GPS Question

[Hawkmoon]

For anyone who has a newer car (or pickup or SUV) with a built-in navigation system: does the GPS report your current position using GPS latitude and longitude, or does it just show your current position as a blip in the center of a constantly scrolling map display?

How about newer models of Magellan road GPS units (not the hand-held hiking type GPS units)?

Thanks

[Nick1911]

For anyone who has a newer car (or pickup or SUV) with a built-in navigation system: does the GPS report your current position using GPS latitude and longitude, or does it just show your current position as a blip in the center of a constantly scrolling map display?

How about newer models of Magellan road GPS units (not the hand-held hiking type GPS units)?

Thanks

The ones I've ridden in are the latter.  The actual lat/long information may be burried somewhere in a menu though, but a pair of numbers isn't very useful for when you're trying to get somewhere on roads. 

[RoadKingLarry]

My 2015 Wrangler shows a scrolling map with a little Jeep icon for your position. Lat, long, elevation, speed and heading can be pulled up a level or two deep in the menu.

[Boomhauer]

Map display. You can get the numbers if you want them usually.

Also the current trend is to connect to your smart phone and use its map software and position data for navigation displayed on the car’s screen. My Silverado does both the built in map and nav database and can also use Apple CarPlay or the android equivalent. Wife’s 2019 Challenger just does the CarPlay type, no built in map.

[Fly320s]

3 cars in my family.  All use the map, not lat/long.

[griz]

I think I've used the nav system on four different brands.  On two of them I could get to the Long-Lat if I wanted to (useful for geocaching for instance) but on all of them the display is a map.  On (I think) most you can choose the display so it's a scrolling map with North up, make it so the direction of travel is up (the map rotates as you turn) and on some you can make a sort of drivers view display so the screen represents, at least to a useful degree, what you are seeing outside.

[Hawkmoon]

A bit of a hijack of my own thread:

What this is all about is advising people on how to determine their location for if/when they have to call for help if they get stuck or their vehicle breaks down. And I'm thinking about in places like on the highway (or off!) in the southwest or plains states, where traffic may be light, exits are far apart, and the only landmarks are expanses of flat terrain. Most people probably don't pay attention to highway mile markers, but if you have a GPS device, in theory you should be able to find out the coordinates of your current location.

I have figured out how to do it in the Google Maps app (it's not "difficult," but it's also not intuitive). I know hiking GPS units display coordinates, but I don't know if the automotive navigation units do. I have an old Tom Tom GPS in my Jeep, and I don't think it allows me to access latitude and longitude. But I'll check on that.

Then I started looking at cell phone apps that might make this easier. I found a free compass app that's very easy to use, but requires the device to have a built-in magnetic compass. My old Samsung Galaxy SIII does -- my current Samsung J3 Eclipse does not. The compass app opens up with a display that includes the latitude and longitude.

Then comes the fun part -- a friend turned me onto an app that's a actually a fairly complete avionics package. We both looked at it because of daydreams about buying or building an ultralight aircraft. Ultralights can only only VFR (Visual Flight Rules) so they don't need (and the weight limitations won't allow) a complete set of expensive gauges and sensors. But this app, installed on a modest tablet, offers maybe 90 percent of the functionality of a modern "glass" cockpit (without any engine gauges or autopilot, of course).

There's a free version (B&W) and a Pro version (color, with the capability to interface with an external sensor module for real-time airspeed and altitude, rather than GPS). I've been playing with the free version. It's overkill for the purpose of finding your location to call for a tow truck, but it's fun to play with.

Looking at their web site, I just discovered that the Pro version is available for free to anyone who has access to US Department of Defence (DoD) and Intelligence Community users. So if anyone out there is military and you want to turn your Yugo into a ground effects aircraft, here's what you need:

http://a-efis.com/downloads  (Scroll down for the GEOINT version)

If any of you are pilots and you'd be willing to download even the free version and try it out in an actual aircraft, I would be very interested to get some field reports on how it performs. It seems like it would make for a great backup system against the possibility of an instrument failure.

[Fly320s]

I looked at that A-EFIS and I won't download it.  It needs access to active GPS to work, but my phone has to be off when I'm flying and I don't normally get a good GPS signal in the plane anyway.

We do have a list of external GPS antennas that we are allowed to use in flight with our Ipads.  If I get one of those, then I'll give the app a try.

[dogmush]

If you are calling a friend on a cell phone, you can share your position with them, and then you get to be a dot on their screen.

If you are calling 911 on a cellphone,  they can pull your position from e911.

Google maps is not the best choice.  Most text message apps can share your position via SMS, or use Glympse.

[griz]

I have figured out how to do it in the Google Maps app (it's not "difficult," but it's also not intuitive).

Most car units will be the same, possible but not obvious.  Combine that with the person calling probably not knowing what a set of coordinates even looks like, and it's going to be difficult to talk them through it.  So you're probably stuck with the "I'm near a white house by the tree" sort of location description.

[RoadKingLarry]

More importantly, how difficult is it to disable the GPS tracking in modern vehicles?
Is it as simple as pulling the fuse for the radio?