Complexity made simple

I've always been interested in Global Positioning System (G.P.S.) technology. Especially since the U.S. Military removed that error correction thing. As far as I knew, what GPS units did, was show the longitude and latitude of the unit. I looked around for a cheap one and after reading some reviews decided to get the Garmin Etrex Legend. I picked this one because it had some memory (8mb internal only). The model below this one has only 1 MB, which wouldn't seem much and the model above has a whopping 24mb. The only downside of the Vista model is the price (50% more than the Legend). After playing with the Legend I might be tempted to upgrade for the extra memory one day but 8MB is enough for normal use.

When I purchased the Legend I had never used a GPS before and I never realised what they could do besides the long/lat bit. I had to buy the Metroguide CD Rom, which cost me nearly as much as the GPS unit!! I know there are a lot of costs in developing the system but wow it's expensive. You can download the program from the web but you will never get it to work on your GPS. You need an unlock code from Garmin listing your serial number from the unit. The upside is that you can own two GPS units and use the one software license.

So all GPS pictures I had seen to date were little black lines that are suppose to represent where you have been. With the Metroguide software you will know the street that you are in. You can also put in a house number and it will tell you which end of the street it is in. You can zoom in and out at about twenty different scales (from 1500 miles to 80 feet). If you buy this unit you will NEED the software, otherwise it will be just like all those older style GPSs that show squiggly black lines that mean little.

I bought mine from overseas (for me anyway) that had the US cities Mapsource software. Don't get this confused with the Metroguide; they are like chalk and cheese. I thought I really needed the Australian Mapsource and I can see it might be useful, but when I checked what a sample map looked like on the Internet this is what I found... I live in a city with 300,000 residents. The Mapsource sample map showed one line representing the main road through our city. That was it!!! (Nothing). It would be next to useless navigating with that amount of detail i.e. drive north for 50 miles till you reach that black line?? On the other hand the Metroguide shows everything, even local restaurants and gas stations.

You will need a computer to run the software. The legend comes with a serial cable that allows it to be connected to the computer. The Vista model with its 24mb sounds three times better. The software allows you to select which maps you want to load into the unit. It all depends on the number of roads in a given area. The map of Australia is divided into small and large grids. If I were travelling from Sydney to Melbourne I would just click the maps between those two cities. The whole of Australia is 50 MB. The trip from Sydney to Melbourne would take up my 8 MB of memory but that IS a long way. If I was travelling in the outback, I could almost fit the whole of Australia in the 8 MB, so the cities take all the memory space. You cannot fit memory cards (like MMC) into this unit, which would be so much easier.

Once you know where your next trip is to, all you have to do is type the street name and/or suburb into the Mapsource program on your computer and the spot is marked on the map. You then plot a route and download it to the GPS. I needed to know which way to point my friend's television aerial. After searching the web we found the exact lat/long location of the three closest transmitters. Using the locations in the Mapsource program, i was able to determine the locations, distance and direction in degrees from his house. It is easy to change measurements from imperial to metric.

I ride in a motorcycle club where we need to give reports of where we've been after long rides. With the Garmin Legend all I have to do is upload through the patch lead to my computer. The program shows exactly which streets and towns I've ridden through. I no longer have to try and remember every backwater I rode through and just enjoy the ride instead. The ocean maps would be terrific for finding new fishing spots off the coast. They show the contour of the ocean floor and all the reefs. They are on a different CD (called Blue charts) at additional cost.

I haven't tested the waterproof claims. I don't want to risk getting water into the screen. It's not likely to happen as you are suppose to be able to submerge the unit for an hour down to three feet deep. I would have to send my unit too far for warranty claims so I'll just have to believe Garmin's claims of waterproofness. It's good to know it would take some water or heavy rain at least. It takes AA batteries, which are common, and I use Nickel Metal Hydride batteries.

Another handy feature is the rubber surround. I guess this is for better grip but I use mine in the car and the rubber makes the unit stick into the corner of my windscreen and dashboard. It will sit snugly in there all day without any signs of falling or moving. This is great as it is at eye level and I find myself moving along those black lines. The little arrow on the screen (representing me) refreshes every second and I can see my movements anytime, going over bridges or alongside creeks. The Metroguide even shows bush tracks and waterways that I never knew existed but have driven over for years.

The main criticism I have heard is that the unit needs line of sight with the satellites. I have found if I hold my hand over the top of the unit it loses signal. When it is sitting in the car I can get eight satellites. You need three to get an accurate measurement (down to 5 metres or 15 feet is the normal accuracy obtained by me). My unit works in the house (with concrete tile roof) and I end up with millions of grey lines showing where I have been within the house. The unit indicates your elevation above sea level. The Summit model should be more accurate but the readings I get from this unit are consistent and more than enough for my information.

Another feature is being able to choose what size font you need. I have mine set to large so I don't have to look so hard while driving. It tells you exactly what speed you are doing. It's amazing how different the actual speed is compared to what your car says. There is a compass heading and tripmeter with average speeds and time on the move.

You can set it so the map is always facing north. That would be better when walking, where you move the unit continually. I have mine set so it turns the map into the direction I'm heading. So when i'm driving north then turn 90 degrees into another road, the map on the screen also turns 90 degrees, so I am always heading 'up track'. That way I know whether to turn left or right ahead.

I haven't investigated all of the unit's features yet but it does what I need and far more than I ever thought possible from a tiny handheld GPS unit.