Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Trusting your GPS?

My cousin, a fanatic for the latest and greatest things, like them little phones they slide their greasy fingers all over to flip through pages and stuff, always mentions his GPS. Interesting thing about GPS is he has never found the shortest route to my house from Oregon, and it's all freeway. So I break out the AAA map and show him how to cut 40 miles and a lot of traffic off the route. That didn't help, next time he calls from Antioch, California asking how to find his way. Said he must have made a wrong turn. I told him it couldn't be done, he'd have to go back to Oregon and start over. Good thing he had his daughter and wife with him, or he'd have never stopped for directions.

Next time, I had written down the route. He calls and says it seems to be working. I ask where he is, he says he just went through the big tunnel. What tunnel? I ask. There isn't any tunnel on the route. Turns out he didn't believe me and followed his GPS, it was the Caldecott Tunnel. He was driving miles out of his way toward Oakland, after exiting I-680 South. He finally arrived about two hours late and frazzled.

Last time he visited, he was going to see his father in Exeter, California after stopping at San Simeon. later I found out that after leaving San Simeon, they had driven two hours the wrong way on Hwy 101 before catching on and turning around. He finally found Hwy 198 and on to Visalia and Exeter. Sort of roundabout but he made it. I told him the best thing he could do with that GPS thing was toss it out the window and clean the suction cup rings off the windshield.

Back in the day, when I worked at a huge show horse farm, I'd ride Rosy down to the store and post office, and never once got lost because Rosy knew she'd get an apple or a Hostess Apple Pie for a treat, and she always knew the way home for dinner. Yep, a living GPS. Ah, those were the days.

Well, if u ain't smarter than a GPS........ It aint going to turn out well. .

Goes for horses too. In that case the rider has to be smart enough to let the horse do the thinking in fog or dark. BTDT. They always know where the goodies are.

The GPS system itself, satellites and receiver, is incredibly accurate. The map databases are what's usually screwed up especially in rural areas. When you've got a county road that's 20 miles long and you enter in 10174 CR 5184 you might get sent to one end of the road instead of the other. The GPS still knows exactly where it's at in Lat/Long's, but the map is screwed up so it can't translate the lat/long to the address.

I fly for an airline and our aircraft use inertial reference units constantly updated by GPS to navigate. They're incredibly accurate, so accurate that you'll be halfway across the north atlantic on a route with another aircraft coming the opposite direction on the same route 1000' above or below you & your fuselage will align with theirs when you pass, every time. If we were co-altitude then we'd hit. They now have us doing an offset maneuver designed to prevent that in case the altitude split gets messed up.

Yes. I absolutely trust my GPS units. Those that might furnish the underlying data, not so much. Much of that has been traced from out of date maps depicting long abandoned or inadvisable ways.

One must have at least half a brain if he's trusting roadway navigation data.

Was looking for an address in Central Oregon one time. It told me to turn left but when I looked there was a sign on the fence post saying this was not the road to *** St. We turned around and the gps kept telling us to turn where there was no road but just a culvert. Years ago the land had been laid out and subdivided but nevr been developed. The gps map was telling us to take those roads.

Garmin recently did a highway map update. They moved our house and several of the neighbors 3 miles to a different highway. I reported it to them and the correction is supposed to be on the next update. We'll see.

GPS is great at knowing where you are, and knowing the point you are navigating to.

The problems start when they calculate the route between the two places.

My Garmin will calculate the route using mostly the main routes, often not the shortest one. Its after you leave the route and it has to recalculate that the problems start.

Have seen the GPS get travelers in trouble more than once

in our local area....unmaintained winter Forest roads

It's not the GPS that's inaccurate, it's the mapping software. I'm using a GPS system right now that's showing my accuracy at .027m X and .026m Y with a .032m Z value. Would be more accurate but we're running 26 knots.