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Letzte Änderung am 01.01.2010 13:47:44

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Table of content

• My experience with Garmin GPS12
• My experience with Fugawi Moving Map Software
• Emergency call with coordinates
• Exchange of files like digital maps, routes, tracks, ...
• Links

Main purpose for the purchase in 1998 was tracking of speed during inline skating. The GPS12 serves this purpose well: Put in the backpack while skating I can download track data later at home and analyze the speed. See chapter Fugawi below.

Second use is in my car, where I use at the dashboard a cheap standard mobile phone holder self-made GPS cradle. In 2002 after 2 years of duty the cheap standard mobile phone holder broke, most probably because the GPS12 is too heavy compared to state-of-the-art cellular phones.

Both cradles (mobile phone and GPS) are mounted on one back plate that is fitted into one ventilation outlet	The connector for the GPS12 is glued to the acryl glass with an elastic hotmelt, 7808 is located behind the socket

The cradle is made of acrylic glass, bent with hot air to hold the GPS12 at the top and two "fingers" at the bottom. Later support the weight of GPS12. An aluminum bracket holds the GPS12 firmly in place. A plug to supply 8V DC (made of 12V DC with a 7808) and connect to a notebook (used by passengers only!) is glued into the cradle.

Third use: For bike rides:

Meanwhile - after two bad experiences - I use lanyards (thin ropes) to secure both, GPS and HAC, in case the holders fail.

Recording made during bike rides of both instruments (GPS12 and HAC 4) are published at www.MTB-Schwelm.de (English version)

My honest overall experience is: "The GPS12 is a very reliable instrument".
I can only report one bad incident:

"Worst case accident" Saturday, April 6th 2002, during a bike ride through the woods nearby: The Garmin handlebar mount did not hold the GPS due to tiny cracks in the lever of the bracket clip (see red arrows):

The last recordings were:

... and with 39.1 km/h it dropped on a rather rocky soil. The housing opened into two halves and we saw the inner life of GPS12:

Later we tried to switch it on again and to our surprise it worked. All electrical functions including data transfer were O.K..

Disappointing was the Garmin service: Even with a precise description what was broken they asked for 30€ just to make an estimation of total repair costs. Therefore I ordered the GPS12 back and glued the housing myself and mounted a new bracket clip to the back of the GPS12. BTW: Though otherwise stated on the packaging of the handlebar mount, it is possible to remove it from the GPS12. The bracket clip was 2 ½ years in service before this accident happened.
Even the new clip installed after this accident already shows tiny cracks after one year in service

Functions of Fugawi:
Please refer to http://fugawi.com/docs/navframe.html, I don't want to repeat what is already on the web.
Still missing in Fugawi are graphics of speed versus distance and vs. time. Therefore I created an Excel file:

Analyze with EXCEL:
Download with right mouse click TRACK_Fugawi3 (300kB), save it to your hard disk, run the self-extracking file, it will result in an one MB Excel file. Start this file with Microsoft Excel.
Instructions for use are in the far left tab / table "Instructions". Sample printout see below:

If GPS precision is poor ("poor coverage"), track may contain points "off track" resulting in longer distances within the same time and thus in very high speed. I'm quit sure, I was not 77km/h fast on my bike in the woods!

Therefore I made this emergency plan (German only,sorry), and trained my wife, who is not mountainbiking with us, to print a map with the place of accident marked. This shall be handed to the rescue team.
Whoever wants to translate this plan and adapt to his case may use this Word doc as tempate emergency plan in Word.

Thank God, we never needed it until now.

In Summer 2003 I called police and ambulance team again, there was some "improvement":

The police uses the system CEBIUS. This one can show the position of the cusor on the map in Gauß-Krüger-coordinates. It shall be possible to key in coordinates directly in Gauß-Krüger-coordinates and in format degree, minutes and seconds. Comparison of a known position prooved, that CEBIUS also uses WGS 84. The only remaining problem is training of the stuff.
The fire brigade and ambulance car team use a different system that displays the cursor position in UTM.

If you are interested to exchange files, please contact me per email at Hendrik.Woelper@web.de

GPS equipment in Schwelm: www.out-fit.de

Geocaching:
For Germany: www.geocaching.de
World wide: www.geocaching.com www.navicache.com

Maps: www.brillig.com/geocaching

GPS and PDA cradles for offroad use are available at