Phone as satnav

Yeah it's not the main route one needs..have a good idea of that beforehand..it's finding the actual house or hotel where it helps..and more than that getting out of towns  with their cobbled streets and one way systems and ring roads to find your next route...I don't use it on the Jota ..or the XT500 as I quite like going where the road takes me  on those...recall finding Cor Dees museum with soggy maps in the dark...with the aid of a man driving his car smoking a large spliff!
 
nick7 said:
Yeah it's not the main route one needs..have a good idea of that beforehand..it's finding the actual house or hotel where it helps..and more than that getting out of towns  with their cobbled streets and one way systems and ring roads to find your next route...I don't use it on the Jota ..or the XT500 as I quite like going where the road takes me  on those...recall finding Cor Dees museum with soggy maps in the dark...with the aid of a man driving his car smoking a large spliff!
Click to expand...

Going through Amiens in France I became a sat nav convert.. It gets you in the correct lane ahead of time..and you know what's coming.
Going to Mons central using a sat nav in the dark was the worst experience of my life !

There was a left turn off the ring road which you had to go right and then back under the ring road but the sat nav got confused and didn't know there was an underpass which you would disappear down and then not be able to hard right as you should have taken the slip road but at the slip the sat nav was telling me 50 metres to the turn..all in the dark and rain and 5 lanes of French drivers wanting to rush home for a good fight with the Missus !

Then after all that  0.2 KM from the hostel in Mons we were stopped by this...and then after some directions from a Belgian pharmacist who obviously had a wicked sense of humour..we went down the side of the the church Italian job style down big blinking steps...Through a fun fair, carousels the lot....I don't even want to think about it !!

Imagine turning and finding that big pile of wood all lit up in the dark by flood lights ,,,It was memorable.....It was actually a piece of street art celebrating St George and his dragon..The project was scrapped after it caught fire ! I reckon there was ? 100,000 worth of timber there..A bonfire in the sky !!


Joe
 

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Interesting looking up the price of the Garmin map for Aus/NZ.  120 quids!  That compares unfavourably to about 40 for the UK.  Anyway, I downloaded a free 'wiki' map from the NZ Open Street Map Project (like Tracks4Africa and the Open Street maps it only works with Garmin) and  we're good to go.  All fits easily on a micro SD card in the unit.
 
Reggie3cl said:
Interesting looking up the price of the Garmin map for Aus/NZ.  120 quids!  That compares unfavourably to about 40 for the UK.  Anyway, I downloaded a free 'wiki' map from the NZ Open Street Map Project (like Tracks4Africa and the Open Street maps it only works with Garmin) and  we're good to go.  All fits easily on a micro SD card in the unit.
Click to expand...

At that price it may be cheaper to buy a new GPS when you arrive, and sell it before you leave. Depending on the exchange rate...
But the free map seems like a good approach.

cheers,

bazzee
 
Fairly sure when you ppan a route on Google maps ypu can download all the maps required for that route for free. I'll check it out tonight.
 
nick7 said:
Yeah it's not the main route one needs..have a good idea of that beforehand..it's finding the actual house or hotel where it helps..and more than that getting out of towns  with their cobbled streets and one way systems and ring roads to find your next route...I don't use it on the Jota ..or the XT500 as I quite like going where the road takes me  on those...recall finding Cor Dees museum with soggy maps in the dark...with the aid of a man driving his car smoking a large spliff!
Click to expand...

Why was his car smoking a large spliff? Just Holland I guess??
 
At that price it may be cheaper to buy a new GPS when you arrive, and sell it before you leave. Depending on the exchange rate...
But the free map seems like a good approach.
Click to expand...

It all looks good in Base Camp - lots of detail, and probably more on back country trails/huts/camping etc that Garmin would bother with.  Tracks4Africa worked seamlessly with the same GPS unit on the last trip, although it was designed more for, er, tracks so it was a little bit sketchy in some of the cities, but having said that it got us unerringly across Lusaka to our hotel in rush hour so I can't complain.  If your unit has an SD card you can easily switch between O/E Garmin maps and more specialised products anyway.

There is a world wide open source mapping project which can be a useful way of getting up to date maps for obsolete units.  I used the OSM map of the UK in my old Street Pilot and it worked fine.  They do all tend to be for Garmins though - although will work on phones that can run Garmin XT, whatever that is. 
 
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