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GPS settings can make or
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After each trip
Stop Navigating. If you were navigating a route or a track or activated a GOTO or a MOB (= Man Over Board), your GPS receiver will continue to guide you according that request, even if in the meantime you have turned it off and on again. If after the walk you will use your receiver, linked to a pocketPC with street routing software, to guide you back home (See Car GPS), your receiver will warn you every 30 or 60 seconds that you are far off course, if you did not tell it to stop navigating your walk.
Reset the TripComputer, or whatever it is called on your receiver. It is the screen where you can read how far you traveled, what was your maximum speed and your average speed, etc. since the last reset. Note the values that you want to remember in your paper notebook and clean up the memory. Speeds of a walk, mixed with speeds of a car trip, do not make sense.
Clear the Track Log. (See GPS Terms). In case you want to keep the logged track, save it to one of the free tracks. WARNING about these GPS settings: If you just finished a complex trip and your GPS receiver registered 1000 or more track points and for you every detail in the log is important, then you should save your track log to your desktop computer, instead of saving it to a free track. The reason is that a saved track often is limited to about 250 points, so you could loose some detail of your trip.
Clear all unneeded waypoints. Maybe you registered a lot of waypoints during your trip in order to facilitate your return in case of trouble or whatsoever. Now that you are safe at your base, you don’t need them anymore. Or maybe you would like to show them on a map on your desktop computer, in which case you better clear these GPS settings later. Before downloading them to the desktop PC, set the GPS datum to WGS84.
Delete unnecessary routes. They only occupy precious memory.
Disable NMEA output when you want to download waypoints or tracks from your GPS receiver to the mapping software on your desktop computer.
GPS settings before every new trip
Take spare batteries and your GPS manual, or at least the quick reference guide, with you.
Verify all the above points.
Clear the track log, if you did not do so yet.
Set track record method to "Auto", unless you have a very special reason to choose another setting.
Set the GPS datum to WGS84, when you want your GPS receiver to feed your street routing program in your pocketPC.
If for your walk or hike you will use a (topo) map, as you should, then set the GPS datum to the same datum as your map’s. And if you count using a compass, as you should, then set GPS North to "Magnetic North".
And if you are really a perfectionist, clear the track log again, just before you start walking. During the time that you put on your walking boots, checked your spare batteries, compass, map and water supply and your GPS receiver was warming up on the roof of your car, trying to find out where you took it this time, it already registered track points, but the first ones will not be of a high accuracy level.
Before leaving your car behind, record its location as a waypoint and name it "Car".
During the trip
Check battery power so now and then and save waypoints at remarkable locations as cross-roads, bridges, etc.
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