My navigation equipment

rustyrhinos wrote:

Yeah and sat navs are pretty useless in the desert/mountains/etc of course!

I mentioned somewhere on this forum (or another???) about how we had a two-Range Rover expedition to Morocco when the first SatNavs starting appearing - when they used to cost £800-£1000 for a what is now £200 - and the Silva SatNav we had on a sponsorship deal took us directly to the mouth of the Todra Gorge at the dead of night. Yes, they do work.

Wasn't doubting they can get reception in remote places...but what use is navigation where there are no roads to navigate? It can tell you the direction to head for I guess.

One thing Sat Navs are particularly useful for - once in a large town or a city, they are great for finding your way back out of town. Even if you didn't have a map with you, providing you know a town or city you wanted to get to next, the box of tricks will get you there.

Mind you, providing the sun can been seen, I suppose one could argue you could find your way out of town that way too ... eventually.

I have to admit...we tend to get to places OK...but we do get stuck in cities....we end up going round and round for hours trying desperately to get out. I can think of a few examples - Paris, Volvograd and Brussels! Using a 50p compass is not the way to navigate through a city hehe . "Head East" does not always work quite that easily!

Before I bought my first Sat Nav, my mate said the very same thing. They are okay getting to places when used in conjuction with a map, and, they are great for finding your way out of cities. Never without one now.

relied too much on Satnag once, street ended in a set of steps and no where to turn round

On reading these posts one would think that OS maps are available all over the world ?
I know they are not.

There are times when only the GPS will shew you the way. Try the T junction in the CKGR. Working from a sketch map there's a T. When you arrive there there's five roads. Thank goodness for T4A at the time.

A GPS tells me where I am. A paper map shews me where I have to go.

Mike

Tom Mc wrote:

How come you can be pottering quite happily along a French national heading north when the Sat Nav will belt out ... RIGHT RIGHT RIGHT! You dutively turn right whilst muttering "this ain't right?", only to enter a village with street barely wide enough for an anorexic 2CV, let along a Rangie, then it'll get all bolshy again and command you to TURN LEFT. Low and behold, you're heading north again, and you guessed it, the darn thing will lead you back to the very same national you came off 20 minutes ago only 5 km up the road.

What the hell's all that about???

My Garmin started doing that over here a couple of months back. For example it would tell me to leave the A3,go down sliproad to roundabout then take 2nd exit back to A3. it did this for about 2 weeks then suddenly died on me!

Mine hasn't died yet, but it's still a pain at times. Darn handy at other times though, found it's most beneficial when trying to get out of cities. As long as you know a town in the general direction you're heading, then at least it will take to N, S E or W. Without a SatNav you can be going around in circles for hours, especially in cities like Birmingham where there's loads of ramps, flyovers and ring roads. Deadly!

You are so right Tom - they CAN be very useful and they CAN be very accurate, but I try to use only as a guide. However I do a lot of work in London and would be stuffed without it now.

Regarding accuracy/errors; Most of this is down to the satellite system being in poor health. The US haven't spent any money in more than 10 years now so there has been no maintenance and no replacements sent up. It is entirely possible that this year - 2012 - we could actually lose the system altogether - that would be interesting!

Very interesting. Like you I try to use it only as a guide, but find myself slavishly obeying the dammn thing - especially at vital times when a decision has to be made i.e. motorway splits and you have to make that split second desican there and then. You think right is best as it's that side to the city, yet the SatNav says left ... you go left like an idiot only to find yourself sitting in heaps of traffic because the SatNav has calculated that left is the Fastest route. Yeah, maybe at 3am it is, but not at 5pm! Sh !!!

Yet again like you I now couldn't do without it - nor a mobile phone. How rarely do we leave that at home by mistake?

Slaves to technology, welcome to the 21st century!

Actually Tom I frequently leave my mobile at home

I often find that if you set your satnav to "shortest route" it can be very effective, especially in places like London.
A few weeks back I had to take an Extra LWB Sprinter van to an address in E London, from Aldershot and the \M3 was closed and the A3 was dutifully chaotic . So I reset to shortest route and it took me all round the side streets - some very tight for that van! But it got me there and in fact I was 5 mins early too. Worth trying sometimes

Couldn't agree more. It's now very rare that I don't check out bother Fastst and Shortest routes. I'll compare the ETA, mileage and at times even the route the SavNav's planned, then decide.

Often, especially in big towns and cities, on Fastest Route it will simply take you out to a ring road, then back in again. Sure it may be fastest, but saving 1 minute for an extra 1 gallon ain't good.

Yep, they can be good, IF you use them to your advantage, otherwise they can cost you more than you gain.

Now that the series landie is my daily driver I am finding that shortest route or limited speed is often better as I don't tend to go at motorwau speeds...so taking the motorway route is often not in my favour.

I'd wager yours is the oldest "daily driver" on this forum. Mmmm, feel like a new thread starting, over to you Rusty.

Hillbilly Raider wrote:

they also can not tell you of road closeures etc

The Garmin I use has a receiver. Traffic jams and closures it knows. Recalculates the route. It is based on the mobile networks. Does it not exists in Brittain?

Yes matey, you can get Sat Navs with traffic updates here. They are Very Expensive and the updates are not always quick enough either.

Sat Navs suffer from many issues, and the major issue is what is termed in the retail trade as its "USP" or unique selling point, the USP usually consists of a mixture of bling or useless fitments many will never use or understand, but sound good to those who like their bling and boast to their friends about it to try to top them by having more bling then them, and the one with the most bling usually sells more units to these majority of people. Last year a study was undertaken, and it covered all modern electronic devices, mobile phones, computers, laptops, sat navs, navigation add on's, i pads, and many more of todays electronic items; its results were astounding, it showed they 99% of users of this equipment used less than 10% of the features installed on the equipment from new by the manufacturer. Basically 90% of the features were redundant items which served no purpose at all other than being features to brag about and one upmanship on your friends.

This meant most people were unaware of the features on their electronic equipment and did not use it, so were not conversant with how to fully and effectively operate it by being knowledgeable about the equipment they used. This was confirmed with the new range of mobile phones, most users used the latest phones to make calls, send texts, take video or photos, and access the internet, therefore most of the other features fitted as standard became redundant to most users.
When the same criteria was applied to computer users it was found that Microsoft Office was pre-installed on many computers and operated on a Windows operating system, this came with Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and One Note. Of these programmes only Word was used by all users, Excel was used by less than 20% of users and most of these were company's or people associated with the financial, procurement or planning industries. Powerpoint was used by less than 2% of people, and One Note was virtually unused by everyone.
Therefore we have a situation where we have a lot of junk that most people don't use, but have installed on their computers, do not know how to use because they have no need to use it, but as with any software products they are all interlinked in some way to each other, and can influence other programmes; and this applies to all electronic products. Why does this happen??? a reasonable question, money is the predominant answer, if a manufacturer adds a lot of useless equipment or features they know most people won't use it, won't know how to use it, but can charge much more money for it, and increase their profits.

Such things changed the way manufacturers approach their new products, instead of focusing on its primary focus or usage they focus on the money and profitibility, where a sat nav system is concerned it means the mapping systems are not as good as they should be, and they become overloaded with bling or totally unnecessary equipment or features which most people cannot or will not use. This is reflected in their user manuals, many are now the size of a small dictionary and are often translated from one language, into many other languages, and this in itself causes many problems as many technical terms or words do not translate from one language to another accurately, they often translate as approximate words or words with spurious or vague meanings, depending on the original language, and final translated language.
This meant many user manuals are combersome and often difficult to read or understand by a layman, particularly as they are written by experts in a field who will know all the abbreviations and industrey specific terminology, so most people do not read an instruction manual fully, and many often become confused with the terminology or industry specific abbreviations and give up reading it, then ignore the specific function or group of functions on their equipment

In summary we have a multitude of problems, development money diverted away from the actual development of the mapping systems and spent on unnecessary items, user manuals which are large and very complex, and a focus by a manufacturer to generate maximum profitibility by adding items or equipment most will never understand or use.