a pencil. In reality these are all decisions you make as to where you're going to pitch things - what do I need, what can I afford etc

Electronic navigation in its various forms hasn't been around that long - I bought my first gps in '98 but I've been been bike touring since '68. Many of my early eurotrips were done with pages ripped from a school atlas and my first trip in Morocco was done without any maps at all, just depending on signposts and asking locals.

GPS and satnav doesn't really change this, it just makes it slightly easier in the same way that upgrading from a donkey to a scooter has made life easier for millions in the third world.

My first gps would just give me lat/lon and once I'd got over being blinded by the technology I started wondering exactly how that would help on a long trip. The obvious way was to navigate as usual by map until I got lost, stop and switch on the gps to get my lat/lon and use that to figure out where I was - a kind of hi-tech version of what years in the scouts had taught me except I wasn't using a back bearing from a church with a spire, it was radio signals from space.

The other use was to be able to tell the rescue services exactly where I'd broken down! - except that the one time I did try it they couldn't use lat/lon data and still wanted to know what road I was on.

My eyes were opened though in about 2002 when I was staying in a campsite in Mauritania. Some other overlanders were sitting at a table with a laptop on which they were displaying an IGN map of another part of Mauri. They were plotting a route through the desert (using something like Ozi Explorer) and explained how plotting waypoints would keep them on the piste and give them a "you are here" moving display. OK, they were in a convoy of 4x4's so running a laptop wasn't the problem it would be on a bike but they did plot a tricky section I was going to do and download the data to my gps.

That gave me 3-4 mile waypoints to follow and made routefinding so much easier - especially when the piste forked and you had no idea which way to go. Again it was nothing I couldn't have done by trial and error but as I'd made quite a number of those over the previous few days, it made a huge difference to my stress levels.

gps
 

It came with the bike :rolleyes: (2nd hand)

But we really like it because it can lead you to nice small backroads, if you put on the "avoid highways and tollroads" button.

But we also take maps.

Can't beat a good map.

But I would take a GPS to help back track to my hotel or some other location I've been. Mine doesn't support international travel very well if not at all. Delorme is way behind Garmin on this.

You may be given a set of coordinates by someone for a place to meet up at. If the GPS doesn't cover the area well, you can still work your way there using it and a map.

Regarding models and price...here in the USA we have pawn shops. You might try some where you're at.

daryl

While wandering aimlessly has its charm, when you need to get somewhere in a major city (hotel, garage/mechanic) the GPS is not only more useful than paper maps, I believe that its safer. I have a Garmin Zumo 660 mounted just behind the windscreen on my VStrom 650 so I can see it without taking my eyes off the road. It gives advance warning of upcoming turns so that you can take your time getting into the correct lane. When you miss a turn it recalculates and immediately gives you an alternate route. Maps don't always tell you things like one-way streets. On the open road I find that it gives a much more accurate speed reading than my speedometer, and the features like "distance to destination" helps me to pace myself along the road. Its has also been helpful in finding gas stations in remote areas. I have maps for North America and Europe and for the time saved and safety aspects, they were well worth the money. It doesn't always give you the optimal route, but I have never failed to get to where I was going. When I wiped out on the remote Dempster Highway in northern Canada and broke my ankle, I was able to give the police (who I called on a satellite phone) the exact GPS coordinates so that they could come and find me. I wouldn't leave home without it.

For me it is simple. Three reasons to own a GPS. The first I have relied on plenty, the second, unlike Ted earlier, I've never needed and hope I never do whilst the third can simply be handy to have:

1. With the appropriate maps and data loaded finding your way around a major foreign, town, city or capital is easy, as is finding your hotel, a garage, etc.
2. Getting yourself out of a sticky/dangerous situation if you are lost in unforgiving terrain
3. Easy exchange of information with other travellers, eg" there is a great hostel/camping site/view/monument etc at coordinate.XXXXX XXXXX"

You'd no doubt manage points 1 and 3 alone, but a GPS makes it a lot easier, and whilst being no guarantee of getting out of situation 2, a GPS tips the odds in your favour.

Those are my reasons for one.

To an extend it also depends on where you are going. The GPS alone (without maps & data) is practically worthless. It gives you two numbers (lat/long) which at best you can write into your diary. Ok, maybe you have a map with a lat/long grid, and if you're lucky it's the same format as your GPS spits out, but that's more academic than useful in most situations.

So, first of all, if you're going to places where there is no (or only bad quality) mapping data, then there's no point in a GPS whatsoever. Now it also happens to be that in many undeveloped places the mapping data is sparse, but so are the major road networks. E.g. there aren't many roads traversing Kazahkstanz, there is only one Karakoram Highway, and you'll find it without any form of navigational device anyways, so for me there the GPS is also next to worthless.

The big advantage in my opinion are builtup or densely populated areas IF you have detailed mapping data. Naturally this is the case in Western Europe and North America, other parts of the world vary. You might want to find a sight, a hotel or a mechanic in a place where you can't read the signs and are busy enough with traffic to not even have time to read them. Even in your home country, it can save you a lot of time getting to a friend's place in a large city that you don't know your way around.

This, plus maybe finding the one and only water well/petrol station on your solo Sahara crossing on which your life depends, for me are the only scenarios in which the cost of a GPS is really justified, and it really makes a difference. Sure it may be nice/gadgety/whatnot in other situations, but so is having a foldable chair if you see what I mean.

So ask yourself where you are going, if you can get good mapping data (and factor in the cost/time of getting in) and what the use will be for you. Don't get it because everyone else seems to have one.

One last but not least: a GPS does not under any circumstances replace a good quality paper map. It's more of an added bonus.

Another thought: whilst I do love having a GPS and making use of it when time is limited, I feel it can deprive you of some of the best experiences when travelling. Yes it's great to directly roll up at the famous site, take your pic and roll on. But if your navigation is too good, you'll stop less, get lost less and in turn meet and ask less people. And to me, that mostly is a bad thing. Meeting people is one of the most fascinating parts of travelling, and you usually find great friends and other nice surprises when you least expect it. Now I'm not saying a GPS repels people, but if your travelling efficiency is too high, you'll simply meet and interact less, reducing the chances of having those wonderful encounters. And it might trick you into high speed travelling, only zooming from waypoint to waypoint, rather than enjoying the journey between them. So take it along, but don't get trapped in its bubble. Just food for thought ...

I don't use a GPS, although I've got one at home waiting for me, safe in its cute little box.

In Europe or North America the GPS advantages are clear....but then again, it's easy to find good paper maps and easy to ask directions. The times I've really craved a GPS were at night in Italian cities looking for specific hostels--at such times a GPS could've saved me hours of frustration and irritation.

In places without good mapping, as others have said, the GPS advantages come into play only if you've collected good information from other travelers. If so, you can follow their tracks, and if that corresponds to having a good time for you, so be it. If you don't have tracks....well, I've now followed a couple of GPS users through big Latin American cities, and without adequate mapping it's a lot easier (and more fun) to just ask locals for directions every couple of blocks.

There is something just a bit odd about heavily-laden overland bikers--who already look like recent arrivals from another planet--riding around fascinating foreign countries with eyeballs glued to a wee little screen mounted to handlebars. Even when functional, I think this detracts from the essential Be Here Now experience. But maybe that's just me.

Mark

This pretty much sums it up for me as well. I actually enjoy getting lost and stopping every few blocks to ask for directions. In Xela, Guatemala I asked for directions and the fellow happened to be the Guatemala BMW Club president. On 4 orther occasions locals with various bikes simply volunteered to lead me out of the city for nothing but a smile and a thank you in return. Now how cool is that?

But I do agree that a GPS might be useful in certain situations, especially when it starts getting dark and you need to get somewhere without getting lost.

Anyway, we all managed quite well before the invention of this technology. But to each her own.

...Michelle
www.scrabblebiker.com

A GPS can be quite handy even if you don't have GPS-maps for the area.

With simple navigationskills you can find your position on a map, this is not necessarily easy to do the "old way" when you travel in a desert where a (paper)map says there are no road or there are more tracks then your map shows.

Some people will say that knowing your position on a map only has academic interest, but I don't agree. If you know where you are on a paper-map you can figure out distance and bearing to your destination (or viapoint) and make a waypoint. If you select to go to the waypoint(s) in offroadmode the GPS will update bearing and distance as you go.
Even with the big-scale Michelinmaps for Africa this works nice.

Another thing is the backtrack-feature if/when you get lost.

It's easier to use a GPS if you have electronic maps. The coverage is pretty good and it will be better.

For me a GPS (with or without a map) reduces navigation-errors and this reduces the need for extra fuel and water and I'm available to go places which earlier was out of limit for my fuel/water range.

But I always carry a map and a compass and I know how to use it. :cool4:

Another plus for me is the having a log of where you have been together with time stamped photos it really helps me plan another trip and remember the trip better months later.

Wrong device?

I can pick up Garmin E-trex type devices (or plug ins for palm tops) for about the £80 mark in the shops, half that on E-bay. Usually US prices swap £ for $, so cheaper still. No mount required, slot it in the tank bag map pocket. This will give Long/Lat in any part of the world and so gives the option to follow a direct path to that shed full of petrol in the middle of the Gobi when needs must. Leave it in a pannier when the maps are working.

I own and use a TOMTOM rider to solve the "Hotel in Naples at 3 am"/"where's the blokes house who sold me his second hand tyres on e-bay" type problems. It talks to the intercom and is a lot easier to live with than Mapcurse and waypoint generator and unlock codes and wires and....

The fact that these devices don't pop up in the expensive shiney aluminium bits catalogue and won't give the boys at the GS club any form of "satisfaction" is an entirely different debate, they do seem locked in expensive ten year old ideas about needing a Garmin and shiney mount. You won't find me more than 100 miles from home without a GPS, but which one depends what you are doing and why, just like you select your other gear.

Andy

From the king of bling: Touratech Webshop - Not Garmin

Less stress and security. I'll buy that for a dollar.

I can see it being very helpful in some scenarios. Crossing the Sahara, trying to find a hostel in Cusco...

Markharf touched on what I want to avoid. The overland biker with more gear than would fit in the bed of a pick-up giving full attention to the blue tooth speaker linked to a GPS...

Thanks for suggesting the Garmin Trex. I'll have to look in to that and swing through a few pawn shops/online markets for used models.

First thing first, is a few shake down rides in unfamiliar areas to get a feel for relying soley on papermaps.

Sounds like a plan!

Before I had a GPS, I wrote the directions on the windshield of my bike using a whiteboard marker. Then used an old sock to erase them. Kinda like a poor-mans heads up display.

I might write:

RT S Hwy 34
LT N Hwy 55
RT CR-5316

daryl

ha! That I can appreciate.:clap:

I agree with alot of the points raised here, but find it funny that some think that a GPS takes the "adventure" out of travelling...I find that many of my best rides have been made possible by the GPS: basically every morning I take out my paper maps (gotta have them!), pick out a destination and a couple of way points that take me off the beaten path, set the GPS to "shortest route", and off I go. The GPS has taken me down many of tiny roads that I probably would never have taken otherwise, because they didn't look like they go anywhere. And I prefer to keep moving rather than stopping to look at a map every 10 minutes. Finally, in many cases, having a GPS is no guarantee that you won't get lost, because the maps are a bit squirelly--you always have to stay on your toes.

It works!

Whatever you decide to do or take, falls under 'Riding Your Own Ride!' Find out what works for you and stick to your guns.

You can't beat a good map for sitting down at the end of the day with people to talk about where your've been and where your going. It gives you a much larger picture, no pun intended, of your goals.

daryl

It all depends on what digital maps are available for your area.
Paper maps are fine but how many paper maps can you carry ?
The garmin 60cx and 76cx both can hold all of the US and Canada road maps on a 2GB card.

Maps.. to see where and you want to go..

GPS.. to get you there (and back)

Both invaluable..

The people I have met who don't like GPS, have either never used one or have not bothered to learn how to use it correctly..

Never a truer word ever said on this forum !!! :thumbup1:

My good friend bought a garmin Quest, never once looked at the manual, bothered to check or install maps, learn how to use it etc. He had never ever used a GPS before.

He mounted it to his bike and set off around the country. He got completely lost "Because the Garmin didnt tell him where to go" , when he hadnt even told it where he wanted to go !!

He expected it to read his mind, take him down scenic back roads and take it back to his campsite when he got lost without even setting a waypoint or marker.

I think a lot of people expect a GPS to be like a local navigator whispering short cuts and local knowledge into your ear and get very anoyed when it isnt ! It's a navigation aid but useless if you don't bother to learn how it works.

never leave home without it
 

I sort of recognise the "friend" Ted mentions:rofl:. Anyway I now have a Zumo 660. I would not leave home without it as my sense of direction is useless even with maps. As far as I am concerned unless a map has a big X on saying you are here whats the point! You may as well look at a sheet of sandpaper with Sahara written at the top.

I totally understand that most people do not need a satnav and are fortunate that they are intelligent enough to read maps, sadly I do not fall into this catagory:(

PS the garmin quest is the single most useless piece of junk it has ever been my misfortune to purchase. Garmin, sue me if you want it is still utter cr*p but the zumo is great!!!

HAHAHAAH ! I was waiting for you to see this ! :Beach:


The Quest is a nice little piece of kit but yeah your Zumo is nice too :cool4:

I use a Zumo 660 works great, GPS is like if you haven't got one, you don't
know what your missing, but when you get one you think, shit I should of got one years ago !!!!!:thumbup1:

Paul

This year I bought a Garmin 1640 wt.
It could not find my home. (every other device I tried does)
It could not find my friends village.
It does not know many villages in France although it works well in the UK.
After spending near 60 hours downloading updates both here and at my friends house because she has a faster adsl link. It left me with the camera database locked out.
You could easily spend 10 minutes trying to get a destination in as often it spelled it differently to real life and my Michelin maps. Not something I want to do at a crossroads.
so I am back to paper.
I wanted something that would navigate me through towns without putting me on the Peages. The peages will cost less than the annual updates.
So in Two weeks time I am off across France, Italy and Austria to eastern Europe with a £12 map.

What I want is a device that will navigate me to a destination, avoid Peages and recalculate the route if I stray from its preferred route. Without the need for days of online downloads.

Does such a device exist ?

in a word... yes!:smiliex:

(but if you mean you have the Garmin GPSMAP 640 ? - have you switched to automotive mode from marine?)

Every £50 entry level sat nav that you can buy from Halfords will do exactly that. It's exactly what they are built to do.

I'm running TomTom software on a PDA (Mio P550) and it has taken me all over Europe doing exactly that. You start it up and in a minute or so it knows where it is. Tell it where you want to go - you can enter a postcode (I only have the UK postcode database), an address or you can click on a point on the map. It will then calculate a route - either the shortest or the quickest (you choose) and if there are toll roads it will ask you whether you want to use them or not.

If you stray off the route it will recalculate automatically without getting in a strop and with a few free add-ons it'll tell you where just about anything you want is and take you there - stuff like hotels, supermarkets, landmarks etc - including speed cameras. It will do this all over Western Europe, or other places if you have the maps. It cost me £70 for the software (I already had the PDA).

If you decide that the routing function makes things too easy you can switch that bit off and just have the "you are here" moving map bit on the screen. At night or in poor vis you can use that part as a poor mans night vision system. You can see when the sharp bends are coming up on the screen long before you can see things in the headlight.

Biggest reason for me is recording where I have been. I have a Garmin 176C, It has no maps for where I am in Slovakia at the moment.

I use my recorded track for syncing my photos to the map, which is a cool feature. So I have photographic maps as such.

It is also usefull for all the other reasons people say. For me it also useful so I can find out what day it is and what time it is!

Cheers

Dan!

In Valkov

Nope I mean what I say 1640WT satnav.

It may well do that in the UK where postcodes nearly equate to houses. My postcode in France is a 10 mile radius circle.

Tom Tom (and most others) seem to work much better than Garmin.
With the Garmin I mostly had to have the lat/long in order to navigate to somewhere.
for instance my home.. Le Frene 79200 Viennay. you can't find it on a garmin. Neither could I find my friends village 'le gros chataignier' or the small town of 'pussy' in eastern France.
Maybe you can do better ?
How do you obtain update and at what cost ?

My French postcode, 38750, covers the whole town as well! Just to check if I was talking cr*p in my last post I timed how long it took to locate our French address before I started this reply. Navigating to it with the TomTom software took just over 20 secs. It also found both Le Frene and Le Gros Chataignier in a similar time - around 30 secs each.

I've always has a feeling that TomTom was better in Europe and Garmin in the States but thought that while it may have been like that years ago, they must be much of a muchness now. Maybe not.

hmmmm - I am trying to help you but I cannot seem to identify your unit :confused1:....and I just called Garmin UK and they can't either doh. The mystery thickens!

Can you pm me its serial number? then we'll be able to figure out the best/cheapest way for you to get what you need-
Continue in private msg - cheers

While I would certainly keep the map, I think that that doing that kind of trip with only such a map is a real shame, as such maps do not show the smallest roads, which are most interesting to me. On the other hand, the GPS is perfect for directing you to your destination over even the smallest roads, even dirt roads.

I have the Garmin maps and have used them extensively in Germany, Austria, Hungary, France, and Spain. They are certainly not perfect (some towns missing, directing me down a 15km dead-end gravel road, etc.) but I really enjoy riding with them. The only exception was the Garmin map of Morocco, which was a complete waste.

I returned it Bertrand, after spending two weeks online over a period of 6-7 weeks trying to get it to install the maps.

The company 'Satnav easy' were very good about it and i can recommend them. It took five weeks to get any response from Garmin themselves. and they werent any help even then. Satnaveasy took it back without a murmur.
I know I can find my home and the other addresses with a tom tom, but I could not with the Garmin. Of the first 5 places I tried to find, 4 failed. Someone on this forum managed to find a way to find one of those places, but not the other three. I was not trying to trick the machine into failing, was genuinely trying to plan a route. The place it could find was Ouistreham. (ferry port). The place that was tricky (ten minutes to find) was St jean pied de port.

I have deleted the 20GB or so of crap from Garmin and all the correspondence as I dont want to be reminded of it. Butthe model was a 16 or 1340WT 4,3" screen , supposedly with 2010 maps etc pre installed. I have non broadband connection so the downloads if they could actually complete (their server cuts you off after about 10-14 hours) still did not work as the files arrived locked and Garmin just kept telling me to spend another day or three downloading it again.
I would ONLY now buy a device that came with downloads on media, be it memory stick, dvd or whatever.

Update, I just found the invoice. Sorry wrong model.
It was a Nuivi 765WT FM Uk & Europe serial number 1AH072423

I used to find my way all over Europe with an A5 atlas and just hoped that when I got to a city, someone would know where the address that I wanted was and that I'd understand their directions.
I now have a Zumo 550 and a little Geko201 but still like to look at a paper map and do a little route card just in case the Sat Nav has a hissy-fit. Also, they sometimes take you on some pretty daft routes.

A paper map gives a better overview of the area you are travelling and you might see something near your route that is worth a detour. I find GPS gives me "tunnel vision".

Huh...! Never given it much thought :confused1:. I've been using GPS since the mid '90 in general aviation. Just like flying, you don't depend on it solely. But, it's convenient to have. No more and no less...

The world will keep turning without it too...:biggrin3: