GPS Devices Life

Extrex Legend - Excellent GPS - Garmin eTrex Legend® Handheld GPS Receiver July 2001 I decided to take the plung and get a gps. My requirements were that it must be able to load up maps an...

INCREDIBLE TECHNOLOGY - Garmin eTrex Legend® Handheld GPS Receiver Until I got this unit I had owned a Magellan. It was a second generation generic GPS. At the time it was a pret...

How Cool Is This Thing? Very Cool! Cool as Barrow, Alaska in February. No hiker, boater, traveler or “gadget-geek” should be without one.

The Legend is the mid to high-end model of the Garmin Etrex series of GPS receivers. As such, it has many additional features that the basic model doesn’t have. Costing about double the price of the basic model (after rebate savings), I think it is well worth the additional money.

Both have 12 channels which means that they can receive data from as many as 12 different satellites at a time. The more satellites, the higher the accuracy. Four satellites are required to provide good position and elevation data.

The Legend is capable of storing up to 20 routes with 50 waypoints each, whereas the basic model will only store one route. A route is a pre-planned path that you can draw in the system. It also allows 10 saved tracks with 250 waypoints each. A track is a path that the system records as you move.

The Legend also has 8MB of detailed map data storage, allowing transfer from GARMIN MapSource CD-ROMs. This is a great feature that alone is pretty much worth the extra price! It comes with a basic basemap already installed. Mine has “America’s Roads & Highways” which features pretty much all of the major roads in the US. Residential subdivisions appear as blank areas on the map. Uploading certain MapSource data can fill-in these blank areas nicely! As I am planning a trip to Ecuador, I bought the MapSource WorldMap CD which provides basic mapping of major roads and rivers for all over the world! The 8MB allows me to upload pretty much all of western Europe (from west half of Poland). That is 28 grids. Since there are considerably fewer roads in the middle east, which means each map grid contains less data, which means I can upload pretty much all of the middle east as well. This includes the entire Saudi peninsula, all of Turkey, Israel, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, north eastern Egypt, 53 map grids in that region. The MapSource CDs are an additional cost. I bought the WorldMap new on eBay for about $60. Other maps include topographic, points of interest, European road maps to name a few. Different MapSource CDs work with different models. Such information can be found on Garmin’s Web site.

The MapSource software makes route plotting so much easier. Routes can then be uploaded to the Legend. Tracks on the Legend can be downloaded and saved to the computer, and then can be uploaded back to the unit again. 8MB of map data will take about 20 minutes to transfer using the serial cable. You can also get a USB cable which would allow much faster data transfer. Routes, tracks and waypoints are transferred very quickly, even through serial transfer.

The Legend is WAAS capable, which means that it can receive more accurate data from certain satellites. As great as standard GPS technology is today, it is not quite accurate enough to safely guide an airliner down to the runway. WAAS technology is being developed to do just that! As the technology improves, so will the accuracy of the Legend.

The unit features a trip computer page. Data such as current speed, average speed, average MOVING speed, maximum speed, trip timer, and trip odometer, heading, location, elevation, vertical speed, estimated time of arrival and estimated time en-route are just SOME of the 32 different data options that you can display. You can choose up to eight options to be displayed on the page at any one time. Some of these are actually displayed on other pages. The entire list of data fields with their definitions can be found in the manual which can be downloaded in PDF format from the Garmin Web site.

The navigation page resembles a compass and also displays any two of the data fields available in the trip computer page. You can switch between a bearing pointer like a simple regular compass, or a course pointer similar to a pilot’s horizontal situation indicator which is used to help keep him on the desired course! While I would never suggest that a pilot replace his navigation avionics with an Etrex Legend, he could (with much practice) in fact use it in a dire emergency such as an electrical failure.

It seems that Garmin has thought of every type of navigation possible and incorporated it all into the Legend. You can choose between true North, magnetic or grid and you can even enter the magnetic variation for your location. Distance can be shown in nautical, statute, metric and yards. Headings can be displayed in degrees, mils and cardinal letters. Position format and map datum options are simply too numerous to mention.

The unit also has a backlighting for use in the dark and features different options for how long it stays lit including “stays on”. The Legend is rated at IPX7 waterproof, which means it can be submerged at 1 meter for 30 minutes, which makes it ideal for boaters. Its rugged design allows shock up to 6 Gs.

With all of the praises I have for this device, there are a couple of caveats. It requires line-of-sight communications with the satellites meaning that it doesn’t work in big cities where tall buildings block the skyline. It also has problems indoors like in the shopping mall and parking garages. Spelunkers would pretty much find this device useless. I have yet to test it in the woods. Also, the device requires both hands to operate to “Click Stick”. This does not affect toggling between the various pages, but does place limitations on functions such as marking waypoints, routes and changing various settings.

Gadget-geeks will enjoy it as a cool new toy. Pilots can use it to augment their navigation equipment or to save their lives in a pinch. Shoppers can use it to find where they parked their car. Just don’t park it in a parking garage!

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