Why Use a GPS?

 For those not yet familiar with a GPS (Global Positioning System) this article will serve as a quick tutorial and explanation of the equipment and its uses. There are many brands and price ranges of GPS units available, Garmin, Magellan, & TomTom are some of the most popular consumer grade units that can be purchased at your local electronics stores and all of them will give satisfactory results when used as intended. Commercial grade units that are capable of more exact positioning are much more expensive and are really not worth the extra costs for use in navigating roads. Even the lowest cost consumer unit is capable of showing your position within a few yards, where the high-end commercial types can place you within inches.

 The government started the GPS technology in the 1970's to aid in the positioning of troops in unmapped areas, a soldier could take a reading of the coordinates of an object and relate those coordinates to other soldiers and they would know the exact location of that object. The technology grew with the placement of better and more satellites until the accuracy could be used to place a missile in an enemies front door. We saw this technology being used in the film footage from the Desert Storm campaign, a missile could be launched from a hundred miles away and hit within a few inches of its target.

 The satellite system is made up of 24 orbiting satellites around our planet, 12,000 miles above us, at any one time there will be several satellites in the "view" of your GPS unit, the more satellites your unit can receive signals from the more accurate its locational capabilities.
 Here's more info from one of the leading manufacturers http://www8.garmin.com/aboutGPS/

 This technology was reserved for only military use until the 1980's when President Clinton signed a bill releasing the technology to the public, then GPS units became available on a widely used basis. The early units were only capable of reading your location to within several hundred feet because the highly accurate technology was still regarded as military secret. Then in the late 1990's the WASS (Wide Area Augmentation System) was released for public use and greatly improved the accuracy of consumer units that were capable of reading these WASS signals.

 So, why use a GPS?  Well, they're fun to use to map out trips and plan vacation routes that can get you where you want to go without having to unfold a map. They're accurate to within a few feet and can be use for "geocaching", a new form of hide-and-seek where people bury items and give clues to the coordinates and anyone with a GPS unit can search for the treasure. Another reason is its hard to get lost with one, you can click your "home" destination and it will calculate the best route to get you back to your home. You will find that using a GPS will open up new roads and sites within your own area that you may have never found without one. I have used one for about eight years to aid in my mapping for the county and local towns. By attaching a GPS to a laptop computer you can drive new roads and log in way-points for intersections, houses or anything that needs to have a coordinate on a map. The information is then converted to the map units you are working with and downloaded into a mapping program and the new information is saved to your map. I have used a Garmin E-Trex for this with great results and found that my accuracy is within 15 feet on average which is more accurate than any current maps created via transit measurements.

 I currently have a Garmin ZUMO-450, this model made for motorcycle use is waterproof and shock resistant with its 3 1/2" diagonal LCD touch-screen and MP3 capabilities you can download your favorite tunes onto a memory card or use it to view photos from a digital camera card. MapSource software is used to plan trips and download routes, tracks or way-points to the unit, the software is simple to use and the unit plugs into a PC or laptop with a USB cable for easy downloads and updates. If you want to download some great trips, there are GPS routes that we have traveled available here free to download and use in your GPS unit.