Quote:
Originally Posted by amitoj Ok, from my recent trip to Chikmaglur, i realised that MMI has pathetic coverage of state highways. Lesser said about roads smaller than SH, the better.
On the Bangalore - Magadi route, after some time it started showing that i was not driving on a road anymore. I am not talking about it showing me driving next to the road or like that. It showed that i was in the middle of nowhere
Same story on the interior roads of Chikmaglur too. |
Oh God! Even MMI is like that? I had similar experience with Satguide yesterday while driving from Manipal to Bangalore via Chikmaglur.
This was my first time with GPS on all the time. I had Garmin 260W running on Satguide maps. I had given my destination as Chikmaglur. My drive started with driving on what it called perduru road, which was in reality Karkala-udupi road or SH-25A (google thinks it is SH-65). As I turned left at Hiriadka, towards Perdur, it protested and asked me to continue straight on perdur road (or SH-25A in reality), which it wasn't. After that it decided that I was not on any known road until I hit Hebri. In fact I didn't see Perdur road when I passed through the town Perdur. At Hebri, GPS perdur road joined us back. About 3kms later, all maps vanished and the Germin said it can't navigate anymore. It didn't know any roads after that, not Agumbe, not Sringeri... It just behaved like an expensive compass, just telling me the direction and speed. While wife was continuously trashing the equipment, I wondered something could be wrong here. So I did restarted the Garmin and got the map back on. Now I was on Chikmaglur Hwy or New Hampshire 13. Confused? Well, it interpreted NH-13 as New Hampshire 13, one of the states of USA.
Incidently my history buff mind was thinking about the original 13 american colonies and NH was one of them. A GPS device with a historical sense of humour?
Thirteen Colonies - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Every now and then, the device used to declare I am not on the road. I was going offroad for few Kms and join back the highway. Not an easy task in the Chickmaglur terrain, even with a GV. It become more accurate in the Chikmaglur city.
It again become completely clueless on Chickmaglur-Belur road, it asked me to continue into a huge lake while the real road veered to the left. The GPS road joined me back few Kms later as the road turned back after crossing the lake.
Upon entering Hassan, it asked me to turn right into a sewage canal, when I continued striaght, it re-calculated and asked me to turn right into a shop, and then again into a house. But I only turned when I found a road.
And yes, the road from NH-48 to Magadi, was safely put a Km away from where I was travelling. It kept goading me to get back on New Hampshire 48. The GPS become accurate only after across magadi town and remained accurate all the way home.
And I kept thinking, this is the difference between Satguide and MMI. The MMI would have been accurate outside Bangalore too. That is why MMI is 8 times more expensive than Satguide map for Garmin.
But now Amitoj says MMI is equally clueless outside Bangalore. Now what?