Blank Slate - Designing the Best Overlanding Navigation "system".

[RDinNHand AZ]

I spend time in the deep Sonoran Desert of AZ, in New England, Canada, and everywhere in between. I rely on an iPad with Cellular. Not that I pay the cell service but because iPads w/o cell do NOT have a GPS chip. I use the app “Topo Maps” from the Apple App store ($7.99). No subscription needed. <https://topomapsapp.com> I download all the topographic maps I want free by hot-spotting from my iPhone or home based WiFi and then everything works w/o cell service in the desert. No automotive GPS has all the desert roads BTW. Topo’s have the advantage of lots of interesting stuff to see that doesn’t show on any other maps. I hike and the topo’s are on my phone to aid my exploring. On road I use WAZE for it’s user feedback and warnings and contribute to that too.
My current iPad is about 6 years old and they are about $200 on eBay. Use the extra $9792 to travel! LOL

 

[spressomon]

Maybe its just me, but the biggest hurdle for all the software based topo map systems on cell phone architecture (pads included) I've used (many) still require downloading of map tiles where you anticipate to travel. That works fine when you KNOW where you're headed but too often, for the manner we often explore, we don't KNOW where we're headed and often run past the downloaded tiles.

Not being too much of a techie, I don't understand why all of North America 1:24000 can be uploaded from a USB drive or?...similar to how NG Topo, Lowrance, etc., used to work.

 

[Photobug]

Maybe its just me, but the biggest hurdle for all the software based topo map systems on cell phone architecture (pads included) I've used (many) still require downloading of map tiles where you anticipate to travel.

I was concerned about that as well, but I just played around with my newer pad an Android tablet. After downloading a bunch of specific maps for areas i was planning on going to visit, I picked a group of maps on GAIA. I have all 10 western states covered with enough details to get me where i need in under 10GB of data. Since my pad has a 256GB external hard drive, I figure I could carry all of North America and likely South America just in case I got lost or ended up in Southern Chile unexpectedly.