Thank you for the tremendous response. I had 15 replies! These units are
obviously very popular now. Below is a brief summary.
There seem to be a few models that fit the bill. The Eagle Explorer, the
Garmin 12XL and the Magellan GPS 2000XL are the newer models, with the
Trimble ScoutMaster being slightly older. The Garmin 12XL is a later and
superior model than the Garmin 38 and Garmin 45XL. Note that Birds
Australia in Melbourne will soon be selling the Magellan units.
The better units are 12 channel units (which means they locate faster and
are less likely to lose their locks to the satellites). They all have
about 30 to 100 metre accuracy which is the best that can be achieved due
to the US DoD SA (Selective Availability) option, unless you have
differential GPS (i.e. a fixed base station to calculate corrections) which
is not applicable for this application. They have the ability to connect
to a PC to upload/download coordinates, but this is not a feature that I
need. They can store 200 to 1000 locations. The battery life seems to be
a useful consideration with units varying from 7 to 24 hours. The unit
should preferably display the remaining battery life. Water resistance and
water proofing is another feature that you should consider. Some units
display the sunrise and sunset times for the current location. A couple
have an odometer so you know how far you have walked!!
There is a lot of information about GPS and the available units on the
internet, although not very much specific to Australia. The
sci.geo.satellite-nav USENET newsgroup is the main discussion group.
In general, the reviews available on the WWW use the Garmin 12Xl as the
standard, but recommend the Eagle Explorer over the Garmin 12XL, unless
battery life (6.5 vs 10 hours) and water resistance (rain proof vs water
proof) are critical factors.
Some of the web sites are :
http://powerup.com.au/~galaw/gps.htm
http://www.garmin.com
http://www.gps4fun.com/main_eag.html#Explorer
http://www.eaglegps.com
http://www.alloutdoors.com/magellan
http://www.trimble.com
http://www.bridge.de/~tom/garmin.htm
http://www.lowe.co.uk/gps12xl.html
http://www.vancouver-webpages.com/peter/eagle1.txt
Thanks again for the information. Now I have to decide whether to buy now
or next year ....
Frank
|
