Bushnell GPS BackTrack Guides You Back to the Exact Spot
The Bushnell BackTrack, also marketed under the name “GPS Homing Device”, is a useful and simple handheld GPS location-finder for people who need to memorize a spot in a city or landscape and who don’t want to operate a more complex GPS receiver. It can memorize up to three spots by the simple press of a button and guide you back by means of a simple arrow.
Why It’s Clever
This tracking device has a strong gadget component, which is why I first hesitated to cover it on this website. It is marketed as a device that, among other uses, helps you to find your way back to your car in the parking lot. I finally figured out that that’s what the “ducks”, “fishes” and “bananas” painted on the columns in the parking lot were for. But some brainstorming came up with other uses for this GPS receiver.
Most GPS route-planners are really sophisticated tools that don’t just show you where you are on the globe but also compute for you how to get from A to B. In the car, these are certainly the preferred GPS solution. When you’re in a zone that’s not on the roadmap, though, it’s a different story. Most receivers just give you a message such as “Unmapped area” and leave it up to you to get back on the road. Some do give you the option to work with coordinates, direction arrows and other means, but you have to dive into the user manual to understand how to get them to work. And others are integrated into your dashboard, so they aren’t of much help when you’re not driving your car.
The Bushnell BackTrack is a much simpler design. It doesn’t contain any roadmaps, menus, touch screens or the like. You just press a button when you want to mark a spot. When you want to get back to that spot later on, the device just shows an arrow pointing in the right direction and the distance to your destination. This makes it very easy to use, even for the computer illiterate. And it’s compact as well.
But are there useful applications? We think there are.
Let’s say that you like walking in the countryside, the woods or other off-road locations. You can mark a spot where you want to go back to later on, maybe for a picnic, and just follow the arrow when you need to, even if there aren’t any mapped roads.
A typical situation is when you take your children (or your grandmother) to an amusement park or another area with lots of people. I always tell them that if we lose sight of each other, we should all go to a specific spot to get back together. But as soon as it really happens, children (and grandmothers, maybe) tend to panic, and even if they don’t, they still have to be able to locate the spot. Now you can just give them the BackTrack, and when they become lost, they simply follow the arrow to meet you.
And you can use it yourself to backtrack to your spot on a large beach, to find again that good bar in a large skiing resort (or to lend it to a friend to meet you there the next day), to locate your friends during a music festival with 100 000 fans, to get back to that excellent diving, fishing or hunting spot the following day, and so on.
And yes, you can also use it to locate your car in the parking lot or in cities where you don’t know your way around.
Here’s a video:
Summary
- Very simple homing device to backtrack to a memorized spot
- Memorize up to three locations
- Compact and lightweight handheld GPS receiver
- Self-calibrating digital compass
- Accuracy within 5 yards
- 2 AAA batteries for up to 20 hours of operation
- Weather-resistant
- Dimensions 3.5” diam. x 0.5” D, 6 oz. (approx. 9 cm x 1.5 cm, 170 g)
- Available in various colors
- Lanyard for easy attachment, or fits on a keychain.
Tips
If you want a more sophisticated handheld GPS that you can take with you everywhere, a Smartphone with integrated GPS receiver might be a good option. But this will set you back a few hundred dollars and at least one evening of reading through the manual. And you can’t lend it to anybody if necessary.
Where to buy
You can buy the “GPS homing device” from several online sources for approx. $80, but we backtracked to the original Bushnell BackTrack for you, which you can buy from Amazon.com
Approx. price: $60 (February 2010)
Categories: travel,multimedia,portable devices
© Copyright Clever & Easy
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|2009-09-14 01:52:56 Dennis Au - Can I use it underwater as a diver homing deviceI am a scuba diver looking for a homing device back to the boat in a simple and sure way, I wonder the GPS BackTrack can be made to work underwater ( in a water-proof dive case )!?
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|2009-09-14 10:51:39 Clever & EasyHello Dennis,
That's a good idea, I know from experience that it's not always easy to locate the boat when diving. Certainly when there's a strong current.
But it appears that GPS signals cannot be received underwater.
I've seen people who use waterproof containers attached to a string and allow then to float to the surface, pick up the signal and then they pull them back to see what their coordinates are - not ideal with this device.
Other option is to have a homing device on the boat, emitting a signal that can be picked up by the receiver that you take with you.
