Track Back

Today, 3/4 of GAIN Academy and I met up with Trubador, the last finder of our "Foo Foo" geocache, GCY9ZQ. He showed me where it was (since I could not find it before my MN trip -- it was about 45 ft. from its original location) and I removed it for maintenance. While walking along, he mentioned that the main difference between his gps and our gps, in his understanding, was the amount of waypoints the unit would remember. (You know how it goes -- bigger, better, faster, more!) This is when I told him about the track function on Garmin units. We used it for our walk to and from the geocache.

Before school let out, I read about tracking (and "track back") in the book, _Fun With GPS_, by Don Cooke. I tested it in MN with my sister while driving to and from the nearest major town, and loved how easy and practical it was. It could be a pretty handy function.

It could be a fun function, too. The Cooke book suggests walking a path over a large field -- making a design or spelling something (your name, for example). You could also "track back" over your design with a lawn mower. Tracking can also be a useful function. After reviewing the July Geo-breakfast video, I thought it would be worthwhile to mention track and track back here for people who have a tendency to find geocaches, but get lost on the way back to the car. I'm not naming any names.

Here is an example sailplane track with GoogleEarth, found at the Fun With GPS website. Just look for the menu on the left hand side of the page and click on "GPS in Google Earth."