One of my co-workers picked up a Motorola Traxar GPS the other day. The unit used to be in a squad car somewhere in MN. The squad was totalled in an accident and the insurance company paid out. My friends relative was the Ins agent and got him the GPS.

I played around with it for the past few days. The software version was from 1993. It only has a 3 line display. No maps, no plotter screens. It held 99 waypoints. Receives 6 channels, but only listens to 2 “birds” at a time. An internet search shows the original price was $900.00, but now they sell for around $10.00 on Ebay. The 6 “AA” batteries only last 6 hours, max.
I had a hard time programming it. It had some Y2K rollover issues and took quite a while to get the almanac configured properly.

The unit came with an external, magnet mount antenna. The antenna connected by means of a re-radiating antenna device which is integrated into a vehicle mount. In otherwords, there is no direct connection from the antenna to the GPS. Then antenna basically has a smaller antenna built into the vehicle mount. The GPS receives the amplified signals from the small antenna in close proximity.

It was neat to see how much handheld GPS technology has advanced in the last 10 years. I got my first handheld GPS back in 1993. It was a Magellen Meridian XL, and cost $350.00 from Cabelas. It was a piece of crap, and I returned it 3 times before finally swapping for the Eagle Accunav Sport. The Eagle Accunav went for $500.00 and was the best GPS, in it’s day.

I still have the Accunav, but have since picked up two Lowrance GM100’s, a yellow etrex, and an etrex Legend.

Hope the new Garmin coming out this spring is nice. I’m hoping to pick up one of those to add to my collection