ATV Trip

I had a little travel adventure yesterday. My wife, seven year old son, and I loaded the ATV (Bombardier Traxter Max) and drove to Danbury WI to ride the Gandy Dancer Trail. I pointed the two of them northbound on the trail and told them I would meet them near Nickerson MN. The problem was despite my printing out DNR trail maps and bringing along my Garmin StreetPilot 2730 that public roads did not intersect near the trail where we intended to meet at. Our Nextels did not work in that area, but fortunately I brought along amateur radios since both my wife and I are licensed amateur radio operators. When we were near one another we were able to communicated via radio, but I did not know where she was and the trail was not marked very well with signs.

Eventually my wife ran across other ATV riders and she was able to find one of them with a handheld GPS. They were able to radio the GPS coordinates to me to enter in my Garmin StreetPilot 2730. Of course, they used a different GPS coordinate format than I use, but I was able to change that and enter the coordinates and drive right to her.

After a little adventure like that I was giving some thought to getting either a handheld GPS or possibly a Garmin Rino 530HCx.https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?cID=&pID=8523 I think that it would be very handy in the wilderness to be able to exchange position information with other Rino users. I know that Icom also has an IC-2820H amateur radio that will exchange position data http://www.icomamerica.com/products/amateur/2820h/