Originally Posted By Jimshaw
Lori what kind of PS was it that failed? Curious if it was a phone ap.

I believe in a chaotic world and there are many ways to skin a cat, BUT a GPS is accurate and reliable enough to drop a smart weapon on a hardened target. GPS technology is neither unreliable nor in its infancy and is infact an old and reliable technology.

I too have a 6 in my number, but I was an electronics engineer. I can even operate a BIC lighter single handed!!! So since I feel compelled to give the other side:
The single most important principle in traditional (map and compass) navigation is "NEVER GET LOST" which sounds silly since who would really care where they were unless they were lost? confused but the idea is "if you know where you are and where you want to go, you simply calculate a route and follow it. However if you are lost a compass will do absolutely NOTHING to get you unlost (but looking at a map might), HOWEVER if you have a GPS and its been turned on, IT KNOWS where your truck or waypoint is and it will guide you there.
I look at google earth and maps to plan a trip, then I turn on my GPS and mark my car and carry spare batteries. There is absolutely nothing as comforting when lost in the mountains as a reliable arrow pointing the route and telling you the distance to your vehicle.
Jim


It's actually a very good GPS - but it's electronic and not immune to goofy reception or bad data, any more than anything else with a computer chip is. This is the only time it's done that sort of thing - all other trips it's connected solidly to at least six or more satellites and been at least within a quarter mile of accurate.

And I can get unlost with just a compass and a map - in the right terrain. (Being on flat plains a topo map doesn't help much...) One of the things we learn is how to triangulate based on terrain and we can do so pretty well, given we start out with knowledge of direction of travel and approximate location within a few miles, because the main goal of navigation is to not get lost in the first place and paying attention as you go along to the position of the sun, the surroundings, landmarks, etc is worth the effort.

We have been on a search and rescue op and had two GPS units send two people in different directions after they punched in the SAME UTM COORDINATE. Same Garmin, with the same maps. These are all $500 units, not cheesy junk. Hiking along we navigate with the units and sometimes we can be standing precisely on an intersection of forest service roads, and yet the GPS shows us as being down one or the other road. Is this the GPS or the mapset? Don't know, but it's happened often.

I don't trust googlemaps either, thanks to all the wrong directions it's given me. Nothing like winding up in the wrong suburb with your meeting half an hour away!
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