On 9/1/2011 12:40 PM, KevinA wrote:
> You never know when the GPS might provide a little entertainment. . .
> while traveling with friends a few months back, we were among the
> first to travel a new section of a state highway that had been
> relocated about three-quarters of a mile beyond its original roadbed.
> The kind prompting of the GPS maintained that we were not on any
> marked road . . . and went the rounds of "recalculating" and
> "redirecting" us numerous times while we were on that 20 mile section
> of new highway.
I'm enjoying this thread very much... Kevin, your comment about "GPS
might provide a little entertainment" gave me a good chuckle, I've also
been experiencing one of those "GPS" moments that is humorous and makes
one chuckle...
First a bit of history, I have a 1964 Airstream Ambassador International
(28 ft) that I tow with a Ford 2004 F350 extended cab 4x4 Diesel. So
far, in ten years of owning and working on this trailer, all my trips
have been around Northern New England, at the most all within 200 miles
of home. As I'm now retired after 38 years in Oceanography and have my
house up for sale, I'm preparing the truck and trailer for my first
major trip towing and living in the trailer full time for a six to eight
month period this fall/winter, possibly longer.
Part of my career in oceanography involved precision navigation
accomplished buy the use of Loran, SatNav predating GPS, Omega, and
computers for navigation calculations and track logging such that I have
a great appreciation of the capability of the vehicle GPS navigation
technology available to us today. I rate the development of the GPS
system as it exists today to be the second greatest product of advancing
technology, second only to the PC computer evolution.
My first personal GPS unit is a Garmin GPS 45, early 1990's vintage,
predates mapping GPS and gives you LAT/LON coordinates, direction, and
time only. It was one of the first AA battery operated shirt pocket size
GPS, had a 5 channel multiplexing receiver, and it still works today, a
real credit to Garmin...
My second GPS is a Garmin GPS III Plus, purchased in 1999, and is an
early MAP GPS with a 12 channel receiver and a monochrome LCD graphics
display about 1.4" x 2" in size. This I used with Delorme Street Alas
software on a HP 5700 Notebook computer which downloads the GPS
navigation over the serial port. Another fine example of Garmin quality,
its still a very useful, fully functional unit...
After using the GPS III Plus and the HP 5700 Laptop PC for the past 11
years, as I started thinking about future plans and traveling with the
Airstream now that I'm retired, this past winter I decided the time had
come to upgrade my navigation gear... The main reason being that as I
age, the tiny GPS screen is very difficult to see while driving with
eyes that see distance great but don't focus close very well any more.
Also, that the related computer software used for trip navigation simply
doesn't work on older laptop PC technology.
End result is I now have a new HP notebook PC, 3.2 Ghz/6Gb ram with a
15" screen for my e-mail and trip planing and as a 15" screen laptop
doesn't lend itself to navigation while driving with 70 lbs of Black
Labrador as co-pilot, a new Garmin Nuvi 1490LMT vehicle navigator with
5" screen (just received yesterday) that I'm in the middle of testing,
installing, and setting up.
Here is where it gets humorous. I've been planning routes for years
with the HP 5700 Notebook and the Garmin GPS III Plus going through an
intersection about 1 mile from my house where the street I use regularly
crosses a major secondary road however the street I travel has an offset
where the ends of the street, each with a stop sign and are offset
roughly 150 feet. The street I come into this intersection on has a
medium sized grass triangle in the end of it and after stopping at the
stop sign, I turn left onto the other street and in 150 feet, to the
right back onto the road I'm traveling north on. Neither the Garmin GPS
III plus and the Delorme Street Atlas software have any trouble routing
through this intersection, they treat it as you would expect however,
the new Garmin Nuvi 1490 router is apparently totally confused by this
intersection and routes you through two neighboring residential streets
going around the block to avoid this intersection instead of routing you
through it. The Nuvi makes a good route, it will get you where you are
going but to me, going around the block is a kluge fix to a problem that
shouldn't exist...
I have tried putting a waypoint about 25 ft south of the stop sign and
the Nuvi Router will take you to that waypoint and then instruct you to
do a U-turn and routes you back to the side street to go around the
intersection... After many hours of trying to fool the Nuvi router, I've
decided the only solution is have a good chuckle, ignore it, and go on
as I always have...
--
--
Mitch Hill
(Sent from HP DV6T)
This site is not sponsored by or affiliated in any way with Airstream Inc, Thor Inc, or the WBCCI.
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