any of you make custom overlay maps for your GPS units?

[steeliedrew]

It's been a while since I've made one.  Last year I took a topo that I liked for my elk area and georeferenced it using google earth.  Then saved it as a KMZ file and was able to upload it to my Rino 650. It looked great and performed nicely. I'm trying to make one for my mule deer area now and can't remember how I made mine look so crisp last time. does it have to do with how much you zoom in on the topo before overlaying in google earth?

also, I just saw that you can load topo maps directly to your GPS from caltopo.com now.  Has anyone tried this?

Note, I run the onXmaps washington chip in my Rino 650 and the topos are legit but I prefer higher quality if at all possible.

Thank you for any help,

Drew

[xXLojackXx]

My dad use to be in the GIS industry, so he took some software and overlayed a Topo map over a satellite image of an area. Then, called ODFW and got a file sent to him with GPS coordinates of collared elk (apparently public information) from the past 5 years, the 2 weeks of the season we'd be hunting. Took that information and overlayed that onto the 3d satellite topo map as red dots where the elk were.  We went down to Oregon to hunt the Ochoccos and everywhere the red dots were on the map, we found elk.

That's what I call resourceful scouting 

[steeliedrew]

  excellent idea.

[Netminder01]

http://hunting-washington.com/smf/index.php/topic,172210.msg2277405.html#msg2277405

I did one for Kapowsin after a few instructions from Blacktailnweb

[Whitpirate]

I bought the On-X overlay for Google maps

[steeliedrew]

http://hunting-washington.com/smf/index.php/topic,172210.msg2277405.html#msg2277405

I did one for Kapowsin after a few instructions from Blacktailnweb

Nice map!

[steeliedrew]

Edit: I played around with caltopo.com today. It's actually very easy to make a custom topo with whatever layers you want, and then send it to google earth to georeference it and save as a KMZ file. Then you just drag that file into your Garmin custom maps folder. works pretty slick.

My buddy has a Garmin 62s or a 64s and he's got the Garmin 100k U.S. Topo loaded on it. compared to My rino 650 with the onXmaps WA chip I like his topos much better. What I'll probably end up doing is purchasing the downloadable version of the onXmaps WA and ID chip and also the downloadable version of the Garmin 100k U.S. Topo maps. Then I'll put both of them on one SD card.