Handheld GPS

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OneBrightGator

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Scuba Instructor
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Location
St. Augustine, FL
# of dives
If you have a handheld GPS, post up, love it or hate it, I wanna hear about it. Also, if you have any suggestions I am looking for an inexpensive one to play around with, maybe use for driving directions and such.

'ppreciate it!
 
I have the Garmin eTrex. The plain yellow one. No fancy graphics, no color screen, it just gives you the coordinates and other vitals. Love it. It's accurate, quick, watertight, doesn't kill batteries fast, and very lightweight. Plus it's very cheap, one of the reasons why it doesn't quite matter if it gets busted. I think I paid $70 for it while it was on sale at target a couple years ago.

I have some of my favorite dive sites, campsites along the appalachian trail, the keys, it can store quite a bit on it. My only complaint is that it limits the characters you can use to name each site. So you have to resort to abbreviations a lot. It has accompanied throughout many adventures and will continue to do so for quite some time.

If you want the graphics and maps: my buddy has the Garmin 76Cx. Which is also very good, a bit bigger, I'm guessing it kills batteries a little faster also. But very nice, accurate, and the compass works without having to track. What they don't tell you is: you have to buy the maps separately- according to region- to download them onto the memory card. Those are pretty expensive.

Since I prefer printed maps on waterproof paper (so I can take notes) I like the simpler one, but that's also mostly because I need to have the ability to use a real compass just in case of gps failure. That's mostly because I like spending a couple weeks in the woods every once in awhile. heh. Also the gps won't work to well in forests.
 
The Garmin hand-held GPS's are great.

I use one in flying ultra-light aircraft.

You can darned near fly certified IFR with the things ever since the intentional degradation was removed.

They are extremely accurate.

the K
 
I have an old Garmin 45 and a newer GPS-76, both of which I like. The Garmins have worked well for me. The 45 is a lot slower but it's over 10 years old. The 76 has some basic maps built in but because of the small screen I don't find them that useful. My suggestion is to get one of the less expensive, more simple ones. They are plenty accurate and provide all the important information. If you intend to use it for highway navigation IMO your better off if you get one that has a computer interface (most do) and use a laptop and a program like Streets and Trips rather than trying to use the GPS itself. You get a much bigger screen thats a lot easier to see.
 
Was showing mine to a friend several years ago.

We were out on Guntersville lake in his pleasure cruiser/yacht - whatever.

On the way out I set in some way points.

On the way back in I sat underneath the helm with my back to the bow and took us back to the marina and within about 50 feet of the dock.

Needless to say, he was impressed with its performance.

the K
 
I have the same one Mantarey has. I like it a lot. I love hiking and the GPS just adds more to the experience.

I wish it had more access to elevation information though. The basic etrex gives you your current elevation but not your max elevation. I'm surprised they didn't include this feature.
 
Hi,

I have had the Garmin 76CS for a couple of years now, and have thoroughly loved it.

It was what I perceived as their top-end handheld at that time, and which did everything I wanted (road navigation, marine navigation, hiking navigation) ... everthing Garmin offered except aviation navigation.

I believe Garmin has an updated 76, the 76CSx that adds microSD memory slot, for somewhat expanded memory and the capability to use pre-loaded Garmin SD cards.

-- Walter
 
Aother Garmin Etrex fan here. The low end dumb one worked fine, until it went overboard.

I upgraded to the Etrex Legend and got the map database program. Lots of detailed street info.

I also used a shareware program, Gartrip, coupled with some downloaded and scanned marine charts to load in a bunch of waypoint for rocks and sandbars to avoid with my sailboat. Gartrip also does a nice job of plotting the downloaded track log after the sail, and displaying or printing it out as an overlay on the chart. The Etrex Legend doesn't have have marine chart display capability, but for my use that doesn't matter.

The only downside to the Garmin Etrex series is that they aren't very waterproof. In betweent the low end Etrex and the current Etrex Legend I went through 2 other units (Etrex Mariner), both replaced by West Marine after they failed. Never fully submerged them, but frequent wetting down while sailing in an open cockpit boat caused them to die in a just a few months.

Haven't had a problem with the latest one, but when the wind and waves kick up, I'll slip it into a transparent drybag or even just a ziplock bag to cut down on water exposure. Even when not using it to navigate, it's a great way to monitor boat speed when trimming sails.

With or without WAAS, accuracy is usually within 15' and I've never seen it more than 30' off when checking it at a known spot before going for a sail.
 
Garmin 60CS /60CSx are also very nice. Almost identical features to the 76's; different form factor.

Also, both the 76 & 60 (and I think most of the other GPS products) are supposed to be water resistant (submerged one meter for up to 30 minutes).
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

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