Off Road Navigation Systems

I’ve been spending time off road in Nevada lately. Over the years I’ve covered much of the state in Jeeps and other 4Wheel drive vehicles and I’d like to devote a little space to off road safety, and offroad navigation in particular. This is Part 1 of that discussion. As an initial observation, there is a surprising lack of good off road navigation systems out there. Out of the box solutions, like a specialized Garmin GPS, usually have small screens and limited map capability. On the other hand, something that connects to a satellite from the middle of nowhere is necessary and these types of navigators usually do that. Nevertheless, my vote for the best way to find your way out of a tangle of dirt roads is an iPad. iPads have big screen and unlimited app capability. What they don’t have is GPS. After many hours of research I decided to use an old iPad with the navigation app, GAIA, for the trip that we took last weekend. I paired the iPad with a great device, the Dual Skypro GPS receiver, available on Amazon. This gives iPads GPS capability. In my next post on this subject I’ll discuss the advantages of programs that allow you to use multiple maps at once (like Gaia) and I’ll also tell you more about where to find such maps and what maps seem to be best for Nevada off road use.