Over the years, Garmin GPS units have been used exclusively by Wildtrackers. These days 276 and 278 units are found to be ideal for all applications encountered by the team. Although these units have undoubtedly been tested under lab conditions they’ve proved themselves also, in practical everyday Wildtracker conditions, either in the boiling deserts of Oman and Dubai, on boats being covered in salt spray and most recently at -20c mounted on snowmobiles, with a wind-chill that was causing frostbite to some of the expedition.
These Garmins are used with a selection of Ram mountings and the Oziexplorer mapping program has been used for years to transfer data to scanned maps in both 2D and 3D. Recently Garmin’s own Mapsource is becoming more useful by being registered to more producers of topographic maps, thereby enabling topo information to be loaded directly to the GPS units, helping with navigation on the ground.
Both Oziexplorer and Mapsource allow saved tracks and waypoints to be open and viewed in Google Earth. Now Google Earth allows waypoints and trails to be downloaded direct from the Garmin to produce stunning records of routes taken, especially in 3D!
Garmin www.garmin.com
Ram Mountings www.ram-mount.com
Oziexplorer www.oziexplorer.com
Google Earth www.earthgoogle.com