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#298139 - 01/18/21 04:40 AM Re: Offline Maps App Thoughts [Re: chaosmagnet]
rafowell Offline
Enthusiast

Registered: 11/29/09
Posts: 258
Loc: Southern California
There's certainly a lot of positive feedback out there for GAIA GPS on the hiking sites, and apparently there were some significant upgrades in mid-2020:
https://www.adventurealan.com/huge-improvements-next-gen-gaia-gps-hiking-app/

Does anyone have any experience with the AllTrails Pro app?
(https://www.alltrails.com/pro )

The one-year plan at $30 seems steep, but the $60 for 3 years seems not too bad. I've used their website a bit, and it seems competent.

Hmmm: here's a mammoth GAIA GPS vs. All-Trails review by a long-term AllTrails user about what things were important to him (offline maps being a must-have) and why he switched to GAIA GPS last here:
https://www.n1clc.com/2020/09/revisting-alltrails-vs-gaia-from-hams.html?showComment=1600265444687

Here are some other comparative reviews that include both:

(Nov 2020): https://takeahike.us/alltrails-vs-gaia-gps/

GAIA GPS, Alltrails and other apps. They like Greentracks for offline maps (Android only)

https://besthiking.net/best-hiking-apps-test-review/

https://www.territorysupply.com/alltrails-vs-gaia-gps

(note this next review is on the Gaia GPS site ...)
https://blog.gaiagps.com/gaia-gps-vs-alltrails-2/
_________________________
A signal mirror should backup a radio distress signal, like a 406 MHz PLB (ACR PLB) (Ocean Signal PLB)

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#298168 - 01/19/21 06:23 AM Re: Offline Maps App Thoughts [Re: chaosmagnet]
rafowell Offline
Enthusiast

Registered: 11/29/09
Posts: 258
Loc: Southern California
Originally Posted By: chaosmagnet
I've settled on Topo Maps US (by David Crawshay) for now. Pros: 100% free, no ads or membership, easy to use, super nifty freehand distance measuring tool.

Cons: Map tile downloads take a long, long time. If your device sleeps during a download you may have to restart the download.

I want to run this app on both my iPad and my iPhone. It has a little WebDAV server that you can turn on to download map data. You can then upload the map data to your other device (no direct connectivity between iPad and iPhone that I could make work). This saved me hours of download time, but it's probably too fiddly for many folks.

Make no mistake: there are a lot of good reasons that Gaia GPS is so highly rated. But this app works for my purposes.

(The above was posted in the other thread, but I wanted to reply on this one).

Thanks! I've installed the app and downloading it now. I work with a lot of Boy Scouts for whom an annual subscription might be prohibitive - I'll see if this would work for them.
_________________________
A signal mirror should backup a radio distress signal, like a 406 MHz PLB (ACR PLB) (Ocean Signal PLB)

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#298215 - 01/30/21 07:07 PM Re: Offline Maps App Thoughts [Re: chaosmagnet]
Alan_Romania Offline

Addict

Registered: 06/29/05
Posts: 648
Loc: Arizona
Gaia GPS has been my go-to for several years; others have already covered Gaia pretty well in this thread.

While I still love and use Gaia, I recently started using CalTopo.com more. It isn't as polished as Gaia but has some features that make it more useful in some circumstances:
  • Printing Ability - CalTopo allows you to print maps in any scale and datum directly on your computer as well as send them to Mountyn.co Mountyn.co for professionally printed maps. With Gaia, the printed maps are similar to Google Map printouts, and you cannot print them to a specific scale without a lot of trial and error. For many, this will be a non-issue; however, if you want to print paper maps to use with a GPS, GAIA fails here.
  • Geospatial PDFs - GAIA doesn't allow the import or creation of Geospatial (georeferenced PDFs). Again, for most users, this isn't a required feature. For others, this gives CalTopo the ability to use maps from many sources that produce GeoPDFs, AND CalTopo can create GeoPDFs for sharing.
  • Less built-in map sources, but more data. GAIA dominates the market on map and imagery sources. CalTopo has fewer sources but has some unique data available to the paid user; fire activity (including real-time fire and smoke detection), weather, wind plotting, and sun exposure, to name a few.

For many, Gaia will still win, but CalTopo is worth looking at if you want some more "professional" features.
_________________________
"Trust in God --and press-check. You cannot ignore danger and call it faith." -Duke

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#298216 - 01/30/21 08:06 PM Re: Offline Maps App Thoughts [Re: chaosmagnet]
hikermor Offline
Geezer in Chief
Geezer

Registered: 08/26/06
Posts: 7705
Loc: southern Cal
"real-time fire and smoke detection" - I did that once, a long time ago, sitting in a 100' steel tower atop the Rincon Mts. in AZ. Learned a lot about survival that summer.....
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Geezer in Chief

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#298226 - 01/30/21 11:27 PM Re: Offline Maps App Thoughts [Re: hikermor]
Alan_Romania Offline

Addict

Registered: 06/29/05
Posts: 648
Loc: Arizona
Originally Posted By: hikermor
"real-time fire and smoke detection" - I did that once, a long time ago, sitting in a 100' steel tower atop the Rincon Mts. in AZ. Learned a lot about survival that summer.....
I bet!

It is pretty cool (and really useful) to be able to pull out a laptop or tablet and see how a fire is developing before getting deployed.
_________________________
"Trust in God --and press-check. You cannot ignore danger and call it faith." -Duke

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#298234 - 01/31/21 03:28 AM Re: Offline Maps App Thoughts [Re: Alan_Romania]
hikermor Offline
Geezer in Chief
Geezer

Registered: 08/26/06
Posts: 7705
Loc: southern Cal
With today's mega burns, you need all the technology you can muster. Our house was threatened by a fire three years ago, and the size and rapid rate of spread was truly awesome - quite beyond anything in my experience.
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Geezer in Chief

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