The maps Touratech sells are the Russian survey maps made many many years ago. They are great topographical maps. That means they show the land features, which is useful if you plan to go Offroad in an area that hasn’t been developed much in the last 40 years or so. They are great for Africa since it hasn’t developed much and there are very few alternatives.

If you’re driving on roads then other recent road maps would be much better. I imagine Scandinavian countries would have very decent, and recent, maps, so I would get those instead.

The maps come calibrated for Quo Vadis, but you can easily calibrate them for use with other mapping software. All you have to do is define at least 3 points on the map and tell the software their coordinates. You’ll want to pick the 3 points as close to the border of the map as possible and from the grid line intersection to be able to figure out their exact coordinates. The more calibration points the more accurate the calibration will be and therefore the more accurate the waypoints will be. Also needed by the software is the map projection, which is usually written on the map. If not call up the map maker and ask them for it. Simply put the projection is the method used to draw the curved surface of the earth on the flat peace of paper you buy.

If you get paper maps you can easily scan them at any mapping or GIS shop. I would recommend at least 1:500.000 scale maps, but 1:250.000 or better would be best. If the map details and printing isn’t very small then scanning them at 150 dpi would be best.

As I said above, if you’re mainly driving on road then something like Garmin’s Map Source would be best. It contains a lot of roads maps in vector format, which can be uploaded directly to your Garmin GPS. Vector maps use lines and curves to represent roads, no images whatsoever. Other bitmap (images) maps used in Ozi or Quo Vadis cannot be uploaded to your Garmin. Only the waypoint you pick from these maps.

I’m not sure but I don’t think there’s a Mac version of Map Source so you’ll need to use an emulator or something.

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A.B.

OasisPhoto.com – Images from the Magical Sahara.
ShortWheelbase.com – Jeep preparations.

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A.B.
OasisPhoto.com – Images from the Magical Sahara.