When the iPad 1 first came out, many saw it as a perfect tool or toy to allow them wireless access to games, the internet, movies, etc.

I too saw it for those posibilites however due to it's simply intuitive interface and rugged design, I also saw it as an ideal 4x4 navigation tool for off road use.

Not wanting to invest too much money in a 1st gen tablet I elected to buy an iPad 1 (wifi only) for $500 (yeah, it's cheaper to buy a laptop).

I also purchased a RAM car mount system consisting of a locking ipad mount and a RAM articulating arm.

For a gps, I choose a Dual brand XGPS-150 bluetooth gps receiver. For one, it was a separate bluetooth until with it's own battery (so it doesn't rely on the iPad battery) and it could theoretically be used for other bluetooth devices in the future.

For mapping software, I went through several packages before deciding on Scenic Map West and MotionX GPS HD for topo use. I also downloaded You Need A Map for an offline street map (not 100% complete) of the entire US.

For a while I was downloading maps to GPS HD but decided that the space required was far beyond the 16GB capacity of my ipad model.

The xgps-150 gps receiver worked well when it would connect to my iPad but I found all too frequently the bluetooth connection far from reliable.

I've since been able to compare the built in gps receiver in a 3G ipad II with the xgps unit and surprisingly the ipad gps was far more sensitive and accurate than the xgps chipset. This was on a 3G ipad w/out any 3G contract so it was using the gps chipset alone and not leveraging cell phone triangulation to assist it.

Unlike my experience with the XGPS unit, the iPad RAM mount (RAM-HOL-AP8LU), RAM mount arm (RAM-B-201U-C) & two ball joints (RAM-B-202U) were all awesome at holding my gps securely through the roughest off road terrain.

The lock combination on the iPad mount is user changeable so it's about as secure as you can imagine. You can read more about the mod and install process here.

HTH. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" />

Did you look at any other GPS receivers??

I bought a Garmin Montana 650T this spring and used it at Moab and in the Cascade Mountains. After struggling with the Garmin website in trying to figure out what mount to buy. I sent an email to support at Garmin and got the airhead response that I should pick one from their website. When I replied back that I had not been able to decide from their website which mount was appropriate for my application which was why I had written in the first place, then someone higher up the feeding chain answered that probably none of their mounts would work for my application and that I should look at RAM.

I have been very pleased with the RAM mount (and the Garmin receiver).

Sorry, just saw your post John. I didn't look at any others in person. There are only 3 receivers that are IOS compatible when I was looking... Of those, the Dual unit seemed the cleanest/smallest solution.

About a month ago, I upgraded to an ipad 3 3G 64gb which has an integrated receiver. Truth be told, its more sensitive than the Dual unit.

I also had to apply 4 adhesive rubber spacers on the ram mount since the ipad 3 is much thinner than the original ipad (~1/8" thinner).

Been extremely pleased with the setup.

Only one complaint I have is the difficulty in putting waypoints into Scenic Maps since it only accepts one format. DD.xxxxx format instead of the seemingly more common DD.MM.SS.xxx format but luckily it's easy to convert the formats with a calculator albeit a PITA when you have many waypoints to Þnter. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" />