[Lisa Tinkley]

I’m thinking of entering the 21st century and buying a GPS and PLB.
What are the current recommendations?

I will be taking a map with me still – but a GPS seems like a sensible addition.
The PLB is a no-brainer really.

I’d really be interested to see which models were the ones most popular with club members.
What are people’s likes and dislikes and what are the features to look out for.
Plus how do you ensure your GPS batteries last long enough for a Christmas tramp over a number of days.

Any feedback and info would be great.
Thanks

[Pete]

All PLB’s on sale in New Zealand are tested to the same standard so you really chose on either GPS or non GPS versions and your choice of colour – as long as its yellow!

On the GPS front, most people in the club seem to have Garmins. They have refreshed their models in the past 6 months but the previous range had a “minimum” life of 17 hours. If you are just going to switch it on once in a while to confirm a location or height, then battery life for a multiday trip should be fine. If you have a particular model your interested in, someone might have one for you to try out too.

[MikeM]

Hi Lisa.

I agree with everything Pete said. In the PLB side, remember you can also consider things like SPOT and inReach beacons, which aren’t so much designed for emergencies as for sending regular position messages through the less-reliable satphone network to someone monitoring at home about where you are. These things have SoS-style buttons, but it’s not a primary part of the design and the tech behind them is different. The systems also aren’t officially monitored by NZ emergency services, so you’re usually relying on a message getting out from the specific place where you press the button, and then a company in a place like Texas getting the message to NZ emergency services. This will happen, but there could potentially be issues I guess. If it’s one or the other then personally I think I’d go for a regular PLB which is designed specifically for emergencies, but opinions vary lots depending on what people want. Ask Craig McG in the club if you want a very experienced opinion about SPOT.

On the GPS side, I only know about Garmin models but they’re not exclusive if you’re shopping around. Good starting points are their GPSMAP62 line (formerly GPSMAP60) and their eTrex line, which has also been revamped. Garmin also makes fancy stuff with touch screens and cheap built-in cameras and wireless exchanges of stuff, which others would know more about than I do. Personally I think if I can’t operate it wearing gloves in a blizzard, I’d rather have something else, but again it really depends on what you plan to use it for.

The models in the GPSMAP60/GPSMAP62 and eTrex lines are generally equivalent in most respects, except GPSMAP62 has a larger screen at the cost of weighing more and a slightly shorter battery life, whereas the eTrex line has a slightly smaller screen and weighs less and tends to have a longer battery life. The battery life is probably only a concern if you plan to leave it switched on for long durations, though. I do, because I like to record tracks of where I’ve been, so I prefer an eTrex as a better trade-off for me, but plenty of people prefer the alternative.

As a side note, the GPSMAP62 models also look like they have a much bigger antenna than the eTrex models which confuses some people. Garmin still makes them with a very old case design, probably so as not to alienate existing customers by providing something that looks completely different, but in my experience this makes no difference. Tubular antennas were apparently a very substantial improvement over flat-base antennas back in the early days of low-sensitivity, because they could be held in a much wider range of orientations and continue to receive a signal, but with the more highly sensitive antennas, which virtually every dedicated GPS unit has these days, there’s little or no effective difference.

For battery life I routinely leave my eTrex 30 in the top of a pack and it happily tracks away for an entire weekend keeping a signal without issues. Usually one set of AA 2500mAh rechargeable batteries gets through a weekend (if switched off overnight), but I’d generally carry a spare set just in case. They’ll last longer with Lithium batteries, but I don’t think you can get rechargeable lithium AA batteries. On a 6-7 day Christmas trip I think I got by with 2 sets of AA batteries, but to be fair a couple of days of that was waiting for a stream to go down. Generally you can get on the order of 25-30 continuous hours of of these things if you adjust all the settings for minimal power usage, though, with only occasional stops to check the display. If you only plan to switch it on intermittently in the first place, there’s little to worry about. (I’d always take a spare pair of batteries as general good practice, though.)

Have fun.
Mike.

[MikeM]

Oh, and go to a specialist retailer if you’re not sure of exactly what you want. IMHO with this kind of stuff, they’re worth their weight in gold.

I bought my first eTrex Vista HCx from this guy who imports and sells GPSs and PLBs from his business in Christchurch. http://www.kiwigps.co.nz/ As is probably also the case with several other retailers, he’s brilliant, very actively helpful, full of information about GPSs, and has an awesome reputation amongst everyone I’ve met who’s dealt with him.

[Ian]

Hi Lisa,
I have a Garmin 62s and am happy with it. I used to carry a spare pair of AAs for weekend tramps but don’t anymore as one pair easily lasts for a couple of days walking if you turn it off at night.
The newer GPSs such as the 62 series can get a signal where older models couldn’t.
One thing to consider is what maps are available. Garmin like people to buy their own maps so have restrictions on loading on other (free) maps. That aside you can still load in one Topo50 map sheet as what they call a “custom map” which is just a Google Earth kmz file. These can be downloaded for free from http://www.topomap.co.nz/
The problem is if your tramp crosses a number of sheets as you can only have one file displayed on the gps at a time. There’s software to make your own kmz files if you’re keen.

Cheers,
Ian.

[Dave Collett]

Ah, that’s great about the Topo50’s Ian! Glad someone sorted it out!
I can vouch for the GPSMap 62s too. I’m using it on a year-long cycle tour and I get about 2.5 days of riding and navigating- following a route (so say 20hrs) out of a single set of rechargeable NiMH AA’s. That’d be enough for a weekend tramp..

I bought mine through REI in the states- a bit cheaper there, and got it posted over through a friend.. Not sure what the warranty stuff would be like, but Garmin products seem relatively bombproof to me..

[MikeM]

Garmin products seem relatively bombproof to me..

The hand-held units are rated IPX7, which translates to being immersible in up to a metre in water. This is really good if you happen to be in rivers a bit, but even just out in the rain it’s pretty good because you shouldn’t need to worry about water damage. If you buy a new one, it’s not a bad idea to verify there aren’t any leaks by switching it on, dunking it in the kitchen sink for a while straight after purchase and making sure it keeps working flawlessly underwater. If it doesn’t stand up to that, the retailer will need to fix or replace it under warranty with one that works properly. Just make sure it’s one of the models with this rating before testing it. (I told the retailer I was planning to do this when I bought my latest one, just to ensure things would go smoothly if I brought it back.)

[Pete]

I got my UK purchased Garmin replaced at 11 months after one of the buttons decided to stop working. It needed a trip across the ditch to be replaced but I had proof of purchase, and they were happy to deal with the unit bought out of country.

Speaking of being bomb proof, even when my model has been filled with water, a day in the hot water cupboard got it back to full working order too.

[Dave Collett]

Just had a play with the KMZ’s Ian mentioned.. It is possible to merge multiple sheets using Google Earth.
Open the files in GE, create a folder and move both of the sheets to it. Then right-click on the folder and use ‘Save Place As’ to save the folder out as a KMZ file.
I haven’t tried it on the actual GPS unit, but it loads into BaseCamp – the Garmin software.

Not sure how many sheets you could merge together- sounds like the newer receivers would obviously be able to cope with bigger files. Don’t think it could cope with a single file of the Tararua’s for instance..

Internet’s too slow in Laos for me to download a heap and try it out!

[Dave Collett]

Hi again..
I’ve been having a play with these files.. Looks like Garmin’s put an arbitrary limit on how big the files are, and you can’t merge two whole sheets together..
I’ve gone through and made some custom extents for some areas that might be of interest to people. They fit restrictions.

The first covers the Wellington region, up to Plimmerton and east to cover most of the Rimutakas (but not quite Climie). It can be downloaded here.

The second covers most of the Tararuas- from the Rimutaka Road as the southern boundary, the Akatawara Road in the West and north to about Herepai/Ohau Gorge. Download it here.

Hope these are of use to people. I’ve also made some for the Dunedin area, and Stewart Island (although the cropping is hard there)..

As an indication of the file limits- the downloads from Topomap.co.nz have 54 embedded images each (4x4km each), but the Garmin limit is 100 images. So you should be able to fit the equivalent of ~1.85 Topo50 sheets into a file at a time..

[Ian]

Good job Dave
Didn’t think about combining in Google Earth, was going to try and do something in ogr one of these days.

Previously I have loaded in two smallish maps of the same area- a Topo250 and a Topo50. When zoomed out a bit could see the 250k, and zooming in switches over to the 50k. I’m guessing the combined tile count would have to be under the 100 limit as sometimes it didn’t work when trying to quickly bung maps on the gps. In practice the 250k map isn’t that useful though.

Cheers,
Ian.

[MikeM]

Gavin Harriss, who runs http://www.topomap.co.nz was looking for feedback some time ago from people who were using the KMZ files on GPS devices, so if you guys think there could be some useful changes to the specifics of what the website generates then I expect he’d be keen to hear from you.

[MikeM]

Gavin Harriss, who runs http://www.topomap.co.nz was looking for feedback some time ago from people who were using the KMZ files on GPS devices, so if you guys think there could be some useful changes to the specifics of what the website generates then I expect he’d be keen to hear from you.

[Dave Collett]

Yeah, I’m not sure how much use the maps will actually be. I’ve seen some pretty decent vector representations on the Garmins. Maybe if the rasters were at a larger scale- 1:10k or something. Hmmm.

And yep, Mike, I was going to send some ideas through to Gavin, just needed to have another look at the limitations to see if I could give him some useful ideas around resolutions etc. Jeez it’s a pain that Garmin put such arbitrary limits on it. Their new models (the Montana) can take 500 images which would be sweet- 9 full sheets! Mmmmm.
At least this way it’s possible to make quite large single maps to view in BaseCamp even if you can’t load them onto the unit.

[Dave Collett]

And if anyone’s heading to Stewart Island, this file covers the Northwest and Southern Circuits..

[Dave Collett]

And if you’re heading to Dunedin here’s one that covers the peninsula, most of the Silverpeaks and the surrounding area..

[nztopomap]

For anyone that has a little technical know-how and wants to create their own Garmin Cutom Map KMZ files…

The excellent GDAL utilities should allow you to combine multiple GeoTIFF’s in to a single image. I guess(!) gdal_merge is probably what you’ll want. I haven’t needed to do this myself yet, but you seem to be able to do most things you’d want with GDAL.

For those who struggle to get GDAL setup on their PC, take a look at OSGeo4W – simplified the process somewhat I found!

Then to spit out your own Garmin Custom Map KMZ files have a play with OkMap – it’ll make sure the output plays nicely with your Gamin device.

Hope that helps you have a play

Gavin

[Craig]

Re: Battery Life
I occasionally go for some little bicycle rides, during which I have found I can get up to 50 hours on an Etrex30 (with ANT+ cadence & HR monitor operating) when using overpriced lithium batteries. For long tramps and not using the ANT+ wireless receiver there seems ample room to squeeze more battery life out of it.

Re: Maps
I have used OSM, nzopengps, 10m vectors and the KMZs from topmap.co.nz. With new Garmins you can load multiple maps, and select which mapset (or mapsets) to use on the device. This makes it easy to use different mapsets for different purposes without too much of an issue.

While being no technophobe, not knowing which of the tens (or hundreds?) of utilities that exist for manipulating electronic map files, I heavily favour mapsets that work with a simple copy & paste into the correct directory on the Garmin device rather than spending countless hours on finding which tool does which tricks and building the perfect mapset. With that in mind, I have found nzopengps best, easiest to install & most up to date for street nav and cycling; and the topmap.co.nz KMZ’s provide the most easy to drive detail for tramping.

I tried topmap.co.nz KMZ files for the first time this past weekend. (Thanks Gavin) It was so easy and useful, it felt like I was cheating on my map & compass.

[nztopomap]

Hi Craig, great to hear they’re working well for you as-is. Cheers

[Lisa Tinkley]

Wow – such a lot of good advice and some interesting info on the topic too.

Following the tip to contact http://www.kiwigps.co.nz, we’ve ended up getting a Garmin eTrex 20 which has open source maps that seem to meet our requirements.

On the plb front I’ve ended up with the minute ACR ResQLink (130g)

So all sorted for the 5 passes tramp now
Especially as I’ve just read Paul and Sharon’s trip write-up in the journal

Thanks to you all for the feedback
and MERRY CHRISTMAS – hope to see some of you out in the hills

[Ludd]

Jeez, these days you apparently need a PhD in astrophysics and an entire truckload of incomprehensible custom computery just to go out into the hills. I wonder how those old jokers featured in those From The Archives stories in the last few Journals ever managed.

Be careful on the Five Passes Trip – there will probably be so many loopies wandering around with their eyes so firmly planted on their GPS readouts they’ll be bumping right into you (if they’re not tripping over their own bootlaces or wandering straight off the bluffs).

[Dave]

Yup- all technology is bad. In fact those guys in those From The Archives stories probably didn’t have 1:50,000 Topo maps either- maybe you should leave those at home too?

Or Goretex or anything made of plastics. Have fun with that.

[nztopomap]

LOL – This is getting fun!

[MikeM]

Probably only because they didn’t have computers to ask questions about all this stuff on internetty forums.

People have been playing with new technology in the hills for more than a century, though. I guess the important thing is to not rely on stuff unrealistically. I really like the electronic track records that I get from my GPS, especially after I get back. Info from it is sometimes useful reinforcement for decision making, but I think I’d feel very uncomfortable relying on it actually available working at any critical time.

[Dave Collett]

It is getting interesting..

In reality I don’t use my GPS for navigation in the hills, but it is nice to have. I really use it to map my trips and photos: http://maps.smugmug.com/?feedType=geoUser&Data=dc-onabike

[Pete g]

Hi,

just wondering about a follow up to this – how did the garmin 20 work out? My etrex H gave up the ghost last week and need something in the next couple of days…

Thanks

Pete

[Author]

Posts