Kojack

Can I use Garmin maps with oruxmaps?

OutWestJeep

So, funny story. Wife and I were out on an expedition yesterday in national forest land. Had a good time roasted some hotdogs...got late, i.e. dark. We knew where we were, but didnt want to backtrack all the way out and the jeep nav system was showing the "roads" so we decided to punch in "go home" and let it navigate us out. The route it chose seemed familiar, but we hadnt been that way but only a few times, and not in the dark. Looking back, we know where it took a wrong turn, but we decised to go against our instinct and follow it anyway......big mistake! We finally got out, 4 hours later after traveling down two-tracks that lead to cattle water tanks and then disappeared into nothing more than a cattle/game trail. After a while, and countless turns in the dark, you end up having to "trust" the nav system and hope it eventually gets you out. The jeep nav system got us close enough to civilization that we picked up a signal on my phone and I was able to use backcountry navigator to get us out because the jeep nav system kept taking us on huge loops! Unfortunatly I hadnt preloaded topos for that area, because we had no intention of being there, so I needed a signal to get topos to load. God only knows how much forest and ranch land we traveled over before getting out to a paved road way the heck on the other side of the forest from where we went in.

OutWestJeep

My point of the previous post is Backcountry Navigator, $10 for the pro app can save your butt! Just be sure to have all you topos downloaded and saved on your phone for any area you think you may ever end up being in so that when you dont have cell service to update your map you already have it loaded and the gps will show you where you are.

Sahara_Maverick

Not sure. Did not try it yet. If Garmin uses a proprietary file system, most likely not.


What phone do you use with Backcountry Navigator? I once tried a GPS app on my iPhone but it was useless where no AT&T network was available. It seems the iPhone's "GPS" needs a network signal to work and does not work by itself.

jeepguy553

Once you download it to your phone you have all of the topos and aerials. I used it yesterday and the image quality was pretty darn good down to about 100m scale.

Wrangled

Topomaps was just what I have been looking for. Thank you grundiesel.