I have always been pretty keen on exploring, using maps and so on, then I was bitten by the 4wd bug. Not long after that, I was on a trip around Lithgow & I noticed the trip leader (Dave) had a laptop computer in his vehicle with what looked to be a map on the screen, so I asked him if I could have a peek.

To cut a long story short, he showed me his setup & I thought to myself that this was obviously something for the rich, so put the idea on the back burner until another day. Besides, I probably couldn't have easily installed it to the Sierra anyway.

Then a year or so later, I was at the local computer markets & saw a cheap laptop. I went over to the stall holder & asked if I could take a look, to which I noticed it had an error, which sort of looked familiar to me, but I used it as a bargaining tool & negotiated this laptop down to what I call a fair price & bought it. Luckily for me, I was right with what the error was & being a Compaq trained PC Techo, knew where to go to get what I needed to fix it.

The once I had the laptop, I new that I needed a GPS. I had a talk to Dave & Steve (another of our mates from the 4WD Club) & decided that a Garmin would be the go, but it had to be NMEA compatible (which to me meant very little as I knew bugger all about these gadgets). So I asked, what model etc and looked at what Steve was using & it was a Garmin GPS 12XL.

So there I was, with a little knowledge about GPS & thought now is the time to start shopping around. Off I went to Dick Smith Electronics and Big W to see what they had & see the prices. That was my first shock, as these things were around $700 & I thought, you have got to be kidding. There is no way I am buying a fancy little gadget for that price, when I could lose it easier than I can lose a mobile phone and I still didn't have a clue what NMEA was.

Then it was off to the camping and 4wd Accessories stores, to which I came back just as disheartened, but with a little more knowledge & that was that being NMEA compatible meant I can connect it to a computer (now why didn't the guys explain that to me, or were they just having a little joke at my expense)

Just then I was starting to think that I wasn't going to get one, when I saw my wife (Stella) was shopping & buying stuff through ebay & I thought it can't hurt to just have a look. Then I saw one, a Garmin GPS 12XL with all the cables listed on there. So I dropped a bid of $150 just to see how I go. Anyways a few days later, I noticed I wasn't the high bidder any more, so after a quick chat to Stella, I decided I would try to snipe it in the last minutes of the auction, where I succeeded & managed to pick it up for about $300

Well from there, I needed to solder a connection to the end of the cable, so it would connect to the laptop & then source some software & maps.

The software selected was oziexplorer, as this is what the other guys were running & I thought if I am going to be using this stuff, I want to learn as fast as possible. The best way to do this is to use it with other people who know how to use it.. For maps, I sourced these from various locations, including oziexplorer site, scanned images & a few CDs as well.

OK there I was, all the bits & pieces, a bucket load of enthusiasm & no idea of what I was doing. I set it all up (that was easy enough) & tried to make it all work, to which my enthusiasm quickly turned to frustration. So I called Steve around & we went through what to do & how to do it. OK now I had a little knowledge, so all I needed to do was to use them.

We decided to take the gear with us on a Night Drive through the Watagans. Unfortunately, I didn't do very well in capturing any of the tracks, but I learnt plenty (about driving in the dark too) which I was able to apply before my next few adventures.

The main things I realized I was lacking, was a power source, as the laptop will not last very long on it's battery. So off I went to Dick Smith Electronics where I noticed the 300 watt invertor was on sale for around $130, reduced from nearly $200. With this now ready to install, I went on a few local "road" trips just to get the hang of what a waypoint is, a track file and so on.

OK, now I had most of the gear, then I noticed at the local computer markets, a 10 inch flat panel display. The price seemed pretty good at $200, so I bought it & made a mount up to mount it on the console ready for my first trip as a trip leader.

So for the trip, I decided it would be good to get Dave and Steve to help me out. Firstly they had loads more experience in 4 wheel drives, but the bonus is these guys know how the this satellite navigation gear works.

We organised a meeting at my place, where we went through the paper maps to see what trails we were going to take, what turns we were going to follow & where we were going to camp. Luckily for us, our club leases a property in the area we were going, so that took care of the campsite. As for the tracks, I decided I wanted to follow the trip notes from the Boiling Billy publication - 4wd Trips Close to Sydney for the trip "Terrible Billy"

All in all, everything went OK, except I could not see the LCD screen at all in the light and the sound signals from the laptop were hard to hear even over my fairly quiet vehicle. I also had problems where the temporary mount for the screen failed & was moving all over the console and lastly in mountainous terrain, I lost the signal with the satellites for the GPS.

So back to the drawing board. I decided to get a screen filter from Big W to try to take care of the glare problem. As for the problem with the screen being in a stupid location, I decided to install a mount into the dash, just above the radio. I figured once I have set the radio on a station, I am not likely to be changing it, so I don't need to see the radio. The last thing was to take care of the little problem of losing a signal with the satellites with an external aerial. At first I mounted this to a magnetic mount on the bonnet, then I saw Jon's setup on the snorkel of his Hilux on www.4lux.net & thought that up high was the go, so I mounted it to the roof racks, but when I removed these, decided to mount it to the top of the snorkel. The Audio was taken care of by some amplified digital speakers I have installed behind the rear seats.

Since these modifications, I have run a few trips & rarely have any problems with wrong turns etc & even when I do, I know I have taken the wrong turn within 50m, as opposed to with paper maps, you could go many miles before you realize you are completely lost. 

For setup of trips, I have the software loaded to my desktop computer, I work out what tracks I want to drive on, the waypoints & then manually plot all of this before I go anywhere near the vehicle.

Then I usually do a few trial runs , using "Track Replay" on the laptop, just to confirm my waypoints are setup right. Once I am happy with the files, I pack the gear away, until the morning of the trip, when I install all of it into it's places.

The Laptop gets strapped to the cargo barrier, where it is out of the way & gets a minimum of vibration. I have an external keyboard / trackball for on the fly use. I then mount the screen up front & strap it in with 2 small straps. Attached to the screen is a mobile phone holder I bought to hold the GPS & all of the cables are there ready to plug in.

From there, it is just a case of turn it all on, log in to the laptop & kick off the software. Then we basically follow the pre recorded route & most of the time all goes very well.

All up, this gear has been set up for less than $2,000.00 & has saved many an argument (created a few while I was acquiring the gear) while out on the tracks, especially when we are in the middle of nowhere & need to find a way to point y because track x is closed.

In all of this installation I have to thank the following people

Dave P & Steve Power