Outdoor Navigation with GPS tracker

Electronic tracking device designed for outdoor use always assume a straight line as the route between two points. That might be convenient for airplanes and boats, but it doesn’t take into account cliffs, rivers, streams, fences, and other obstacles on land. GPS receivers designed for automobile navigation are a bit smarter, having built-in databases of road information that’s used in suggesting and measuring appropriate routes from Point A to Point B. Depending on the GPS receiver model, other waypoint-related information that you may be able to display includes

 Travel time: The amount of time it will take you to reach the waypoint based on your current speed.

 Compass: A picture of a compass that displays the waypoint direction heading.

 Directional arrow: An arrow that points in the correct direction that you should be heading.

 Navigational hints: A picture of a road that moves as you travel. If the road is centered onscreen, your destination is straight ahead. If the road veers to the right or the left, you need to correct your course so that the road is centered. A symbol associated with the waypoint will grow larger as you get closer to it.

Some GPS receivers come with databases of cities, highways, airports, landmarks, and other geographic features. These are just waypoints stored in memory that you can’t edit or delete to free up memory for new waypoints. Most GPS receivers support mapping. At the very least, a GPS receiver has a simple plot display, a map page that shows waypoints, tracks (see the upcoming section, “Making Tracks”), and your current position. More advanced (and expensive) GPS receivers support more sophisticated maps; your waypoints and tracks appear along with roads, rivers, bodies of water, and whatever built-in features the map has. When the map page is displayed, you can zoom in, zoom out, and move around the map with an onscreen cursor that you control with buttons on the GPS receiver. A map page can be orientated two ways: so either the top of the screen always faces north or the top of the screen faces the direction you’re traveling. Orientating the screen to the north is probably the easiest if you’re used to working with maps, which usually are orientated with their tops to the north.

Following Routes

A route is a course that you’re currently traveling or plan to take. In GPS terms, a route is the course between one or more waypoints (see the following picture). If multiple waypoints are in a route, the course between two waypoints is a leg. A single route can be made up of a number of legs.

Suppose it was a beautiful day, and you went hiking, deciding to make a loop: hike from a parking lot trailhead to a scenic waterfall, go over to a lake for some lunch on a sandy beach, and finally head cross-country until you reach a trail intersection that would take you back to your starting point at the parking lot. You’ve hiked in the area before; in fact, you’ve visited each of your planned destinations and marked them as waypoints in your GPS tracking device . However, you’ve never hiked this particular loop before, so you decide to make a route called LOOP with the following legs that you’ve already previously entered as waypoints:

PRKLOT to WTRFALL

WTRFALL to LAKE

LAKE to TRAILX

TRAILX to PRKLOT

After you create your route, the GPS receiver tells you how long each leg will be and also the total distance of the route. When you activate the route (tell the GPS receiver you’re ready to use it), this information is displayed:

 Direction: The direction you need to travel in order to reach the next waypoint in the route

Distance: How far away the next waypoint is

 Duration: How much time it’s going to take to get there After you reach a waypoint in the route, the GPS receiver automatically starts calculating the information for the next leg. This continues until you reach your final destination.

To route or not to route 

A fair number of GPS receiver owners don’t use routes and find them to be an overrated feature. After all, after you reach your first destination, you can easily select the next location from the waypoint list and be on your way. In addition, if you want to record where you’ve been, just using tracks is much easier. I discuss this in the section, “Making Tracks.” However, here are a couple of situations when you should consider using routes:

1. If you’re traveling to the same location on a regular basis (such as a guide leading clients on established trips).
2.If you’re planning on sharing a route with other GPS receiver owners. Think of this as being a virtual tour guide. Routes can be downloaded and then uploaded to other GPS receivers.
3. If you have a mapping program, you can plan a trip ahead of time and create routes on your computer by simply clicking your mouse where you want to go. When you’re finished, you can upload the route to your GPS receiver.

Using routes is a personal preference. Try creating and using routes to see whether they meet your needs. If they don’t, you can get by with waypoints and tracks.

Don’t confuse a route with an autoroute, which applies to GPS receivers that can provide you with turn-by-turn street directions to a destination you’re driving to. AutoRoute is also the name of a Microsoft European street mapping program. Routes can be created ahead of time or entered while you’re traveling. Like with waypoints, after you create a route, you can delete or edit it, including removing or adding waypoints within legs. Whenever you’re using a route or navigating to a waypoint, you don’t need to leave your GPS receiver on all the time. You can shut it off every now and then to conserve batteries. When you turn the electronic tracking devices back on, just select the waypoint or route that you were using, and the GPS receiver recalculates your present position and gives you updated information about how to reach your destination. The number of routes and the number of waypoints that a route can consist of vary from one GPS receiver to another. Some inexpensive GPS receivers don’t support routes, but a high-end consumer GPS unit might have up to 50 routes with up to 125 waypoints in each route.