GPS Mapping Through Africa - How Much Memory??
 

Hi All,

I will be using a Garmin GPSmap 60CSx with the Tracks4Africa GPS maps on our overland trip from the UK to Cape Town. I am hoping to log detailed tracks and waypoints for our trip and am looking at the options available for additional memory.

Should I go for one card with the maximum memory possible card (2GB) or should I get 4 or 5 cards that are 256MB or 512MB? That way I would have spares and it would also not allow me to rely on one card only meaning that if it goes wrong I lose everything?

Any comments and advice would be appreciated.

Thanks!!

Bruce
onewaysouth.com

I'd believe two 1 GB cards should be sufficient.They aren't that expensive. Never had any trouble whatsoever with these cards yet.

At any point of your trip you can connect your GPS to a computer in an internet cafe and send route back home as backup (ZIP greatly compresses the logs for e-mailing). As 60CS has option in menu to work as USB mass storage device, it will be presented to the computer as usual disk from where you can copy logged tracks in GPX format (if you have enabled track logging to the card). Not as easy with your waypoints, though, but these are saved in internal memory of GPS and not on cards anyway. As prices of cards are very low nowadays I'd take 2 gig one (avoid accelerated Sandisk Ultra II cards as they are known not to work in this GPS device).

I use the 2Gb cards.

The 'only' probelm I've had once - the GPS did not 'see' the card at some time during the day - previously ok. I took the card out and put it back in .. gps now sees the card. !@#$$# ... Later when downloading the tracks .. some were mssing .. took the card out of the GPS and put it in a card read - all tracks now avalible.

Whatever you do - take more than one card with the maps on it .. T4A is less than 100Mb, take Island Oafs Morrotopo too .. still less than 100Mb IIRC ..

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Daily logs are fairly small .. say 300kb each day (set on most) ... or less depending on how much you do in a day.