Yesterday freegeographytools.com (a great resource if you’re interested in mapping, GPS, and GIS applications – they offer a lot of insights and opinions on various free software) wrote the first article in a series on building an inexpensive GeoPad. They are defining a GeoPad as a small touchscreen computer, field ready, loaded with built-in GPS [...]
One of our recent customers to purchase our South American Topographic Maps Series 2 which covers almost all of Brazil (as well as most of Peru and parts of Bolivia) had a few questions for us after downloading the 124 maps from the OverlandResource.com client download center (you can do the same by purchasing the [...]
I thought I’d write down an email exchange I had with a recent customer who purchased one of our South American Topographic Map series. As you can read on the download page, the maps are in Russian, and normally not of much use to us English speakers. To remedy that we provide a database of [...]
Someone came here the other day looking for the answer to this question – which battery terminal should you connect first. It’s a great question. We’re talking about automotive batteries, and whether you connect the positive terminal or the negative terminal first.
If you are building an off-grid power system you probably need to start building a battery bank. And one of the first questions you’ll have is how many batteries do you need. To answer that question you need to start by understanding the capacity of batteries. This article explains what is meant by the Amp-Hour rating of a battery.
You need to increase the amp hours available from a battery bank as well as the voltage. This article shows you how!
How do you connect two 12 volt batteries in series to get 24 volts? On the face of it it’s an easy answer – read about it in this article. But there are many complications when you get into mixing systems – maybe you have a 12 volt alternator running your main circuits, and a 24 volt auxiliary piece of equipment. This article starts by explaining the basics.
GETAC Inc., a leading manufacturer of rugged notebook computers, Tablet PCs, and other mobile computing products since 1989, is proud to announce it has finalized an arrangement with HP to supply – and service – rugged computer products to the company’s 3rd Party Solution group.
We’ve spoken with a number of Overlanders, and the biggest complaint we hear about rooftop tents is keeping them clean. And for some reason it’s the men who don’t seem to care, while the wives just hate sleeping on the scratchy, gritty, sand that collects on the mattress. This short article lists the few things we do to keep everyone in the household happy!
The biggest strength in OziExplorer is its ability to display georeferenced, scanned paper maps. But many really good maps don’t come in the rectangular format that OziExplorer likes to display – there are often city cut-outs, indexes written down a sidebar of the page, legends, and even advertising. Using the moving map feature, your track would run through the middle of these areas, making them useless to you. So, what can you do?
International Travel Maps have some of the best paper maps available for expedition and adventure travel. Based out of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, these guys have been producing maps for over 20 years. This article describes the process we use for calibrating the maps for use in GPS software, and shows how well they actually work.
We’re seeing more and more fully customized CF-28 Panasonic Toughbooks out there, particularly on eBay. Vendors are buying old laptops in poor condition, pulling them apart, and refurbishing them. This article is a quick review of what you might expect to buy.
Lonely Planet Travel Guidebooks have grown to be the biggest and largest guidebook company in the world. They have been an invaluable resource on our travels – this article lists the books that we have bought for our South American travels.
Do you have the discontinued Garmin GPS 35 TracPak GPS, and you need the manual? OverlandResource.com has a free copy available for download.
One of the issues with a dual battery system is to keep both batteries equally charged. This applies whether you have a 12 volt series system to make 24 volts or more, or if you have a 12 volt parallel system for extra starting power or maybe a secondary power system for recreational use. This article describes how to charge two batteries so that both of them are charged the same.
Do you fear travelling to a foreign country, and not understanding the language? This is how I, a Canadian, learned Spanish on the fly, in real time, on the road. And you know, it was fun. Really fun.
Part of expedition travelling is about taking time from our regular lives to take on the world outside. One of the things we need to consider when doing this, is how we’re going to give back to that world, the one far from home, the one where people have not and have less. This article discusses some ideas you could consider.
Finding good maps of South America can be difficult, especially if you don’t want to spend a lot of money. This article summarizes our research on good south american topographic maps, especially for GPS use.
A vacuum operated 4-wheel drive system is used on many Toyota Land Cruisers in lieu of a standard lever shifter. This article describes why these systems are less than ideal, especially for an expedition vehicle.
Some people need to know whether a small handheld GPS unit is sufficient, or if they need a full blown laptop computer with a GPS. This article discusses the pros and cons of each.
Here is our video review of the Katadyn Combi Water Filter. We know this filter – we used it every day for about six months and all in all it’s a great unit.
Travelling with a laptop has a lot of great advantages – but expedition travelling requires something a little more robust than your average computer. However, new fully rugged laptops are beyond most people’s budget. This article describes what to look for when buying a used Panasonic Toughbook laptop.
How a canoeist sits in a canoe is really important – there are two opinions in this area. Either you sit high up on a seat in a canoe, or you kneel, low down. This article discusses the two approaches.
Canoes are made from various construction materials including wood canvas, cedar strip, aluminum, fibreglass, and kevlar. This article describes the different material types so help you decide what you material you would prefer for your own canoe.
There are six really important elements in the design of a canoe hull. In no particular order they are tumblehome, bottom profile, rocker, rise, depth (freeboard), and length. This article explains each component to help you decide what style of canoe is best for you.