Chartable point-to-point route planning and display system?

[x32792]

Long ago and far away... There were GPS devices and route planning software you could input a series of points identified by latitude and longitude. These points would then produce a series of straight line segments which represented the route you wanted to follow.

Once this data was input into a display-gps signal receiving device, you could see both your current location and the route you wanted to follow displayed on street and/or topo maps.

You'd mark the important stuff like where to turn and such....You could add points to make your desired route more comforting to the trails, paths or streets you wanted to travel...Surely, this must have been the golden age of off road navigation.

Now that off-road navigation seems to have become such a niche of a niche market, all I see are Soccer Mom Garmin devices with Auto-Routing (or which default to Auto Routing)...Stuff that melts down off road, shows you multiple magenta lines to follow and tries to get you back on the nearest paved road where you belong.

Something like the old Garmin 276C comes to mind....

Anyone out there found a simple, affordable, planning, direct routing, current location showing set up and display system? On Window or Mac?

Thank you in advance for sharing...

:snorkel:

 

[dms1]

I just upgraded from the 276c to the Garmin Montana 650, I don't know if that is affordable to you, but it doesn't cost much more than the 276c did and has all the desired newer features and enhancements. I was actually going to go to a PC based unit once my 276c gave up the ghost but I also wanted a handheld unit because me and the wife have started doing a lot of hiking. When I was researching handheld units a couple of months ago I heard about the Montana and waited for it to come out because it is designed to be used as either a handheld or mobile GPS. So far I like it, but I don't like Basecamp (I prefer Mapsource) but I have found I can use them both together to keep my familiar workflow ( I basically do everything I need in Mapsource and save as a GPX file and then import that into Basecamp to transfer to the GPS).

But you should know that you can turn the auto routing off and either just follow your waypoints, or you can have "straight line" from waypont to waypoint in your routes.

Garmin also offers Garmin Mobile PC which runs on a laptop and is affordable, but I am not sure if you can turn off auto routing or add topo maps.