On 2/10/2015 3:26 PM, Mike Lazzari wrote:
I've been updating the trail maps here on the Island for our local Trails Committee
<http://sanjuanislandtrails.org/>
I asked folks to carry a gps when they walked the trails and send me the tracks to help out. There are miles of
trails. Lots of people were eager to show how useful their $800 iThingies were....NOT. This is a typical track from an
iphone. Pretty much useless for my needs. I say thanks and delete them.
http://www.interisland.net/watershed/mike/iphonetrack.jpg
Bottom line: maybe good enough for tagging photos but don't rely on it when you get lost. Don't know about the
dedicated I-gotU gadget.
The I-gotU doesn't seem to me to be much different than the phone. I've found both to be quite accurate in open country
and increasingly erratic as the tree cover gets heavier. Get under huge, heavy redwood forest, with tons of wet wood
between receiver and sky in all directions and they are quite vague.
Are other, dedicated GPS units much better? More sensitive receivers? Any GPS is dependent on getting multiple satellite
signals.
As you suppose, what I have is fine for tagging photos. After all, there is already the inherent dichotomy between
tagging the camera location and the location of the subject. I have a shot of half dome, relatively close looking,
thanks to a super tele, nicely tagged with the camera location - eight miles away. :-)
As to getting lost - or found - I've found the iPhone GPS to be quite useful. YouNeedAMap is a free app with a topo map
of the whole US stored locally. Absolutely wonderful when out of touch with 3GS or higher cell connections. Then the
Google and Apple mapping apps know nothing, but YouNeedAMap can show where the GPS thinks you are. Sure, it's a little
flaky under tree cover, but a little watching and moving around, combined with the contour lines, roads, streams and
trails on the map, can actually be quite useful in locating oneself.
Last Fall, hiking in a heavily overgrown area of Acadia NP, I could see no landmarks, and was a bit unsure just where I
was. Not lost; I could easily retrace the trail I was on, but it was nice to see how far ahead the junction with another
trail was. And indeed, there it was, when I got there. I've found it useful in that way many times.
When I carry a real gps it's easy enough to sync the time with my camera and
tag photos with software as Moose suggests.
The process of time sync and tagging is the same, and relatively easy, whether
the tags are accurate - or not so much. :-)
Locate The Moose
--
What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
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