Garmin Gps 45 Xl Handheld Personal Navigator Water Resistant Marine Reviews

Discovering that my old Garmin GPS 45 still works was especially cornball because Gizmo and I were returning from WoodenBoat School, one of the first places I used it 25 years ago. Many memories that far back are foggy, but it'due south easy to call up how much this wonderful gadget helped me to stay safe and relaxed even when trying to teach beginners how to sail and navigate in large tides, cold water, and real fog.

This handheld as well played an important function on many yacht deliveries and pleasance cruises, and while getting reacquainted with the onetime 45's talents, I thought nearly how circuitous today's MFD chartplotters take become, even though they're also much amend nav tools. I suspect that I've understood evolving marine electronics better because I started navigating before they were omnipresent — another good reason to take the WBS nav course I was assisting — and then peradventure there'due south value in a closer look at that transition menstruation between paper and electronic charting.

Garmin 45 with portable case and 12v mount with NMEA 0183 information wire

At some bespeak in the early 90'due south I had briefly experienced navigating with the first handheld GPS, a white brick chosen the Magellan Nav 1000 that "ran for a few hours on six AA batteries, and sold for $three,000" (according to this splendid early GPS history).  Thus I learned early the high value of reliable electronic position finding — even at the 50-meter Selective Availability accuracy then mandated — and was quick to purchase the Garmin GPS 45 when information technology came out in early 1994 for about $400.

At get-go, and especially in open boats, that cloth case (with custom neck strap) was handy for taking a position set — either latitude/longitude, or the bearing/distance to a waypoint — direct to a paper nautical chart. But on bigger boats, I eventually figured out how to wire the cradle'due south NMEA 0183 data port to a laptop running one of the beginning charting programs (Nautical Software'southward ChartView, long gone just not forgotten).

So by the tardily 1990's the Garmin 45 took me to the wonders of abiding GPS plotting on an electronic chart, but permit's look at what it could do on its own (although I have no intention of going back).

The 45'due south Marking button was an easy way to create a waypoint when y'all were actually on the spot, and that's what I did as Gizmo passed under the (still-standing) Deer Island Bridge. In retrospect, I should have entered a more descriptive viii-letter of the alphabet name, merely using the 45's up/down keys to curlicue through the alphabet is tedious, and entering a lat/long position for a afar waypoint involves fifty-fifty more finger exercise.

Dorsum in the day though, my fingers were decorated because a waypoint fix as a "Become To" with constantly updated begetting and altitude was the cat's meow. It was much easier to correlate with a chart and the real world than changing lat/long positions. Also, well-named waypoints (and past tracks) could make the Garmin 45's otherwise minimalist Map Page quite useful.

Incidentally, in 1984 I sailed transatlantic with a Transit satnav organisation plotting on an electronic chart, just it was uncommonly exotic yacht gear and notwithstanding but delivered fixes every ii to half dozen hours. I likewise used fixed Loran A then C devices on diverse vessels — though I missed the "first chartplotter" — and while Loran C was quite good at returning to previously captured waypoints, it was especially dicey at computing lat/long positions along the hilly coast of Maine. (And we're withal wasting the run a risk to improve information technology.)

In brusque, the inexpensive, portable, and relatively accurate Garmin GPS 45 was a true game changer. But is it actually working properly 25 years afterward? And what does marine navigation accuracy really mean anyway?

Garmin 45 working well in 2019 except that the magnetic Track (aka COG G) is consistently off

I checked the 45 against various modernistic GPS sources similar the 56-aqueduct receiver (with WAAS, EGNOS, and MSAS SBAS) built into Gizmo'south Furuno TZtouch2 MFD with results seen above on their FI70 display. The old Garmin's eight channels with no Satellite Based Augmentation is consistently about this close (with a proficient sky view), which is darn close since the 0.002 minute of breadth departure is but 0.002 nautical mile off, or almost 12 feet / 4 meters (using the 1929 international nm definition).

Also qualifying for the "Earth math we used to know" category: the 0.001 infinitesimal of longitude difference is even more accurate than it looks considering i degree (60 minutes) of longitude at 45N equals 30nm while 60 minutes of latitude is always 60nm. And call back that errors this small are exceeded past pencil dots when using paper charts, and almost all charts are still based on old-time expectations of accuracy (see Zones of Confidence).

So be careful when you zoom deep into your precise-looking electronic vector nautical chart. Your gunkhole may exist exactly where it's GPS plotted, merely that doesn't hateful that every dangerous object is exactly where it's charted.

Meanwhile, the Garmin 45's Speed Over Ground (SOG) was normally within 0.2 knots of the modernistic high-performance GPS competition, and they're all better than most paddlewheel speedos so or now — permit alone a taffrail log — with SOG already corrected for the set and drift we once had to guesstimate.

But the 45's calculated Magnetic Rails — now chosen COG (Course over Ground) — seemed to be consistently incorrect by a few degrees, and the reason became obvious.

Indeed, on June 22, 2019, the Garmin 45 thought it was my birthday in 1999 (today information technology reads November 22), and if you lot do the engagement math that'due south exactly 1,024 weeks agone. Which is the infamous GPS date rollover number, due to an overly short information field as Ben Stein explained.

Now call back that Earth's variable-by-region Magnetic Variation changes slowly over time, and that the World Magnetic Model is somewhere in your marine electronics. And incidentally, a manual True to Magnetic correction was function of my probable most dangerous navigation mistake, and — while the recent GPS rollover didn't seem to cause much boating problem — information technology and human error apparently did take out the NYC municipal wireless network.

At whatsoever rate, the second screen to a higher place shows how I changed the Garmin GPS 45 "Heading" type — which should read COG/BRG, non Heading, considering they're quite unlike, dang information technology — to True. Then the BRG and TRK (COG) values to the Deer Island BRDG were right on that final Waypoint Navigation Page that I used to value and then much.

1994 Garmin 45 with latest InReach Mini and Explorer+

Finally, judging from all the Garmin GPS 45 eBay listings, mine is not the only one however working. Chapeau's off to Garmin for that, but for goodness sake don't buy one for navigation. Besides the issues already detailed, and mayhap others I haven't realized, information technology's a pretty crude machine by today's standards. The 45, for instance, can't keep a fix at Gizmo's lower helm though both inReachs do fine (even though their primary task is two-way Iridium communications, more on Mini soon).

Just I can see acquiring a GPS 45 as a fundamental flake of electronics history, and you might appreciate the 1990'south Garmin GPS 45/twoscore/38 FAQ — the work of many users comparing notes — and/or a visit to Retro GPS.

Speaking of retro, notation the merely announced Body of water Global Race that volition honour the original 1973 Whitbread effectually the earth race by doing it again without GPS and lots else. Perhaps we should exist taking GPS holidays on the water like some folks regularly turn off their cell phones for a mean solar day?

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Source: https://panbo.com/my-garmin-gps-45-was-amazing-in-1994-and-it-still-works-mostly/

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