Well it's finally arrived and well chuffed I am with it too. Amazing
number of features packed into it. Okay, it's probably not essential
for a GPS to have a stopwatch, alarm clock, calculator and so one, but
it doesn't hurt to have them, they may come in useful, and they're a lot
more potentially useful than those stupid games.
And the colour! I know it shouldn't really make much difference but it
does! It looks so cool compared to the drab low res black and white
screen I've been looking at for the past five years. You have a choice
of colour schemes and it automatically switches to a night time colour
scheme when it gets dark. Rather useful that, especially when using it
in a car at night. Oh yes, I bought a dash mount and cigarette lighter
adapter for the car. Car nav wasn't my main reason for buying it of
course, but if it has the capability I may as well make use of it.
Can't make full use of the auto-routing yet, still wondering whether to
splash out on one of these new CitySelect CDs - inbuilt auto-routing,
automatic recalculation if you take a wrong turn, plus locking to road
and instructions at each junction (might come in useful if I ever leave
Wales!) I did try following a route in the car which was very
interesting. It didn't lock to the roads and I had to plot a route the
old fashioned way, but it did show off a rather clever new feature - 10
seconds before you arrive at a junction it switches to a stationary
close up view of the junction with directions for which way to turn and
the position arrow (which normally stays in the same place on the
screen) moves up from the bottom of the screen and through the junction,
then it switches back to whatever screen you were using before. Quite
clever.
As for the accuracy and lock strength, I can't say that I can see any
real difference between it and the GPS12. Presumaby this will change
when Egnos comes online. The altimeter is good fun though. Not as
stable as I'd hoped, but then I haven't yet used it anywhere with a
really clear sky view.
I did take it for a quick trip down to my local reference trig point at
Blackpill...
SS 62171 90903, 10m (official OS grid ref converted from WGS84 using
OziExplorer)
....and got the following results;
SS 62171 90905, 10.0m (60CS - barometric)
SS 62170 90904, 13.1m (60CS - average of 200 samples - EPE 4.4m)
SS 62171 90904, 11.9m (60CS - average of 100 samples - EPE 5.0m)
SS 62171 90905 (GPS12 - long average)
As usual, very accurate results were obtained, the horizontal
coordinates being no more than 2m out, in spite of the EPE suggesting a
much larger error. The GPS12 performed just as well in the horizontal
department.
What I was most interested in of course was the altitude (it always
reads 10-15m too high with the GPS12). Annoyingly the GPS only displays
the altitude rounded to the nearest metre, even though it saves the
waypoint with one decimal place. In the case of normal (barometric)
waypoints, they are all rounded to the nearest metre, but if you average
the waypoint it averages the GPS altitude and thus you get a fraction as
well.
At first glance the barometer seems to have given the best result,
having had about 20 mins to settle down before reaching the trig
(accurately calibrated after switching it on), but the reading was taken
from the top of the trig so you have to subtract roughly a metre, thus
it's one metre too low. That puts the two averaged waypoints at 12.1m
and 10.9m, just one or two metres over. Why the barometer should be
reading lower than the GPS altitude I don't know. I thought the autocal
would have settled within 20 mins after starting with a spot on
calibration (determined earlier in the day with a very long averaging
session - the result corresponding to what I'd always believed from the
contours).
Anyway, all of the altitude readings were within 2m of the actual
altitude, which I'm quite happy with. I could be picky and complain,
but it's way better than the GPS12 and should be even better when EGNOS
comes into force.
Anyway. Great unit, thoroughly recommended. Light years ahead of older
models. And no problems with the battery compartment so far.
Paul
--
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