Oldmancrash
Adventurer
I just picked up a Samsung Tab A 9.7 non 4G LTE tablet. (Side note ***** I was told by the clerk at best buy that buying a tablet less then 10" Microsoft office was included for free. Any tablet over 10" and it has to be purchased. Not sure right or wrong but thought I would pass that along). My objective for buying a tablet was to be able to use it mounted in my 2000 toyota 4runner for some of my overland adventures. The tablet only has 16gb so I added a 128gb sd card. I believe it was $169 at Best Buy. For several weeks I have been trying to decide what mapping app to buy when I finally picked up a tablet. GAIA or HEMA. Well after reading a ton of reviews and hours of research I went with GAIA. I installed the new app and found out just how easy it was to save maps to hopefully be able to use the GPS without the WIFI assist. I am totally new to this mapping thing so I was not sure if this will work or not without WIFI service. I had a lot of concern also because I found out that after saving a few maps in satellite and USGS Topo format that I had used a LOT of memory. I was down to less then 6gb available (I had not gone through yet and cleaned unnecessary apps out). So a little more searching the tabs and buttons I found out that I could save all my mapping stuff to the SD card. WHOOP WHOOP. Not bad for a tablet/map app rookie.
The following morning I decided to take the tablet with me hunting and see how well the GPS did without WIFI to run the GPS. Up in the middle of nowhere Seeley-Swan valley in Montana there is no cell service or wifi for many miles. I was shocked to open the program and almost that quickly the GPS had zeroed in and locked on 15 of 21 satellites. The map was right where we were. I played around a little and decided to open the saved maps. Not sure why the map was working in the area where we were unless because of me scrolling over the area it auto saves the area. Located the map I had downloaded and we were in business. Everywhere we went on back roads I tested it by running tracks. It worked flawlessly without WIFI assist. Now I am no map professional or even an average user. I dont know a dang thing about map apps. But this program seems pretty easy to use. So if anyone has any easy to use links or advise I sure would like to learn how to use this software a little bit better.
My hope for this thread is to keep updating it as I learn it more and folks jump in and give a helping hand and or advice.
The following morning I decided to take the tablet with me hunting and see how well the GPS did without WIFI to run the GPS. Up in the middle of nowhere Seeley-Swan valley in Montana there is no cell service or wifi for many miles. I was shocked to open the program and almost that quickly the GPS had zeroed in and locked on 15 of 21 satellites. The map was right where we were. I played around a little and decided to open the saved maps. Not sure why the map was working in the area where we were unless because of me scrolling over the area it auto saves the area. Located the map I had downloaded and we were in business. Everywhere we went on back roads I tested it by running tracks. It worked flawlessly without WIFI assist. Now I am no map professional or even an average user. I dont know a dang thing about map apps. But this program seems pretty easy to use. So if anyone has any easy to use links or advise I sure would like to learn how to use this software a little bit better.
My hope for this thread is to keep updating it as I learn it more and folks jump in and give a helping hand and or advice.
