• Forum server maintanace Friday night.(around 7PM Centeral time)
    Website will be off line for a short while.

    You may need to log out, log back in after we're back online.

Garmin etrex 10

Bill_Ace_350

Elite Member
Joined
Apr 26, 2011
Messages
1,326
Location
Upstate New York
My old GPS is dead.....


I don't need anything fancy, so I was thinking about a basic Garmin etrex 10.

Look at the user manual, but couldn't find the answer to my question -

Can this unit display coordinates in UTM or MGRS, or just lat/long?

I have 1:50000 and 1:25000 maps of areas, and I prefer the MGRS or UTM.

Thanks
 
Impressed so far.

Thoroughly impressed with the Garmin Etrex 10.

Basic unit, but has all the functionality I need.

It was purchased from Amazon for $89.00, as a replacement for an older broken model.

Plan is to use it for hunting, fishing, detecting, and to locate my actual property markers.

The unit is about the size of an old flip phone and uses 2 AA batteries.


The unit can be operated in many, many languages, and can utilize many different map datums and coordinate systems. (I set mine up for Polish just to see how rusty I am!)

I prefer UTM and MGRS over other systems, and the unit processes both.

It can operate GPS alone, or GPS and GLONASS with WAAS and EGNOS.

Mine is set fo GPS and GLONASS with WAAS and EGNOS, and consistlently get positional data within 2 meters.

The unit is easy to operate, the menus easily navigable and understandable. It is waterproof and seems to be very easy on batteries.

It ships with a usb cable for connecting to a computer.

It came preloaded with geocache waypoints, but I deleted those to free up memory.

The preloaded map is very basic, and the ability to load other maps is limited due to memory, but very possible.

Not a problem for me, as I use the GPS in conjuntion with a physical map, normally 1:12500, 1:25000 or 1:50000.

I pulled up my property maps on the county GIS site, used the sites tools to return the coordinates of the locations for the corners of my parcels, in LAT/LONG decimal format.

I then copied these coordinates to a spreadsheet and assigned a recognizeable name to each point.

Once that was done, I opened Google Earth and searched for the individual LAT/LONG coordinates, and once located, placed a marker on the map and saved the information to "My places".

When that was completed I exported the data to a "KML" file and used an on-line application to convert the file to GPX format, readable by Garmin, and uploaded these to my GPS as waypoints.

Too easy!

I ended up downloading two other free applications, GPSBabel, and EasyGPS, which are tools for managing waypoints, converting between datums and coordinate systems etc.

I then imported files created in these applications to google earth, and my data was seamlessly transferred to the map.

It is definitely another piece of equipment to carry, but weighs next to nothing and fits easily in a pocket or attaches to a lanyard.

In my opinion, much easier to utilize than a cell phone application.

That's my 2 cents anyway.

If you have any questions, please ask.
 
Back
Top Bottom