Advice on Nav and comms for Baja Trip

[danmedeiros]

Hi Everyone,

Could use this community's advice regarding the most streamlined solution for emergency communications and navigation to some very remote areas of Baja. I am a former merchant marine officer and have a college degree in navigation. I'm very comfortable with all things nav but the hardware has changed dramatically in recent years and the tools I used at sea aren't really applicable to the cab of my land cruiser.

What I need for the trip is some sort of satellite messenger (delorme in reach), and either a stand alone GPS unit or a tablet running apps. I was wondering if any of the delorme or new garmin in reach products would stream position data to an ios device. This would be my dream solution as I could use a cheeper iPad mini for nav. If this isn't possible I guess i could buy a garmin glo but I was hoping to keep things as simple as possible.

I also see that garmin, since acquiring delorme, is coming out with their version of the inreach. It's way more money. Is it worth getting the garmin version?

 

[leucadiacruiser]

I'm heading down next week myself - I'm still using SPOT until it crashes then I can upgrade to some DeLorme-like device. As far as a tablet running apps I've used Gaia GPS on my iPad for the last three years and it's worked flawlessly.

 

[dlh62c]

I've been using a Garmin GPSmap 62s handheld unit in Mainland Mexico.

You can't beat a unit that can show you where your at, point you with directions to where you want to go and if you have tracking turned on and displayed where you've been, all at the same time.

 

[Flyinbronco]

http://leadnavsystems.com/

I'm still researching this system but it looks promising to me.

 

[shane4x4]

I'm a big fan of the DeLorme for 2-way Nav, and according to my research it should stream location data to your iOS device. I'll have to get one & test it out =)

I've literally tried every single nav app for both iOS & Android over the last 3 years, much of that in preparation for my work as a consultant with Hema Maps. So naturally I use Hema Explorer (http://hema.li/explorer) 90% of the time when planning & tracking off-road.

While Hema hasn't produced Baja-Specific maps just yet, the global layers in the app (Here Terrain & Thunderforest Outdoors) use OSM data so I think they'll have useful information.

I've done a little research and it's possible to find GeoPDF files at 1:50k scale for Mexico, but it would take quite a few of those to plan your trip =)

Cheers,
Shane

Hi Everyone,

Could use this community's advice regarding the most streamlined solution for emergency communications and navigation to some very remote areas of Baja. I am a former merchant marine officer and have a college degree in navigation. I'm very comfortable with all things nav but the hardware has changed dramatically in recent years and the tools I used at sea aren't really applicable to the cab of my land cruiser.

What I need for the trip is some sort of satellite messenger (delorme in reach), and either a stand alone GPS unit or a tablet running apps. I was wondering if any of the delorme or new garmin in reach products would stream position data to an ios device. This would be my dream solution as I could use a cheeper iPad mini for nav. If this isn't possible I guess i could buy a garmin glo but I was hoping to keep things as simple as possible.

I also see that garmin, since acquiring delorme, is coming out with their version of the inreach. It's way more money. Is it worth getting the garmin version?