Today I woke up a bit late Had a nice leisurely early afternoon of cinnamon rolls and coffee. Spent a good chunk of the day doing some house cleaning that was a bit overdue. I also got to a long overdue project, the GPS. Mine is a Magellan Meridian that was purchased in late 2002 and has been essentially mothballed since then. I put some way points on it back home but didn’t really use it much. To be blunt I prefer the Garmin Etrex series but this is the GPS I already own. Potentially replacing it is not even on the long list. If it breaks I would get another one; other then that I will stick with this one.
Nowadays I do a lot more land navigation and being able to confirm exactly where I am would be quite useful. The first thing I did was to get it out of the box, put some batteries in it and turn it on. The thing worked which was a very good sign. It took some fiddling to get it to orient to our current location but it was nothing too bad. Next I put it to give me the location coordinates in MGRS instead of Lat/Long . We use MGRS in the Army and it is what I understand and am confortable with. Switching it was pretty easy for me. Years ago when I was far less technologically capable (since then I’ve upgraded from a tech IQ of 27 to a tech IQ of 58) trying to do this pissed me off for a couple hours then I mothballed the thing. My last task with the GPS is to mark our residence as a waypoint. This means I can get a bearing and distance to our residence from anywhere. That is a good thing.
After completing this task I turned it off and put it back in the box in the closet, ready for use. Next in my list of electronic tasks is fiddling with the new radio. I will try to get to that sometime this week.
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I’ve got a hand held GPS and another in my primary vehicle. Although I still use a topo map and a compass when I got into the woods, the GPS is a nice thing to have, especially the way it lets you set up a “trail” and then reverse course and follow it back.
Hermit, I might just keep it in the car. I am a map and compass guy also. Great point about a route/ trail. That could be useful. Maybe I’ve got another little project to do.