I'd like to get a GPS system for tracking race performance and for marking the track of long (2 t0 3 hour) cruises. These requirements are somewhat different to the requirements for speed sailing.
Can anyone recommend a GPS system that would be suitable?
How much would a GPS system cost? Are they available 2nd hand?
Can the data from the GPS be plotted onto an aerial photo of the course?
all of these things can be done on a garmin 101 so i'm guessing that the navi ($120+) will also do the same.
the advantages with a full sytem for a boat ($600 and up) is that you can get depth soundings, and the ability to overlay charts. also the screen is bigger and can be in colour.
Whitworths have display cases full of gps stuff.
after using the cheaper gps system on a 40' cruiser i'd say unless you spend big the gps stuff designed for this purpose is really not much better than the portable units we all use for speed sailing.
Hi Yagon
I'm using an 8 year old Garmin eTrex. It doesn't have doppler readout so it's not qualified for GPSSS but by downloading the tracks into GPStoWin you can save them as a .GPX file. Once you have the gpx file you can import it into any of the performance programs and they will give you what ever data you need. You can even drag & drop the gpx file into Google Earth and your track will be displayed over the satellite photo of the area. This info applied to just about any hand held unit that can download tracks.
Jethrow
The track plotting part sounds like the important bit, if you want decent resolution of tracks whilst underway including zoom functions then none of the handhelds are suitable. Contact Johnny Appleseed or Whitworths, they will sort you out. Any downloadable unit can then be transferred to course photo.
Game boats for one update their systems regularly, so might be worth a try in those circles for second hand.
Thanks for all the feedback - there's some good suggestions that I'll look at.
Re the plotting on an aerial photo - I meant after the sailing session, not real time.
Thanks again.
What's the best way to change Navi GT-11 .sbn files to .gpx files for importing into Google Earth? I've downloaded GPSBabel, but this doesn't appear to read .sbn files.
Still having a few problems. Using .sbn files in Realspeed, I don't seem to be able to 'Save as' into any format (incl .gpx), I just get the message "Cannot save to SIRF binary format. Please select a different format" and trying to open .sbn files in GPSAR causes and error window to appear.
I've got a few .gpx files and they open in Google Earth, but I'm hoping to convert saved .sbn files into .gpx files so I can veiw them in GE.
In RealSpeed, use "File->Export".
To use the sbn files in GPSAR, you need to use the "GPSARpro" version.
OK, thanks everyone. Got it working now. Problem appears to have been "C:DevRSpeedReleaseData\" automatically appearing in front of the file name when trying to export the file. Once I deleted this the file saved as a .gpx file fine. Whereas before, with that addition to the file name, it was saying "pathway does not exist".
Cheers
Dave
