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Oregon 450T for Wildland Fire Application

Started by speakt2006, July 09, 2012, 02:02:11 PM

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speakt2006

Hi all!

I'm a new owner of an Oregon 450t and had a couple questions regarding Topo and routing maps for use in the wildland fire setting.  I just got back from a deployment in Colorado, which I had loaded the 24K Colorado Topo 2011 map from this website.  The map worked great and was very detailed and was able to mark all my "safe zones" and helicopter landing zones I needed for the incident.  The one thing I noticed though was when I tried to route myself to a waypoint, I got the "Maps do not have routable roads in this area" message.  I was wondering what recommendations you all have as far as having 24K Topo and routable back roads (USFS, county roads, and jeep roads) without having to buy Garmin's 24K Topos for all areas of the U.S., which would get incredibly expensive since I can ship all over the U.S. to fight fires.

I was thinking I could download City Nav and enable the 24K Topo for the area I was heading to, and the two could run concurrently allowing me to be able to route between waypoints on a 24K scale map.  Of course when I called Garmin, they said that running both maps at the same time is not recommended and that I would have to switch between enabling/disabling one or the other.  Thus leaving me either running City Nav (in the back country, if that works well...) or 24K Topo without routing.  I find that hard to believe since "COTOPO11, My Trails, TOPO U.S. 100K, Digital Globe, and USGS Quads" are all enabled at the same time.  Why couldn't I run a 24K Topo and City Nav (if that's a good choice) at the same time? 

That leads me to my other question; is City Nav even a good choice?  Garmin, of course, recommends I buy the 24K Topo's for every region I'm going to work in.  Not only is it money driven (I think), they say their 24K Topo's are routable.  They also claim that City Nav "Should" have the back roads I'm looking for and "Should" work for what I need.  Before I drop $60-$80 on City Nav alone, I was hoping someone could offer more insight than "should."

Thanks!

Boyd

You can view the Garmin maps online and see if they have the roads you want. The roads on the 24k topo maps are indeed routable, and they also contain the same rich POI data as City Navigator (gas stations, stores, restaurants, etc). To view the map, find the DVD version of the product you want here: https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?cID=255&fKeys=FILTER_SERIES_TOPOUS24K,FILTER_REGION_NORTHAMERICA

Click on that map, then click on the coverage tab. You should see a link for the detailed interactive map. For example, this is the Southwest 24k topo that includes Colorado:

http://www8.garmin.com/cgi-bin/mapgen/webmap.cgi?p=24051713&u=1&v=0&cp=4B21D85AFEFD585A&z=2&w=600&h=450&d=2&rz=0&k=1&sc=1


You can also view City Navigator online and compare the road coverage:

http://www8.garmin.com/cgi-bin/mapgen/webmap.cgi?p=172359681&u=1&v=0&cp=4F8EAFF2EA60CF70&z=2&w=600&h=450&d=2&rz=0&k=1&sc=1

It is possible to use City Navigator along with a third party map, but only IF the author has created the map in such a way that it appears on top. You would not want to use City Navigator along with the Garmin 24k topo, because they are both routable and that might cause problems. If you did enable them both however, City Navigator would hide the 24k topo.

Seldom

I've found that City Navigator ( CNNANT) has pretty good coverage of FS and county roads (checked these in AZ and UT).  What you may want to do is see if a "transparent" topo is available from GPSfileDepot and run that on top of CNNANT.  http://www.gpsfiledepot.com/maps/view/310/ is an example for CO.  Transparent maps show on top of non-transparent ones.

If you find yourself in AZ,NV,UT,CA,NM,or western CO http://www.gpsfiledepot.com/maps/view/518/ has routable roads and trails.  It's not transparent, and coverage is not complete for any state.  It covers a rectangle from 118 W to 108 W, and 34 N to 40 N. CNNANT is more reliable than the data I used for things like access to hospitals, but if you are fighting a fire in a national park,  this map will have routable trails that won't show on CNNANT

Keep safe.


maps4gps

#3
1. Thanks for coming to help fight the wildfires.

2.  I second Boyd's and Seldom's suggestions.

3.  As the name says, City Navigator is primarly intended for navigation in cities - address finding, business POI's, routing.  Besides not having contours, the hydro/water data is very basic.  In one area we were 4x4ing in, the leader's GPSr with CN showed a continous trail and side trails (legal with FS numbers), while the file I recently obtained from the FS only showed a few discontinous segments. 

4. I do not know how Garmin creates their contours; however, USGS has made substantial improvements in the elevation grid data we use to create contours in many non-western States in the three years since Garmin released version 2.0 of their 24k topos.

jbensman

Maps have draw order.  Other than transparent maps like My Trails, only the enabled map with the highest draw order will be displayed.  Almost always City Navigator has the highest draw order.  So to see other topo maps (unless the are transprent like My Topos Transparent CO TOpo), you have to disable CN.

Seldom

IIRC default drawpriority is 25.  You get that if you don't specify a drawpriority.  Copying Boyd's idea, I've set the drawpriority on my Desert Southwest mapset to 31.  It's easy to do if your map editor uses a header template, which anybody who uses a Dictionary must.  Can anybody see a downside to making non-transparent non-routable maps with a drawpriority of 31 so that they can overlay an active CNNANT?  The idea would be to access the routing and search features of the CNNANT, but have access to the higher quality hydro, topo, and possibly property data on the overlaid topo.

speakt2006

Thanks all for the responses!  I didn't realize that there were transparent/non-transparent maps, so that explains why Garmin was saying I couldn't run two maps together.  I'll try running a transparent Topo with CityNav and see how that works.  I also didn't know there was a draw order to maps, so I need to figure that one out and see if I can make all this come together.

Thanks again!

Seldom

I'm pretty sure jbensman means DrawPriority.  Draw order applies to the order at which the polygons (area features) draw in the map.  It's defined in the TYP file, and you'd need to re-compile it in order to change it. 

maps4gps

FYI - there are not many transparent topo mapsets available.

Transparent mapsets are usually created for specialized data items which are usually not included in normal mapsets.

Seldom

Ideally, a transparent topo meant to overlay CNNANT wouldn't include roads, boundaries, or other features (except hydro) shown on CNNANT.  This would avoid conflicts caused by duplication.