Hand Held GPS

[rbuck351]

The electronic things like smart phones and gps tend to not work after you take them swimming when crossing a river. At least mine didn't work anymore. The map and compass still worked.

[trebor44]

Navigation: how to lose yourself with an undying faith in "technology". Living and traveling in the mountains for work and pleasure was and is interesting. Reading a map is an art, not science. Declination, GPS offset and of course the license of artistic interpretation for map making makes you wonder how the "ancients" got around! Have to admit I never saw a migrating ungulate herd with a compass etc.

[Tazman1602]

The electronic things like smart phones and gps tend to not work after you take them swimming when crossing a river. At least mine didn't work anymore. The map and compass still worked.

Navigation: how to lose yourself with an undying faith in "technology". Living and traveling in the mountains for work and pleasure was and is interesting. Reading a map is an art, not science. Declination, GPS offset and of course the license of artistic interpretation for map making makes you wonder how the "ancients" got around! Have to admit I never saw a migrating ungulate herd with a compass etc.

Which map app? Get OnX. It is the most advanced mapping available, bar none. It doesn't matter if you have it on your phone, on a GPS, on a tablet, OnX maps are the ones to get. They are updated very often, it seems every year. The Topo data has been super accurate in the mountains for me. The aerial images are beyond amazing, new every year. It shows every bit of land ownership, state, federal, private, whatever. It even often shows what a farm field had planted last year. You don't need cell service. Phone GPS works great.

Look on the geocache site, geocaching.com. there are quite a few people there that can find a cache smaller than a dime with a GPS. I bet there are more than a few people around you that would help, and may have your exact GPS to guide you on how to use it all.
(https://forums.geocaching.com/GC/ind...lasses&quick=1)

I too have paper maps, because electronics can and do fail, specially when you need them the most.

Thanks for that Omega, I have buds that do the geocaching thing all the time and they are really good with it.

Art

[MaryB]

LOL

In the Boy Scouts it was look for a glow on the horizon and hike to the Mall.

I was out cruising back roads with a friend and not paying any attention to where we were, he stopped and started freaking out saying we were lost... I looked for the local FM radio station tower and then the city glow and told him to drive that way as I pointed LOL. I don't get lost, built in compass... just seem to know which way to go.

[MostlyLeverGuns]

I have run into small areas where 'magnetic rocks' make a compass 'act funny'. Mostly walking 30 or 40 feet fixed the compass. Powerlines are shown on most topo maps so a compass is not critical. You might want a compass or GPS to find the powerline?. My wife's IPhone 8 drains the battery fast when searching for signals. If I am on road in vehicle, I do not consider myself 'lost'. Even most western Wilderness areas are crisscrossed with marked trails, topo map and compass or GPS finds them easily. Sun comes up in the east goes down in the west, Big Dipper points to Polaris(the North Star). When you are 'out there', PAY ATTENTION! I like the GPS for marking points in rough terrain or finding kills that are far from a trail or road, much better than flagging tape for two miles.

[megasupermagnum]

Do you have a link to a diagram or something to get an idea how this is done? I do have multiple chargers that I take hunting, but I only require a day's worth of power where I hunt. I currently use my drill batteries to shock rechargeable batteries back to life, well most times anyway.

There's no diagram. It's just an adapter that you plug your phone charger into. I got one free with a tool once for my Milwaukee M18's. There are cheap ones that only use USB, and there are expensive ones that allow a 110v plug in. I don't see much point in the expensive ones over a charging pack as you said. The cheap ones are great since I already have the drill batteries. I always have one in the truck. Mine looks just like the one in the link.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Milwauke...2371/203461325

[rockshooter]

Sun may rise in the east and set in the west, but, depending on your latitude, during most of the day it may hang in the south. As long as I can see the sun and know what time it is, I pretty much know where all direction are.
Loren

[MostlyLeverGuns]

I've used the sun and a compass as a watch, when sun is south its noon, guessing what time it is in-between. Old technique of holding hand up to judge how much daylight is left, hold outstretched hand between sun and horizon, each finger is about 15 minutes of daylight, only works later in the day. I had to learn map and compass, no GPS or cell phones in the 70's, 80's except for classified military stuff.

[Thundarstick]

Only problem I've had with a map is to use it to go somewhere, you first have to figure out where you are on the map! Maps are often badly out of date(probably more so in the East) especially road maps. Roads are miss labeled, or given route numbers the locals don't know or use. I asked a fellow about finding highway 218 once, he'd never heard of that road, I showed him my map, and he exclaimed, o, you mean brush creek road! Bad thing about GPS, they need power and signal. US or Russia flip the encryption switch and all non military GPS become extra weight.

[MaryB]

I've used the sun and a compass as a watch, when sun is south its noon, guessing what time it is in-between. Old technique of holding hand up to judge how much daylight is left, hold outstretched hand between sun and horizon, each finger is about 15 minutes of daylight, only works later in the day. I had to learn map and compass, no GPS or cell phones in the 70's, 80's except for classified military stuff.

In Girl Scouts we had a competition with other troops to see who could navigate best. List of directions and distance to walk with multiple turns, crossed back over your trail, went off into dense woods to navigate when a straight line is difficult... score was based on how many feet you ended from the spot picked in advance. 3 years running I was within 10 feet, next closest was 120 feet from it... I learned to navigate from grandpa when we went camping, by the time I joined Girl Scouts I was an expert. Grandpa loved to hide treats in the woods and hand is a compass and a short list of directions/distance to walk.

[farmbif]

waterproof phone? a little searching and its available rating is designated as ip67, up to a meter, and ip68, up to 5 feet, if I didn't get the two mixed up,
yeah sure spend north of a grand the apple iPhone 13 pro max and then get that app that seems pretty darn good, there's a bunch of em some free some subscription, I guess the free ones make you register and sell your information or something like that. nothings been free in the world I grew up in. but then what you gonna do when a solar flare or maybe even a Russian or Chinese thermonuclear device makes everything electronic obsolete, might want to have a couple compasses and maps for backup. they make these really great topo map books by every state that are not all that expensive, forget what they are called, wait wait ill look it up
here we go.
https://geology.com/store/delorme-atlas.shtml

yup this electronic stuff is great while it works.
but with Putin becoming unchained who the heck knows what the future holds

[ulav8r]

Went elk hunting on public land many years ago. Had a topo map and compass, covered a lot of land and came back to within 30 yards of my car at the end of the day.

[rbuck351]

I lived and hunted in AK for about 30 years, sometimes above the arctic circle. There is not a lot of cell reception for hundreds of miles. Sat phones work for 4 or 5 minutes and then you have to wait a while until the next Sat comes by. GPS worked so long as you have batteries and you don't damage the gps or drown it. Maps and compass work but declination is severe.

[MaryB]

I lived and hunted in AK for about 30 years, sometimes above the arctic circle. There is not a lot of cell reception for hundreds of miles. Sat phones work for 4 or 5 minutes and then you have to wait a while until the next Sat comes by. GPS worked so long as you have batteries and you don't damage the gps or drown it. Maps and compass work but declination is severe.

I would imagine magnetic north would be dang near ENE from northern AK

[rbuck351]

Yeah, it's been a while now since I needed a USCGS map, but IIRC it was over 20 degrees.

[huntinlever]

This is a subscription, but is good for unknown areas.
https://www.onxmaps.com/hunt/app?msc...onX%20-%20Hunt

Older thread, but was actually going to post about a handheld and OnX. I went kicking and screaming into modern times and finally got a cell phone. Downloaded OnX and bought the I set. Pretty nifty, but the topo is a different scale than standard USGS maps, with less contour lines. Do I remember it correctly, OnX is no longer supported on the Garmins? Phone app only?

Had a Garmin 600-something, I think. Great little unit. I don't navigate by GPS (map and compass only) but it was pretty nice to mark sign waypoints, hub/corridor/edges, etc. and I forget the software but I had a good, color-coded set of maps that gave boundary lines for Nat'l Forest/private property. I'm looking at a handheld again but don't want to drop a ton of coin for it.

[huntinlever]

My phone has the map app and tells me where I am, but the topo data is lacking, as well as not showing boundaries of the national forest.

Missed this when I posted. +1.

[thxmrgarand]

I gave up on GPS about ten years ago after trying 3 or 4 popular hand-held units. I live in the 17 million acre Tongass National Forest, a very small part of Alaska but given that the Tongass is spread out over mainland and many islands it's just about identical in size to the state of Maine (for example). But the timber in this part is mostly old growth and at least the GPS units I tried were therefore useless. Has the technology changed. My cell phone coverage has improved in the past 5 years so maybe that is the way to go? I really don't find using a compass to be in any way inconvenient, inaccurate, or troublesome whatsoever but I do like toys. Is there any satellite technology that will work when in dark timber that is 200 feet tall and 8 feet in diameter on the stump?

[megasupermagnum]

I gave up on GPS about ten years ago after trying 3 or 4 popular hand-held units. I live in the 17 million acre Tongass National Forest, a very small part of Alaska but given that the Tongass is spread out over mainland and many islands it's just about identical in size to the state of Maine (for example). But the timber in this part is mostly old growth and at least the GPS units I tried were therefore useless. Has the technology changed. My cell phone coverage has improved in the past 5 years so maybe that is the way to go? I really don't find using a compass to be in any way inconvenient, inaccurate, or troublesome whatsoever but I do like toys. Is there any satellite technology that will work when in dark timber that is 200 feet tall and 8 feet in diameter on the stump?

Absolutely GPS is better now than 10 years ago. Both the technology of the satellites and the sheer number of satellites is so much better. You can no longer look up at the night sky and not see at least a couple of satellites moving along at any moment, which is both annoying and good for GPS. Of course if your signal is blocked by mountains there's not much you can do about that. There's nothing you can do to get a signal through a giant tree. All you can do is go to a clearing. I always carry maps, but that's the biggest trouble, getting good maps. To cover the area you are talking about takes so many different maps it's a pain. Our black hills national forest is tiny by comparison at 1.2 million acres, and it's mostly continuous with only smaller plots for private land. Even at full scale, 5 maps doesn't really cover the whole place. In your case you are only trying to navigate A to B. For most of us OnX is a gamechanger not for navigation, but because it show private and public land boundaries. Plat maps are a nightmare. OnX and others completely changed the game of hunting.

[GregLaROCHE]

Be careful not to get into danger with a false sense of security. If you count on a GPS to get home, what happens to you if it stops working for some reason? Better hope you have a cellphone signal.