Mopar Action gone again?

[Ron_M]

Perception that the staff at MA doesn't care about the printed magazine.

 

[fullmetaljacket]

I still use maps and the position of the sun. If you know your NORTH/SOUTH EAST/WEST balance, you can make your way home from anywhere.

 

[Richard Cranium]

I haven't seen a paper map in years. When I was a kid, I always had our state map in my glovebox.

People our age have learned how to get around so well that we don't need road maps to travel any longer. We know all the major routes within a 100-200 mile radius, but a GPS does come in handy for finding specific locations.

I too haven't used a paper map in years, but I still have them, along with a road atlas, sitting on a closet on a shelf just in case.

 

[6PKRTSE]

I have 1000's of magazines stored out in plastic storage totes out in the garage containing the last 40 years of collecting of all the big car brand named magazines. I guess they will make for good fires someday since they aren't going to be worth anything when I am gone.

 

[mpgmike]

My uncle passed not long ago. I wonder what happened to his massive stash, as it was mostly 70's stuff. Probably got tossed.

 

[padam]

I usually have a paper map in my car.

Wife and I went to Costa Rica this summer. We were going to meet my daughter at a condo we rented. I downloaded the maps to my phone ahead off time, but when we got out on the road my phone wouldn’t work right. The phone from the rental car company wouldn’t get a signal.

You guessed it, the road on our route was closed about 15 minutes before we got to our condo. No detour marked.

I turned around, but most of the rods aren’t marked. I was getting concerned because it would be dark soon and I don’t speak Spanish.

Finally I found a guy who spoke English and knew the way. He gave me the route. Luckily the compass on my phone was working, so I kept it headed east.

I should have had a paper map. I was really pissed at myself for being so unprepared.

 

[Kern Dog]

Far too many youngsters wouldn’t know how to get home if the GPS on their phones crapped out ….. and they were only 15 minutes away.

The use of readily available technology is smart but complete dependence on it is not.

I still use maps and the position of the sun. If you know your NORTH/SOUTH EAST/WEST balance, you can make your way home from anywhere.

Absolutely. It is disappointing how many others cannot grasp this simple concept. It reminds me of how some new apprentice Carpenters got GREAT at doing one specific task but then were lost when there were any deviations from it. I always tried to emphasize to them the following: LEARN the fundamentals. Understand the basics because they apply to every condition, allowing one to adapt to changing conditions.

I usually have a paper map in my car.

Wife and I went to Costa Rica this summer. We were going to meet my daughter at a condo we rented. I downloaded the maps to my phone ahead off time, but when we got out on the road my phone wouldn’t work right. The phone from the rental car company wouldn’t get a signal.

You guessed it, the road on our route was closed about 15 minutes before we got to our condo. No detour marked.

I turned around, but most of the rods aren’t marked. I was getting concerned because it would be dark soon and I don’t speak Spanish.

Finally I found a guy who spoke English and knew the way. He gave me the route. Luckily the compass on my phone was working, so I kept it headed east.

I should have had a paper map. I was really pissed at myself for being so unprepared.

This is a prime example of how technology works until it doesn't, then the unprepared are unprotected.

 

[XS22J8R]

It's gotten worrisome in aviation now too. When I learned to fly in the late 80s, it was all paper charts, and navigation was most often done by the use of ground based electronic navigation aids.
Around 30 years ago, the US military opened up the use of GPS using their satellites. Cockpit GPS equipment became more and more common, to the point most pilots only use GPS for navigation now.
Paper charts got replaced by what is called electronic flight bags. Which are programs you subscribe to that present charting and flight planning by an app on ipads and phones. It's all very handy and provides much more information that we used to get. However, batteries can run low, and ipads sometimes overheat and then go blank. Then what?
In addition, government can shut off GPS in an emergency and sometimes actually have in some areas in tests. That has left pilots flying around scratching their heads as they just lost their navigation tool when GPS got shut down.
They often call pilots today children of the magenta line, because the line from point A to point B mapped out using GPS is pinkish, and pilots blindly follow that magenta line without any concerns whatsoever that is accurate.
We hear stories of drivers sometimes ending up on remote country dirt roads and truckers stuck on a small road unsuitable for a big rig in a mountain because they were blindly following their GPS on a trip. Children of the woman's voice?
I enjoy reading articles online, but there is a different element to magazines that they don't match up to. I like thumbing through a magazine reading a little of various articles in it sometimes, or taking a quick glance at pictures and captions. Sometimes I pick up an older magazine and read it, and see an article or car of interest I'd forgot about. If you see something online, and later remember it and want to look at it again, it's often lost as you can't recall what the title of the article was, or enough other details needed to try to do a google search for it.
I'm of a different time though I guess, I usually prefer a paper newspaper over looking at articles online too.

 

[GTXDAN]

The use of readily available technology is smart but complete dependence on it is not.



Absolutely. It is disappointing how many others cannot grasp this simple concept. It reminds me of how some new apprentice Carpenters got GREAT at doing one specific task but then were lost when there were any deviations from it. I always tried to emphasize to them the following: LEARN the fundamentals. Understand the basics because they apply to every condition, allowing one to adapt to changing conditions.



This is a prime example of how technology works until it doesn't, then the unprepared are unprotected.

I have traveled all over this country with truck and camper with nothing more than a road atlas. Made it where I was going every time. I think there is still an Atlas in the seat back of my truck right now.

 

[moparedtn]

I haven't seen a paper map in years. When I was a kid, I always had our state map in my glovebox.

At least you have the knowledge of being able to read a real map to the point of knowing when a GPS
one was lying to you, eh?

 

[kiwigtx]

I used to always carry the latest road map book - nationwide and local. But it seemes that every time I needed to find an unfamiliar address, the damn book was out of date. I would buy a new book nealry every year.....it got to the point when taking the cellophane of the map rendered it out of date. I stopped using them for a few years after that.
Now I have a Tom-Tom....roads are too hectic to be trying to read a map when out on an emergency job....most of the places I am familiar with, but if a detour pops up, or traffic gets hairy, I use Tom-Tom to guide me back to the destination once I have driven around the blockages. Quite handy at times.

Except the one time when I was stuck miles (many washing machines) from home due to three disasters in the same area at the same time. Fire Crew turned me round on a desolate country road, as well as a local Cop car. I asked how would I even begin to get back to where I was headed....one of the Cops told me to follow them. Well, we drove through valleys, over hills, around twisty country roads until the Cops pulled over. Apparently their GPS said perform a U-Turn.....just as well, because straight ahead would get us to Australia.....if our vehicles could swim that far.

Long story a bit longer....I eventually got home around 8pm, and wife was giving me a hard time for being so late. I told there was a fire, and the first fire truck rolled down into a farm paddock, then the road was closed because a stupid 15 year-old kid set fire to the family rented home.....she didn't believe me.....until we were watching the news on TV minutes later.

The fire truck rolled off the road on a bend that was freshly chip-sealed with watered-down tar.....and the paddock belonged to a friend of mine. Only one fireman was injured slightly.....another lost his wedding ring. My friend actually found the ring about a month later while searching the ground. It was an eventful day that started with the local fire siren sounding off.......

 

[68BabyBlue]

I started my trucking career in 1976 driving a moving van over the road. No two trips were ever the same, and I survived based on my ability to read a road map. Many guys in my era started out driving local coal trucks and such, and never had to learn map reading. My ability to navigate with maps enhanced my earnings from the beginning, saved enough to buy my first truck in two years. One reason I happily exited the moving business, and moved into pulling tankers, was the issues of navigating the last few miles to destination. Tanker deliveries were based on main arteries, easily tracked with a state road map, residential was always a crap shoot. My worst was backing up six blocks the wrong way on a one way street in Brooklyn, NY.

When GPS arrived years later, I found it a monumental improvement in last mile navigating. But driving my personal vehicle, I've found it's still more efficient to drive the truck routes I've learned from memory, and not activate the GPS until nearing the final destination. I've seen the results of the new generation of truck drivers relying on gps alone, and it's not pretty.

 

[68BabyBlue]

I have 1000's of magazines stored out in plastic storage totes out in the garage containing the last 40 years of collecting of all the big car brand named magazines. I guess they will make for good fires someday since they aren't going to be worth anything when I am gone.

I started giving mine away a few years ago. I took a pile to Carlisle last summer, priced them at 25 cents each, and ended up giving the stack away before I left.

 

[440 4 speed]

When we travel, we get State and Provincial highway maps. Still sometimes look in the rear view mirror to see what that view looks like if coming back that way.
I was taught that by my father, at age 13 when I started hunting moose and elk in the forest. Also had a compass.

 

[kiwigtx]

Also had a compass.

Funny story here .... on a major European road trip my wife and I embarked upon in 1996, I bought several book road atlases and various maps along for the journey. I also spent a reasonable amount of money on a fancy orienteering compass, thinking it could save us in the middle of nowhere. Anyhoo, we were driving along a motorway is Sweden one day...I happened to glance at the compass and felt that it was reading wrong. The compass said we were headed due North. So I thought I'd keep an eye on it....knowing full well that we were actually headed south at the time. A little while later, while heading south again, the compass read North. So I pulled into a Gas Station, got out of the vehicle and looked at the compass again. This time it pointed South like it should have.

We were driving our Range Rover with the small block Buick V8 (3500cc) .... aluminium block......I surmised that the engine rotating was actually generating a magnetic field capable of upsetting the compass. We didn't use that compass again and started to rely on the sun more.....difficult at times in the Arctic cicle....but there ya go.

 

[70bigblockdodge]

I started my trucking career in 1976 driving a moving van over the road

Haha that's how I started my driving career. HHG is definitely a different animal. Finding a house with a tractor trailer(that isn't supposed to be there) is harder than finding a steel mill.

 

[Jeff Peterson]

In the new MCG………..

 

[Dipstick]

I used to always carry the latest road map book - nationwide and local. But it seemes that every time I needed to find an unfamiliar address, the damn book was out of date. I would buy a new book nealry every year.....it got to the point when taking the cellophane of the map rendered it out of date.

Same with GPS, many times when I'm driving I look at the screen and it shows me traveling through a wilderness. New roads that were built just months ago won't show unless you update the data base every couple of months.

 

[kiwigtx]

Same with GPS, many times when I'm driving I look at the screen and it shows me traveling through a wilderness. New roads that were built just months ago won't show unless you update the data base every couple of months.

I get alerts at least once a week about speed cameras and local charging stations....I turned the charging stations off. Seldom have I found a road that doesn't exist.....that's where I rely upon good old fashioned verbal directions.

I did however notice about three years ago that when 600+ roads in my city had the speed limits reduced, not a single update appeared on my Tom-Tom. After several emails and attempts to get Tom-Tom to update, I was informed that the local authority has to advise Tom-Tom of the changes.....or it is peer-reviewed - as in motorists are expected to plot the speed changes and submit via the App.

I did that along a road I frequently travel along, and a week or so later I was sent a big thank-you from Tom-Tom about that. The local council ignored all my emails and calls. That guy didn't get voted back in again.

 

[moparwacko]

I thought you were Hugh