in dash nav system under $1000?
 

Is there a DIN size navigation system with CD changer control that costs less than $1000? The ones I see cost at least $2000 before installtion and don't do anything my $600 Garmin dash top unit doesn't do... with the help of the factory stereo.

I wonder if I can squeeze a Garmin GPS V inside a W140 dash cell phone cubby.

Sixto
95 S420
91 300SE
87 300SDL
83 300SD

Caution falling prices
 

Sixto - I was reading recently that next year is when the bottom is going to fall out of the 12V auto electronics market. It went on to say that most of the technology has been paid for and Mfg's. feel that everyone should have a DVD/GPS/MP3 in their vehicles and to look for all kinds of cool toys at affordable prices in 04.

Which Garmin are you using?

blaupunkt travelpilot ive seen for under $900

Harmon Kardon makes one called the Traffic pro, I think, that is less that $2k.

www.crutchfield.com has it on sale for $799!!!!!

I used a Garmin Streetpilot when we went to the UK last year and France this summer. It really avoided a lot of marital conflict when my wife was navigating. However, there is an odd thing about Garmin's. You can't buy a Streetpilot with the European basemap in the US. I ended up buying from a German on eBay.

In Europe, where it is apparently against the law to have roads go directly North or South or East or West and the government dishes out additonal funds if you can jamb over three roads into every intersection, it was a lifesaver.

Re: Caution falling prices
 

Street Pilot III. Pretty good bang for the buck.

Sixto
95 S420
91 300SE
87 300SDL
83 300SD

On the technical side, are high-end dash-mounted units dual or single freq? Can they access PD corrective signals?

Most hand-helds provide 2-15 meter accuracy, unless DoD decides to degrade the signal (Selective Availibility--SA). To correct for this Selective Availibility various commercial outfits and USCG (near ports and waterways) offer signals that can largely remove the error introduced by SA. If not available, then the ol' GPS could be degraded by 10's of meters.

If I were an airplane pilot or maritime navigator, I'd not become reliant solely on GPS for navigation.

Keep the ol' sextant and chrono handy, boys and girls.

Good point, but it's distracting enough to drive while listening to a GPS nav device let alone fiddling with a sextant and compass. The Street Pilot III doesn't even have WAAS functionality but my eyesight is usually good for the last 10 meters :)

Sixto
95 S420
91 300SE
87 300SDL
83 300SD

About 8 years ago I took a course to become a certified celestial navigator using a sextant. It was quite rigorous. About 40 people started the course but only 3 or 4 took the final exam. When the course was over, I decided to call some local pawn shops to see if they had any sextants since a quality sextant costs more than a GPS.


When I ask one clerk, "Do you have any sextants?", he replied, "Sorry, we don't have any tents at all."

Since this is the open discussion forum, what exactly does a sextant do? Is it an ultraprecice version of the device one would use to measure distance to the pin in golf?

Thanks,
Sixto
95 S420
91 300SE
87 300SDL
83 300SD

Its a hand-held opto-mechanical device for measuring angles. It is used for locating one's position using either known, observed terrestrial positions or may be used to determine latitude and longitude (if accurate time is known).

There was a business in New Orleans, "House of Time" that handled repair and resale of all sorts of precision instruments. I think they're on Esplanade. I don't know if they're still in business (I haven't had dealings with them in ten yars), but they were wonderfully knowledgeable and had all kinds of opto-mechanical technology. I'd trust a used sextant from them.