Hand held GPS unit for walk verification

Post by **rhino49** » 05 Jun 2007, 21:34

I recently purchased a Garmin Etrex Vista hand held GPS unit to use as an aid in off track hill walking, and decided to take it out on my delivery route to familiarise myself with it's capabilities before ditching my compass and going hitech.

What a wonderful piece of kit - it first of all confirmed what the much vaunted Pegasus program has always insisted - that my walk should take me one and a half hours less than it actually does (mobile time 2 hours 34 minutes) !!!

It also informed me that, in addition to the mobile time of approx two and a half hours (Pegasus' time allocated for the route) - it showed an "idle" time of slightly over one and a half hours, being the time spent at letterboxes, bag drops etc, bringing the time up to what I usually take i.e. about four hours on a busy day. This unit separates mobile and idle time very accurately and also shows mobile speed and overall speed for complete walk.

Obviously Pegasus only shows the time taken to walk the route ( approx 8.2 miles, give or take the odd driveway in my case) and doesn't allow for the fact that we are delivering mail while we do it. If anyone else has a similar unit, try it out and see what results you get.

I have repeated the exercise and am certain that Pegasus was named as such because we are expected to be flying horses

side_door · Post by **side_door** » 06 Jun 2007, 14:22

How much does this thing cost?

I wonder if we couldn't get one of these things out of the first line fix?

Post by **TrueBlueTerrier** » 06 Jun 2007, 14:25

wow quite cheap on Amazon - Â£68.79

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000 ... m_10006-21

Post by **rhino49** » 06 Jun 2007, 15:30

The model I used was a Garmin Etrex Vista - expect to pay about Â£225 + mapping software
Lower priced models won't give the analysis breakdowns you might need - but getting one out of first line fix is a great idea.
Got mine from a place in "Gods own country" cos I like walking there and my wife is from Keighley.

http://www.blokesstuff.com/ProductsByCa ... egoryID=19
Based in Huddersfield and very helpful

side_door · Post by **side_door** » 06 Jun 2007, 16:46

Thanks for the info chaps.

I would be nice just for once to see the first line fix actually spent on something -- I'm past caring what it is. Just to see the bastards spend some money.

Post by **rhino49** » 06 Jun 2007, 18:39

We are having our ex smoking room sanitized and redecorated after july 1st out of first line fix, to provide a quiet refuge from the pool table, football table, table tennis table and worst of all Big Al and Little Adams performance tables on the big screen in superduper videoramascope. Oh I do look forward to eating my gruel in peace before leaving the workhouse.