Magellan Topography Software

[+SandyEggoGuy]

I starting to do caching in the rural hill country in San Diego. I usually print out the topo on line and use that. Is the megellan topo worth buying I have a megallan I can use it with and a capable Pc.

[+Moose Mob]

moving to GPS stuff

[+embra]

I think the topo maps are pretty good. You can look at them for the area you are interested in with previewer on the Magellan web site.

 

You didn't specify which Magellan model you have, so be sure to check out the compatibility table on the site.

[+BadAndy]

I couldn't imagine my gps without topo. Idaho has a good deal of topography however.

[+SandyEggoGuy]

have the explorist 210 and it's considered compability. Appreciate the responds.

[Fenrus]

I am new to GPS and am having trouble getting started with a new exporist 600.

The basemap is not very good so I ordered a the 3D topo from Magellan. It loads into the PC, but I can not bring it up as the PC will not recognize the third disk when I try to run program. Anyone had similiar problem.

[+embra]

I am new to GPS and am having trouble getting started with a new exporist 600.

The basemap is not very good so I ordered a the 3D topo from Magellan. It loads into the PC, but I can not bring it up as the PC will not recognize the third disk when I try to run program. Anyone had similiar problem.

Lots of people. It sounds like there was a "bad run" recently with their CD publisher. You should contact Magellan about exchanging the disk.

[Fenrus]

I did and Thales Navigation sent me another, but had the same results.

[Fenrus]

I did and Thales Navigation sent me another, but had the same results. Can I download a good topo from the computer without this program?

[+embra]

If you want topo maps on your 600, you pretty much need this program to work for you.

 

Are you having difficulty running the program specifically, or doing the installation?

 

edit: spellig

Edited December 14, 2005 by embra

[+Team Chevelle]

Note that, from what I understand, the 3rd disc is the one protected with the funky copy protection -- which is NOT compatible with all CDROM/DVDROM drives. I'd keep talking with Magellan about this -- it should be a KNOWN issue since other companies using the same copy protection are having similar problems and have had for a while now.

 

- John...

[+Klemmer]

Back to SandyEggoGuy's original question: On my Meridian, the uploaded Topo maps (MapSend Topo) are great. Wouldn't hike the SoCal mountains without them. With a 256MG SD card, there is room for 3 or 4 states, a couple Worldwide Basemaps (another good investment if you travel outside the US and plan to cache). Still leaves plenty of SD card space for lots of 500 Wpt chunks of caches & benchmarks, and various tracks.

 

You guys are starting to scare me with all the Explorist problems.... my Meridian has been great, and better keep working a while yet......

[+SandyEggoGuy]

Well I went and brought the Topo software and WOW what a different it makes. There's is a learnig curve to get the the software to load on a explorist 210, you have to use the megallan conversion. But yesterday seeing a cache was only 600ft way , but seeing the elevation was 350 higher, made me a believer. I would recommend anyone to upgrade from the baseline mapping equipment. I was able to load all San Diego, Orange and some of LA county, it was only about 6megs. You definitely have to sort out the rest., bars, gas stations and such or it clusters the screen.

[+BadAndy]

The 3rd disk error seems to be pretty widespread. I was told by Thales tech support that the problem was with their "burn vendors" equipment not beine setup properly. I was sent a replacement set of disks that had the same problem. I finally got some help on how to bypass the "look for disk 3 at startup" issue altogether.

[OGBO]

The topo software on both Magellan and Garmin has some good and bad points. In both cases, how well it fits the real terrain is highly variable. Both use the USGS DEM (Digital Elevation Model) files and do an interpolating procedure to draw the contour lines (different algorithms for each, so they do not match each other, nor do they match USGS quads or real terrain). Both use a set of vector files for road, trail, political boundary, river, lake and ocean shore, and other linear features, but from different sources. With the linear features, zooming past a certain point shows the feature to be segmented straight lines. In some locations (Alaska, along the Dalton Highway, for example), the displayed location can be a mile or more off. In other areas, particularly urban areas, it is spot on.

 

The contouring of each is pretty good in areas of not much complexity or relief (Nebraska, for example). In other areas (my locale on the San Francisco Peninsula, the Sierra, Colorado Rockies, New Hampshire), I have found the contours to be very wrong. I was out yesterday in Russian Ridge Open Space Preserve and found a smooth, broad ridge on the displays (had a Garmin 60CS and a Magellan 400), slightly different in each case, but with little resemblance to the actual pair of sharp ridges with a deep and steep gully in between (the cache I was locating was just off the trail in the gully).

 

In sum, I find the topo maps on both the Garmin and Magellan to be useful, but in no way real substitutes for a real USGS quad. I use National Geographic's Topo! on my PDA as a good way to carry the real topo maps, or just print them onto waterproof paper. I don't have a GPSR for my new PDA yet, but there is a special on them (hint, hint, nice Christmas present, maybe )

 

I have had no problems with the new Magellan Mapsend Topo 3D USA third disk on either my desktop or laptop. On my cross-continent trip last summer, I loaded topos of the area around 8 state highpoints plus the BSA National Jamboree site plus several backpack areas I planned on onto the 1G SD card for the eXplorist 400 before the trip. Nice, but the printed scans from real quads (from Topo!) were more useful, and much much more accurate.

Edited December 16, 2005 by OGBO

[+OmniCitadel]

i have had problems with my laptop reading the first disk... i fixed this by making a copy of the first disk on my desk top and that worked for getting the software installed. Perhaps this might work for the rest of you if you can beat the copy protections that are on the third disk.

[+SandyEggoGuy]

I had no problems with the third disk, worked fine. I told the guy at REI, about the problem I had heard about the third disk and if I had a problem would I be able to bring it back to them. He assured me if I had a problem bring it back to them. Fortunately I didn't.

[+paulamur]

BadAndy,

 

Can you share about how you bypass the look for 3rd disk issue?