freeagent Posted April 15, 2006 Share Posted April 15, 2006 right, i'm off to Morocco in August and need to get my head around navigation... we are travelling on an organised trip but i'd want to ensure we've got 'stand alone' navigation sorted in case the need arises... we will be taking paper maps of the whole country, and a compass but as a bit of a techy i'd like to use GPS aswell.... i've got a garmin GPS V with the european city select CD's but the do not cover morocco. i don't realy want to take my laptop as it cost me a grand and as i need it for work/ study don't want to get sand in it/ have it nicked/ drop it/ etc. i dont realy want a PDA as i'm not a big fan, and they seam a bit 'fragile' to me.... so what are my options.... has somebody got any electronic maps, or even better, Garmin mapsource stuff of morocco that they'd be willing to, ahem, well you know..... i've been looking at Garmin GPS units with bigger screens on the 'bay, including the 126.... or do i take a chance on a cheap recon laptop from ebay..... i've not got loads of money to spend, as i'm a poor student, but don't mind coughing up a little... what do you all think? cheers in advance.. m@tt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
western Posted April 15, 2006 Share Posted April 15, 2006 Just set the existing GPS to show lat/long refs instead of UK OS refs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freeagent Posted April 15, 2006 Author Share Posted April 15, 2006 yeah, i know that'll help us corelate our position with the paper maps.. i quite fancied some sort of electronic map, i.e a bit like mapsource but of morocco.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest diesel_jim Posted April 15, 2006 Share Posted April 15, 2006 I'm not sure what maps are available for Morocco in electronic format, i'm a bit of a mapaholic myself, also waiting to do a trip across to N Africa. I suggest like Western says, set your GPS to lat/long, or whatever paper map reference you have, and mark it down with a pencil on your map. at least the paper maps never have a flat battery or get sand in them and break. Just use the GPS to occasionally double check your dead reckoning as to your actual position. it's quite fun really, and if you are in a group, and your map reading isn't brilliant, you're not going to be strabded waiting to be vulture food. B) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freeagent Posted April 15, 2006 Author Share Posted April 15, 2006 and your map reading isn't brilliant, you're not going to be strabded waiting to be vulture food. B) its not my map reading im worried about, as mines ok, its the wifes... and before you suggest it, i'm not going to let her do all the driving.. although she's certainly doing some of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest diesel_jim Posted April 15, 2006 Share Posted April 15, 2006 Just use the GPS to occasionally double check your dead reckoning as to your actual position. it's quite fun really, and if you are in a group, and your map reading isn't brilliant, you're not going to be strabded waiting to be vulture food. B) spot the obvious typo.... it should read "stranded" not the gibberish rubbish i typed! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freeagent Posted April 15, 2006 Author Share Posted April 15, 2006 jim, you said you are going on a north africa trip, are you going with LRO on the 12th of august by any chance? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
simonr Posted April 15, 2006 Share Posted April 15, 2006 If you don't like Laptops or PDA's - at least not on the trip - your Garmin V is about the best available option. Even if you have to buy the maps for Morocco - they will be cheaper than a laptop or PDA, even from eBay. I think the Garmin V is the best thing since sliced bread and would not swap mine for anything! Si Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dollythelw Posted April 16, 2006 Share Posted April 16, 2006 panasonic toughbook and Oziexplorer - sorted for £150 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cols110 Posted April 16, 2006 Share Posted April 16, 2006 Sounds a bit OTT for a trip to Morocco in an organised tour. I very much doubt that there is any mapping software for Morocco, unless you go the Ozi explorer route. A 1:1000 000 IGN map from Stanfords and you Garmin V should be more than enough. Chris Scotts book has all the way points and info required. Check out these site for some more info, but if your travelling on a budget, I would spend the money elsewhere. Sahara Overland GPS forum Here and here for some info that might be of some interest to you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest diesel_jim Posted April 16, 2006 Share Posted April 16, 2006 jim, you said you are going on a north africa trip, are you going with LRO on the 12th of august by any chance? No, not with any organised trip. We have an apartment in Tarifa, the most southern part of Spain, which is 9 miles acriss from Tangier, so i'll use that place as a stop off point and then go bimble across someday. The LRO organised trips seem to be a little "spendy" for my liking.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mmgemini Posted April 16, 2006 Share Posted April 16, 2006 right, i'm off to Morocco in August and need to get my head around navigation... we are travelling on an organised trip but i'd want to ensure we've got 'stand alone' navigation sorted in case the need arises... we will be taking paper maps of the whole country, and a compass but as a bit of a techy i'd like to use GPS aswell.... i've got a garmin GPS V with the european city select CD's but the do not cover morocco. i don't realy want to take my laptop as it cost me a grand and as i need it for work/ study don't want to get sand in it/ have it nicked/ drop it/ etc. i dont realy want a PDA as i'm not a big fan, and they seam a bit 'fragile' to me.... so what are my options.... has somebody got any electronic maps, or even better, Garmin mapsource stuff of morocco that they'd be willing to, ahem, well you know..... i've been looking at Garmin GPS units with bigger screens on the 'bay, including the 126.... or do i take a chance on a cheap recon laptop from ebay..... i've not got loads of money to spend, as i'm a poor student, but don't mind coughing up a little... what do you all think? cheers in advance.. m@tt Try this site. www.tracks4africa.com AFAIK They now have Morroco maps.If they have I can assure you that they will be accurate.They should still be on the free download. I use the Garmin 276C because it has a memory card,not cheap, but clear and easily used. I too have a PDA with a Garmin cfQue.I think you'll be lucky if that would last more than a couple of days over there.I'm on my third replacement cfQue. Also the PDA needs a steady hand to change the screen information.Not something I've managed to do........ HTH I eat rat poison mike I can cause trouble in an empty house !!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Petergg Posted April 16, 2006 Share Posted April 16, 2006 Try this site.www.tracks4africa.com AFAIK They now have Morroco maps.If they have I can assure you that they will be accurate.They should still be on the free download. I use the Garmin 276C because it has a memory card,not cheap, but clear and easily used. I too have a PDA with a Garmin cfQue.I think you'll be lucky if that would last more than a couple of days over there.I'm on my third replacement cfQue. Also the PDA needs a steady hand to change the screen information.Not something I've managed to do........ HTH I eat rat poison mike I can cause trouble in an empty house !!! Like Mike said. I have all the track's that LRO use and others, most are on the T4A and are accurate. It's follow the leader so other than to know where you are you won't need maps or GPS, but I would take both as to be prepaired for the worst, or if you break group and go it alone. I use a 276c and a 196 mainly for tracking but they are good on the road as well. I don't know of any other mapping that you can use with garmin of Morocco. Bloody hot August, take some cream for that tender white skin you have matt Peter Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freeagent Posted April 16, 2006 Author Share Posted April 16, 2006 Bloody hot August, take some cream for that tender white skin you have matt Peter bloody cheek, i survived Australia in the 'hot' season im sure i'll be ok.... thanks for all the input guys, i had a feeling that mr GPS V was hard to beat... i'd like a 276c but it doesn't realy fit with living on a student loan i'll check out all the links that were sugested, garmins 'world map' CD looks pretty interesting for a reasonable price aswell..... i'll probably be bothering you for some advice soon peter, as i'm off to look at some Discovery auto's next week... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hillbilly Raider Posted April 16, 2006 Share Posted April 16, 2006 try here. http://www.garmin.com/unlock/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve_a Posted April 16, 2006 Share Posted April 16, 2006 I use an IPAQ 3630 with OziExplorer. The PDA is pretty tough IMO, I dropped the whole thing from chest height onto a solid floor and it was fine. it's also rattled around in the truck a LOT. The accessories are more fragile, sodding power lead has an intermittent connection. OziExplorer has the big advantage of being able to make your own maps, to a certain degree of accuracy. I did that for a trip to Washington, mixing maps and satallite imagery to ensure we were going were we wanted. The track logging is fantastic, I have a tool to convert the OziExplorer plt files to google earth KML files so I can see it in that afterwards. Ozi is created by a really small company, and he deserves a good plug IMO. Cost is cheap, <$100 IIRC for the PC and WindowsCE version, he even does a 3D plug in, so you can use DTED data to view the ground layout on PC. On top of that you can still load things like TomTom onto the PDA and use it in a simple manner. If you look around you can find the OS maps @ 25k for the whole of the UK, good quality maps of spain and probably some for Morocco. Of course I couldn't comment on the legalities of this, and even if I had them I wouldn't know that they took about 3 gig of drive space and if i couldn't supply them it wouldn't be on DVD and defintely wouldn't be for cost only. I noticed that the IPAQ go pretty cheap on Ebay, most seem to have duff batteries but they can be replaced. I guess I am biased, the PDA route really suits me, I'm a software engineer, so I can and do write applications to run on it which I couldn't do for a garmin etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tombraider110 Posted April 16, 2006 Share Posted April 16, 2006 Try this www.gpsmaps.de this guy has maps of the hole lot this is what we are going to load in the Garmin 2010 for morocco this year B) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freeagent Posted April 16, 2006 Author Share Posted April 16, 2006 garmin 2010.. thats a bit flash... at least you can read the screen OK... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VERY OLD DISCO Posted April 16, 2006 Share Posted April 16, 2006 All I took was a set of TPC (Tactical Pilatage Charts, for air pilots, you know) and a GPS to give Lat, Long. This worked fine, if you get lost ask the man on a donkey, there is always one of them, anywhere. Geoff Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VeryDisco Posted April 17, 2006 Share Posted April 17, 2006 if you get lost ask the man on a donkey, there is always one of them, anywhere. Yes but you have to give him 10 Diram before he'll tell you anything! Enjoy the trip! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freeagent Posted April 17, 2006 Author Share Posted April 17, 2006 Yes but you have to give him 10 Diram before he'll tell you anything! Enjoy the trip! thanks for all your help guy and gals plenty to look at on the interweb while i'm supposed to be studying...! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve_a Posted April 17, 2006 Share Posted April 17, 2006 All I took was a set of TPC (Tactical Pilatage Charts, for air pilots, you know) and a GPS to give Lat, Long.This worked fine, if you get lost ask the man on a donkey, there is always one of them, anywhere. Geoff Don't know if you can still get the TPC maps as a civi, I know I can get them from work if I wanted, and will have to remember them, certainly our GIS in work has TPC for all the areas I've looked at so far, perhaps a quick peek at Morcco might be interesting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
orange rover Posted April 17, 2006 Share Posted April 17, 2006 i've got a gps v + a laptop running ttqv mounted in the range rover for my sahara trips. best solution, laptop cost 150 € from ebay, cool if you can actually see were you are. there are good digital maps available for marokko, either for ttqv or fugawi: ign marokko for ttqv the maps that are available for the garmins are no good, no details, roads are wrong etc. best use the above on a a laptop and download tracks to the gps or use a laptop life. regards orange Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mmgemini Posted April 17, 2006 Share Posted April 17, 2006 [ the maps that are available for the garmins are no good, no details, roads are wrong etc. best use the above on a a laptop and download tracks to the gps or use a laptop life. regards orange So you've used the T4A maps on the Garmin base have you??So how bad are they?? I eat rat poison mike I can cause trouble in an empty house Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
orange rover Posted April 17, 2006 Share Posted April 17, 2006 So you've used the T4A maps on the Garmin base have you??So how bad are they?? depends what you want to use it for. if you want autorouting the base map is complete carp. doesn't work since the gps thinks you are off the road while you are travvelling on a highway. the detailed maps you can load are ok, and autorouting sort of works, but they are still not great. and for long distances you can't load all of the details map, so you have to use the basemap again. for moving map applications we are talking about here (don't think autorouting maps are available for morocco) the garmin maps are not very helpful, they show the roads and thats it. they have the new garmin topo maps coming out, need a colour gps for that and they are ok, but then the display is too small to really use them. but then again i don't think these exist for morocco either. so that leaves you with a pc based programme like fugawi/ttqv/ozi explorer. lots of maps are available for these in digital form + you scan your own and calibrate them (not very hard if the map has a grid on it). that's the setup i use in africa, gps hooked up to an old laptop running ttqv. got maps as well as satellte pictures of all of northern africa. very cool can see where i am switch between maps, follow tracks, look up reference points etc --> great. no messing around with paper maps etc. for europe the navtech vector cards exist, with these you can do autorouting. it works a bit different than the typical navigation system with the sexy female voice telling you were to go (ever thought about why they are female voices? so we finally learn to listen :-)) here you type in your destination and the computer will calculate the route and display it as a track. alle you have to do is follow the line on the screen. works bettern than the garmin autoroute. bought the garmin because of all the features. if i would buy again, would buy the cheapest garmin (like them because they are waterproof, also use it for mountain biking) and hook it up to a pc. got a pentium II running windows 98 in the car and its quite sufficient, so any old laptop will do. regards orange Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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