Sir Chris Bonnington tells of his GPS experiences

Chris Bonnington gave a talk at the Garmin Topo Great Britain Launch. He releated his experiences of using GPS on his latest trip to the Himalayas.

On the trekking/climbing trip to the Indian Himalayas Chris was using 1944 vintage 1 mile to the inch map with simple lat/lon calibration. This was digitised used to display daily tracklogs and waypoints recorded on a Garmin eTrex during the trip. The trip was a learning experience for Chris. The climbing team were able to see exactly where they were and where they had been on a daily basis. Chris said: "GPS is a really useful tool for expeditioning. Track back is a great for retracing your steps in a whiteout."

Chris also said: "If you are skiinig in a whiteout in the caingorms a GPS is an invaluable device to help you find your way safely."

Article by Mike Barrett on Wednesday, January 18 @ 13:35:19 UTC

Matthew Palmer launches Topo Great Britain for the Garmin GPS series

Today Garmin launched a new product for the UK Market at Blenhiem Palace in Oxfordshire. Topo Great Britain is the first Garmin product to integrate Ordnance Survey topographical mapping into their Mapsource products. Coinciding with the launch of the new "X"-tended memory GPS receivers the Topo Mapping are perfect partners.

Garmin Topo Great Britain will be priced at £149 for full UK Mapping and will be available towards the end of Jan/beginning Feb. Regional mapping will be available on microSD card round about March. This will be available for holiday makers, price to be decided the actual regions are currently being decided.

Matthew Palmer the Garmin Outdoor Product Manager presented the the new products at the exclusive venue of Blenhiem Palace.

The Garmin Topo Great Britain is delivered on a DVD and is constructed from OS topo MasterMap vector based mapping and Navteq street mapping data. This includes routable street maps allowing you to transfer your route from the PC to your hand hald GPS. You can use the same GPS to get you to the start of your walk and then the topo mapping will help
you navigate on your hike with confidence.

The topo maps cover England, Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland, Isle of Man, The Channel islands, or the Republic of Ireland. The mapping data is drawn from a number of databases specifically the Ordnance Survey vector based MasterMap with some resolution down to 1:1250 Urban, 1:10k rural, and 1:25k Mountain regions. This is combined with

Navteq street mapping providing routable streetmaps with topo overlays.

The software supports Vertical profiling on PC and the compatible GPS devices. The elevation profiles are point to point on the GPS or PC (not along the route) As the data is surveyed the profile is very accurate.

The Topographical display has Contour shading (Mike thought this was a neat feature).

Tim Naylor Commercial Partner Account Manager of the Ordnance Survey said "I am really pleased that The Ordnance Survey and Garmin have come together to produce a market leading topograpical mapping product that opens up the worlds of both street navigation and recreational mapping."

Article by Mike Barrett on Wednesday, January 18 @ 11:25:28 UTC