Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2008 14:11:59 -0400
Reply-To: David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
Subject: Re: GPS recommendations, handheld & incar?
In-Reply-To: <43799C08-58B2-4544-89D5-ABC49B53270C@comcast.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
I was a Corpsman, kinda wish I'd been a QM. I've used LORAN A,
turning the crank to match the pips on the scope and reading off the
time delay. I've used LORAN C a good deal for coastwise piloting,
often in dense fog, and GPS likewise, though it -- civilian-style --
was crap compared to LORAN until they took off the SA. I've used a
sextant, but never in anger except a little bit for piloting.
I have a Garmin GPSMap 76 which I'm quite fond of, but I wish I had a
magnifying setup for the screen. It's mainly a marine unit (18,000
buoys, beacons, lights etc), but its built-in database includes large
roads and US highway exits, along with apparently most towns in the
world. It doesn't give directions. On the water it drives Fugawi
chart software; on the road sometimes I've used Fugawi, which knows
roads but doesn't understand them, and sometimes DeLorme which does
understand them and will recalculate routes on the fly for you. But
it's also quite useful on the road all by itself, even without
detailed street maps, and extremely so on the water even without the
charting software -- its built-in plotting and database of buoys etc.
give an easy comparison with a paper chart and make it unlikely to
enter waypoints incorrectly. The place it totally falls down is
alarms -- it gives a single shy little beep, and there's no output to
drive the klaxon from.
When used with either type of charting software, it functions solely
by providing a stream of positions; all navigation is done by the
PC. Conversely, its own navigation is totally independent of the PC,
so for marine use where it matters, it provides a highly capable
fallback should the PC crash. It communicates by NMEA 0183 which
gives position and satellite info, or by a proprietary Garmin
protocol which doesn't give satellite info but does allow uploading
and downloading of routes, tracks, waypoints and such without reconfiguring.
:-)
d
At 11:39 AM 9/28/2008, Chuck Mathis wrote:
>I'll chime in kind of late on this one. I'm a retired Coast Guard
>Quartermaster that started learning navigation when LORAN C was the up
>and coming thing - I actually learned to use a LORAN A receiver. I
>was also a hot s##t with a sextant. By the time I retired GPS was the
>thing and most of the new guys hadn't heard of LORAN or OMEGA or
>SATNAV. I had a brief exposure to Commander Ivan Luke a navigation
--
David Beierl - Providence RI USA -- http://pws.prserv.net/synergy/Vanagon/
'84 Westy "Dutiful Passage," '85 GL "Poor Relation"
| 
