Outer Limits 4x4 Board

I'm about to embark on a road trip from Melbourne haeding north (the idea is that its not too planned) I'm hoping to get at least to Fraser Island before I have to turn back, but hopefully further.

I'm running Oziexplorer in the truck with the raster series maps and Melways maps for Melbourne but I'm wondering if its worth buying something with more detail and if so, which one?

Also, its always a good idea to have something on paper as a backup... which road atlas do you guys find the most user friendly to cover the whole country?

Thanks

if your driving up the highways then save your bux and dont bother with lappy either, signs everywhere to get up to Qld...

bogged wrote:if your driving up the highways then save your bux and dont bother with lappy either, signs everywhere to get up to Qld...

the idea is to stay off the blacktop as much as possible and see as much as possible along the way. The carputer is in so its just a matter of deciding if the maps are worth spending the bux on

V8 Middy wrote:

bogged wrote:if your driving up the highways then save your bux and dont bother with lappy either, signs everywhere to get up to Qld...

the idea is to stay off the blacktop as much as possible and see as much as possible along the way.

a bit of a plan of your direction would help decide if its worth it.. are you going Via Mt Isa, or straight up the coast, or?

Hema Australian map DVD would be a real good start.

Very good GPS tracked tracks on the maps.

Plus you get the Australian 1:2.5 million maps of Australia these will at least let you know where to go.

You'll want to have Maps books more so than GPS because once your've run out of power so will the GPS unit or computer.

I've gotten the Easy to read Hema Australian map book this book is pretty damn good, Road maps for all of Asutralia plus has parts of the HEMA maps as well.

and the Hema 4wd to Australia book this one has Trips all over Australia plus the road maps for each state plus it has the out back road trip tracks etc all with heaps of info
plus good all-round 4wd in the outback info, you know how to pack 4wd, packing food plus cooking it and what to cook it in, how to use HF radio and who to hookup with for the areas your going to plus info about sat radios then you have the first aid part.

With all the tracks you get a bit of info and what you'd need to get through the trip, some of the desert trips in the back of the book could be very hard if your not prepared properly for them, you also get basic info on the National parks for each state as well.

Anyway, great all rounder book that I got for $25 out of aldi stores of all places, you also have a National parks book and a Australia by road book.

The GPS/computer stunt is very nice.... but it's rare for paper to break down...

paper makes planning over long distances a bit easier to, and you can write the odd note in as a bit of a travel diary if you wish.....

at the moment i use 1:25k Auslig rasters in my rolling in car, with OziCE... good for general travel, but in tight tracks you tend to lose the detail..

Spock

For the citys I have UBD Australian City Streets

For the Hwy's I have laminated Maps they are easy to roll up & store in post pack tubes & can be dragged out in the wet.

You can also draw on them with a white board marker.

I use OziExplorer and Street Pilot, but as far as paper goes, all the Hema maps are in the "Camps Australia Wide 3" book - has all the maps, state by state and almost all chep/free camping areas Oz wide.

Great for touing, comes in either spiral bound or hard bound, I got mine from RACV shop.

PK, Which maps do you use with Ozi?

Freedrive (Talky drivey program for the PC, work out routes etc like destinator) & UDB (Within Ozi) for the Cities.

General touring I use the Napmap Raster's.

The Napmap is fantastic, I think its 1:250000. Enough general detail for touring but not really enough for 4wding as it only has most tracks, not the tiny ones.

Middy - I use a different one for each area I go to - such as scanning in Rooftop maps etc, and I bought Rooftop digital maps for certain areas as well - good value, $20 or something for 5 digital maps already calibrated for Ozi.

Went to Melbourne Map Centre yesterday and bought myself a copy of Camps Australia Wide. (They're up to No. 4 now) Its going to be and excellent resource for my trip... Thanks.

As for the computer, I was told the there is nothing more detailed than the raster maps apart from the rooftop maps and given that I don't know exactly where I'm heading, they're not a huge amount of use to me so it sounds like I've got as much as I can fo rthe time being. At leat now I can drive aimlessly and still have an idea of where I can sleep, regardless of where I end up!!!

The vague plan is to head to the blue mountains as quickly as possible, then keep tracking north to Byron for some beach time via the Waterfall way (Armidale to Coffs Harbour) I went through my old copies of Aust 4wd monthly and found a few little trips in there that look interesting too. Then I'll keep heading up to Fraser and see if I have any time left after that.

Any other suggestions welcome too!!

V8 Middy wrote: As for the computer, I was told the there is nothing more detailed than the raster maps apart from the rooftop maps

There's a free set of topo maps covering vic and nsw that are a lot more detailed than natmap raster.
They're being passed around a few different 4wd forums on DVD and they're in Ozi format. They're also available for download, but they're a few gb.

more info?

Free (as in beer) for private use.
Give copies to anyone you want, just don't sell them.
NSW 2 sets, 770 maps @ 1:25k covering the great dividing range to the coast, and 300 or so 1:100k maps covering the whole state.
Vic - 300 odd 1:50k maps covering the whole state.
About 3Gb all up from memory.

http://forums.overlander.com.au/viewtopic.php?t=41954
http://www.4wdmonthly.com.au/forum/show ... hp?t=27766
http://www.gpsaustralia.net/forums/show ... php?t=1830

If someone gets me a copy I will host them for download...

festy wrote:Free (as in beer) for private use.
Give copies to anyone you want, just don't sell them.
NSW 2 sets, 770 maps @ 1:25k covering the great dividing range to the coast, and 300 or so 1:100k maps covering the whole state.
Vic - 300 odd 1:50k maps covering the whole state.
About 3Gb all up from memory.

http://forums.overlander.com.au/viewtopic.php?t=41954
http://www.4wdmonthly.com.au/forum/show ... hp?t=27766
http://www.gpsaustralia.net/forums/show ... php?t=1830

Now that was the kind of answer I was hoping for!!!! Just found out tonight that my partner in crime can no longer come for the whole trip, she'll meet me up on the beach for a few days, then fly back to work again. That means more playtime for me!! Can cover more ground and explore further when I get there. Woohoo!! That also means that I'll have more use for some detailed maps too!!!

Festy, I should be up your way next weekend (13th-ish) Should try and find a way to shout you a beer or 2!!!

zzzz wrote:If someone gets me a copy I will host them for download...

NSW 100k: http://www.craighall.info/NSW100k.zip
NSW 25k: http://www.craighall.info/NSW25k.zip

festy wrote:

zzzz wrote:If someone gets me a copy I will host them for download...

NSW 100k: http://www.craighall.info/NSW100k.zip
NSW 25k: http://www.craighall.info/NSW25k.zip

Thanks Festy.
I will download them and then upload them to one of my web servers.
Now I just need to find the Vic ones.

cheers

z

Festy: Thanks again for the NSW maps. Is there anywhere I can download the victoria maps from?

Gonzo is uploading them to his server I think, I'll post a link when i find out.
You can download the individual maps from gpsaustralia.net by searching for a placename, but it will take you a while to get all 300 that way.

O.K. Now that I have downloaded them, how do I look at them on my PC.
Please excuse my ignorance, but I'm middle aged & when it comes to computers, technically challenged.
I obviously need to download some software, so can someone suggest which is the best & where I get it from. Thanks

oziexplorer.

http://www.oziexplorer.com/

I torrented those NSW maps and put them on mininova.
Hopefully everyone will start sharing them via torrents as well

http://www.mininova.org/tor/699700

Still need to get the VIC ones.
I will superseed these and see how things go.

cheers

z

festy wrote:http://www.craighall.info/vic/

Yep - just found that.
Downloading them now and will create a VIC torrent as well.

cheers

z

was just trolling through the posts, on a boring sunday evening, and i cant help myself....................was it a serious post????????queensland is pretty hard to miss if ya head north lmfao, just drive outa melbourne, and find a truck with a queensland phone number on it and follow it.

pommy40 wrote:was just trolling through the posts, on a boring sunday evening, and i cant help myself....................was it a serious post????????queensland is pretty hard to miss if ya head north lmfao, just drive outa melbourne, and find a truck with a queensland phone number on it and follow it.

Your a noob.