BMW GPS System

Normally I'll cut the fountain of knowledge in front of me short with a quick "just gimme the address, I'll see you there." Perhaps I take in a lot more by looking at a roadmap than listening to someone's voice, or perhaps it's just I'm sick of people telling me the establishment I'm looking for will be on 'this' side of the street, with no reference to left or right, north, south, east or west.

Either way I was looking forward to testing BMW's first GPS-equipped model available in Australia - a K1200 LT - with a certain degree of bemusement. I mean GPS in a car is fair enough - they've been used with a great deal of success for years now, but on a bike? My curiosity was certainly aroused.

But after a few days of using the system, I wished my own bike was fitted with a Global Positioning System - it's a pretty trick piece of gear.

The GPS works by combining a gyroscope, a speedo signal, a digital roadmap/database on CD and a mini navigation computer with the GPS signals from up to eight of a total of 27 GPS satellites currently in orbit - giving a claimed accuracy of about 30m to 100m.

My experience showed on several occaisions its accuracy was even greater than that, with the synthesised voice booming out of the K12's speakers "You have arrived" just as I rolled to a stop less than four metres from Horror HQ's reception.

The antenna is housed in the K12's topbox, the CD and computer in the bike's left pannier and the info fed to an LCD screen mounted in front of the bike's stereo station display.

The GPS CD covers just about every street in every city and town in Australia, with most of the country regions in between covered too - data entry during the unit's developement must have been a nightmare.

Using the GPS is simply a matter of using the seek, volume and mute buttons of the K12's stereo, with entering coordinates made considerably faster by the fact the computer narrows down the list of possible streets you're after by exclusion as you input each letter.

For example, after first entering the suburb of Richmond, you'll be asked to select the appropriate state, and then after putting in the first letter of the street you're after, it will discount every letter which couldn't possibly follow according to its database - pretty neat.

You can even enter the actual number of a building you're after. Or you can ask for a particular railway station, shopping centre -the list goes on and on.

Once your destination is in it's a matter of selecting 'guidance' from the main menu, following the arrow on the LCD display for a bit before the specific arrow and street name directions take over. You'd be fine just following the on-screen prompts, but leaving the voice commands on and seeing the look on the faces of passers-by is just priceless.

You can also select how you want to get there, including or excluding main roads and tollways, the shortest route in kilometres, the shortest route in time - and you can select an alternate route if roadworks or other unexpected situations crop up.

In the short time I spent getting to grips with the system, it did have problems on a couple of occasions, when it seemed to think it was a few blocks away from where it actually was.

But the vast majority of the time it was spot on, where it blew me away just how accurate and helpful it was. For finding a spot in an unknown part of town or particularly for a tourist getting around an unfamiliar country, GPS is a godsend.

At $2850, it mightn't be the cheapest optional extra on BMW's list, but it certainly is a practical one, and a stark reminder of the relentless march of technology.

Rod Chapman. Photos: Ellen Dewar