Getting the best out of an old Garmin GPS

Product/Skill: GPS/Navigation/Maps   Interest: Mountaineering

I have a Garmin Etrex Vista with a Black & White display, it’s getting on for about 4 years old but not a bad bit of kit, does the job very adequately when required. Data wise I think I have got the best out of it I can, considering it’s now limited 24mb memory.

I have loaded it with 3 levels of info.
Level 1 – Waypoints, spot heights & tracks of various well trodden routes, adding particular turns or retreats that I may need to locate quickly in bad weather.
Level 2 – A General base map of roads and place names
Level 3 – Contour maps of selected areas, i.e. Wales & Lakes area

By selecting certain downloads available free from the internet you can build up quite an impressive database that uses only 23mb of memory.

You need a reasonably up to date PC, but Pentium 3 will do it, and a USB or Serial to Garmin cable. try Maplins.
Level 1 – This info is basically up to you to input or download waypoints via mapsource software, or manually onto the unit on location.

Level 2 - By going to some of the free internet sites you can download a reasonably good but basic osm (open street map), try http://mapcenter.cgpsmapper.com./ Note these are not like your in car GPS maps. A lot of them are created by enthusiasts and there can be some errors. But for the Etrex Vista I have found them very useful. I have found quite a good osm map of the UK about 39mb in total, to big for my Etrex Vista in one block, However, when you upload it to the GPS it can be broken down to the areas mentioned You can cover most of western and central England using only 10mb of memory. Unfortunately I have since lost the web link for this osm map, but I could mail it to anyone if interested.

Level 3 – Contour Maps are available from the Scottish Mountaineering Club website
http://www.smc.org.uk/ContourMaps.htm. This site is very informative.
For most of Mid Wales I selected 6.95mb
V2N52 14203052.img Shropshire
V2N52 14204052.img Llandrindod Wells
V2N52 14205052.img Cardigan Bay

The final bit of North Wales 1.81mb
V2N53 14204053.img Rhyl
V2N53 14205053.img Anglesey

For the Lakes I selected 4.42mb
V2N54 14203054.img East Lake District
V2N54 14204054.img West Lake District

In total, the above areas use about 14mb of memory space, add the 10mb of memory required by the osm maps and this takes you to the 24mb limit of the Vista.

Info on the website states the contour maps were very cleverly augmented from NASA mapping data. Version 13 of the contour maps was a bit clunky and the contour’ had sharp edges but was still very useful. The version 14 on the website is much smoother.

I used the ‘sendmap20’ software to transfer info from the PC to the GPS, do a Google search and you should find plenty of sites where it is available as a free download. Check that you have your GPS set up to receive the standard mapping .img data files. I found it easier to get a connection between your PC and GPS If you try to test the com port connections manually rather than setting it on auto.

In all this additional info makes my old Vista a very effective tool for navigation, giving me the basic info I need, the contour maps especially give topographic dynamics to what was previously a boring graphic display. Thanks SMC

I found it reasonably easy upload the data to the Etrex Vista, but it does a bit of trial and error. Please don’t blame me if it screws up your Garmin.

Dave Storey who created the contour maps for the SMC site says ‘I have no problem if people want to use the contour data, although acknowledgement of the source would be nice’.
Thanks Dave

0   0   Please log in to vote!