GPS in the Everglades

[Juan Estevez]

Greetings to all, I am planning one or two trips to the Everglades this coming season, I had read Keith site and Connie's blog trying to learn as much as possible about what to expect. I also bought Johnny Molloy book that of course I'll bring with me.

My question is regarding GPS in the backcountry as an aid for navigation, I know that everyone agree that charts and a compass are a must and it should be the primary navigational tool, but; is it is possible to get by with a GPS alone? Has anyone uses it as the primary navigation aid and charts and compass as a backup? I believe Garmin sells maps of the Glades for their GPS, has anyone tried?

Thank you,
Juan

[Keith W]

The free topo maps look like close copies of the Garmin 24K topos. I installed them and compared them to the Garmin product and they are about the same in terms of detail. Some differences are the lack of trails on the free version. The Garmin maps show the Shark River Slough airboat trails, the free version doesn't. Check out the screenshots. Gotta love those 0' elevation lines on the free maps! For the money I'd say they are very worthwhile, and they will probably get better. A small donation to the developer would not be a bad idea to keep the project going.

[vivian]

I plan to send a donation to the developer thank you for mentioning it. I first wanted to make sure that the program was legit and worked well with the Garmin unit I have.

The comparisons are very similar and the free program should work well for my needs.

[yakmaster]

Vivian
The alternatives on the menu weren't popping up for me @ 1st. I think that when I loaded Florida Topo on the GPS, it overwrote garmin topo & bluechart. Once I reloaded all three at the same time, it worked fine & I could swap back & forth.

The Matheson creeks don't show up on any of my products...maybe on the garmin 24k?

[Keith Wellman]

Viv, nice job on those free maps for Garmin. They should be very useful to people.

Keith

[yakmaster]

Just found a freaky site. It may not be new, but it's new to me.

http://www.takitwithme.com/ge2gps.html

You can plot on google earth & transfer it to Garmin.It's not easy (there may be an easier way...I couldn't get the communicator to work) but what I did, was create my route on google earth, clicked on the name of the route & saved it. Then I plugged it into the website in the convert KML to GPX window & clicked show GPX text and copied that text to notepad. I saved that where my garmin data is saved, opened it in mapsource and there was my google route on my garmin!

I know it soulds convoluted (it's not really), but I've been trying to do this for years! Google charges $400 per year for the download capability!

I love plotting on google earth, but up till now, I couldn't take it with me!

Now we can really swap tracks & routes!

[Terry]

All this electronic stuff will be great for the documentation of the Lost Portage.
Think about it - the undocumented, only to be traversed by Alan a few times,
will be surveyed, charted and presented to the world by you guys. It would be
really cool to get the "Lost Portage" printed on charts and brochures. It
awaits the gladesgodeep explorer.
Kind of like the WW originals, Stokes/Allin and Truesdell surveying and
documenting the Nightmare.

[Keith Wellman]

Here is a comment about using a GPS if you are hiking the AT.

"I have a Garmin eTrex summit for five years and have hiked sections of AT for ten years. In addition to hiking on AT, I also climb big mountains once or twice a year.

1. The AT trail is well marked and very easy to follow. If you only hike the AT trail, GPS is an overkill for sure. A good map and a compass are enough.

2. GPS is a life-saver for mountaineering in foul weather or in unfamiliar terrain without any established trails. I will not go to any big mountains without a GPS and a topo map. I encountered a whiteout on Rainier, the visibility dropped to less than 30 ft. We don't know how close we were to the shelter. But after turning on the GPS, get the coordinates, we found our location from reading the topo map, knowing we were about 10 minutes away. In good weather, you can see that shelter when you are 2 hours away."

I'm not sure if this directly relates to your question, Juan, but it clearly supports the idea that a GPS in conjunction w/ a chart can be useful in complex areas.

Keith Wellman

[Juan Estevez]

Thanks for your reply Keith, I did a trial run yesterday with my GPS, I paddled a familiar place for me; from the A1A bridge in Jupiter inlet to Trappers Nelson in the Loxahatchee River. I plotted the route using the Florida map (thanks again Vivian!!!) and I let the GPS guide me the whole time.

Reality check: sometimes you can't follow the GPS arrow, I had a lot of powerboats traffic in my way back, and I had to change my course, the GPS kept pointing the other way telling me that I was off-course but once I got back to the original route it directed me to my final destination. Also the more precise you are entering your waypoints the better.

Also, for the return trip it was a lot easier to tell the GPS to reverse the route than using the "tracback" feature.

Juan

[Juan Estevez]

I forgot, here's a screen shot of my paddle yesterday, the yellow line is the plotted course and the reds were my actual path.
here:

[Keith Wellman]

Juan, THAT is the way to learn how to use a GPS. Well done.

I'm not sure what you mean about the "GPS arrow." These devices are so customizable, that it is possible two users with identical GPSs will be looking at entirely different pages (windows) with entirely different setups and guidence--you would swear they had different brands of GPS.

For my own use when paddling, I only look at the map page and the trip computer page. The map page shows your route and track--the track shows you how far and to which side (left or right) you deviate from your route. The visual track deviation from your route is amazingly accurate (it seems to be accurate to a couple feet.) I set "Guidence Text" to "Never Show," and I turn ON the declutter filter. Both of those can clutter/fill the map page.

Also on the Map Page, Menu->Setup Map->General menu, be sure to have the "Lock on road" turned OFF. If you don't do that, you can get some strange messages as it tries to route you around on the nearest highway, which may be 20 miles away. Personally, on the same General menu, I like to have the Orientation set at "track up," rather than North Up.

Finally, on the Routing Setup, for Guidence Method, pick Off Road.

There are at least another 2 dozen options, most of which do not have much effect, but you can change them. The ones I mention above are the key ones for my back country usage.

Keith

[Juan Estevez]

Thanks for the tips, I will try those setups if my GPS has them. My unit is a Garmin Etrex HC that is intended for hiking but it looks like it can be used for marine as well.

The "arrow page" I found the proper name is Compass Page, I like it 'cause it points where I should go plus it tells me my current speed and ETA, but it looks like it can be modified.

Here's a screen shot of the Compass Page

Regards,
Juan

[Keith Wellman]

Juan, as far as I can tell, Garmin has a basic piece of software for their hand-held units. The difference between the units is largely cosmetic and ease of use. The cheaper units might have a smaller screen and less convenient buttons, BUT, they all have the same inherent capability. The other place Garmin can change the devices is the satellite receiver—that can vary but again it is a matter of degree. Some devices might take longer to lock on to the satellites, but they do lock on. Some may have more or less sensitivity, i.e., do they work well (or not) under trees.

Each of the small info boxes (data fields) can be easily customized. Read your directions for that. For example, on the map page, you can have 0, 2, 3, or 4 data fields. Since I use that page most of the time, my 4 data fields have Speed, Moving Average, Bearing, Heading. If you are following a route, then your Bearing will tell you the degrees you should be heading, and Heading will tell you your actual degrees based on your movement. (This info negates the need to look at the compass page.)

The Trip Computer page is great because you can have 8 data fields. Some of the fields I have on this page are Moving Time, Distance to Next (i.e., next waypoint on your route), and Distance to Destination (i.e., your overall route destination for that day), and Odometer. When I am doing a multiday trip, I like to have the Odometer logging the total miles of the trip. I was in Yellowstone this summer, and we did a couple paddle trips—the odometer indicates that we did a total of 58.44 mi paddling on those trips—neat info for the overall trip.

On that Yellowstone trip, I also had the Elevation as one of the data fields on the Trip Computer page. On our paddling trips, it hovered around 7700 ft. Elevation is not of much use here in S FL, so for paddling here, I change that data field to Off Course—that gives you feet or miles off course from the route you are following.

Happy navigating!

Keith