BackCountry Navigator works with standard Pocket PC GPS receivers. Connecting a GPS through bluetooth, cable, or compact flash will show your position on topographic maps and aerial photography.  

A GPS Receiver connects to a Pocket PC in a number of different ways, including:

• Compact Flash GPS - connects to the compact flash expansion slot.
• SD IO GPS - connects through Secure Digital expansion slot.
• Bluetooth GPS - connects to your Pocket PC wirelessly using bluetooth messages.  
• Cable connected - connects using with a serial or USB data cable. Some are known as a GPS Mouse, while others use specially made cables to connect to a traditional Garmin or Magellan.
• Built in - devices such as the Ipaq 6515 have a GPS built in.

The good news is that receivers in all of these formats can generally communicate over a serial port using NMEA protocol, and can therefore be used by BackCountry Navigator.

The GPS Tab has a few ways of finding and connecting to your GPS. You can explicitly specify a port number and baud rate. You can also use the Detect button to search for a list of devices on your system.

When you push the Connect button, the pretty lights fire up on the little GPS. For a while, though nothing else seems to be happening. The GPS is establishing communications with the satellites. This can take up to two minutes the first time, but is usually faster at subsequent starts.

Once this has been done, satellites come into view in a number of formations. It is not important to know exactly what the colors or numbers mean in this view; it is just to keep you entertained while you get a better fix on your position.

Moving back to the map view, we see that our position is now marked on the map. Since your first practice with a GPS will probably be around your own neighborhood, we've chosen a neighborhood here as well.

Since the topo view of this neighborhood is not very interesting I switch to the aerial photograph view and zoom in closer. Now it does look like a neighborhood with a bunch of houses, bordered by a forest and a rock quarry.

Now I would like to navigate to a waypoint, in this case a house up the street. Forget for a moment that you probably already know how to get to another house in your neighborhood. You can tap on a waypoint, place, or arbitrary point and select Point -> Activate. A line appears connecting the GPS point to the point in question.

As I navigate to the destination, I switch to the Nav screen, a view that will be familiar to most people who have used a GPS.

The top of the compass indicates our direction of travel, while the green arrow indicates the direction of the waypoint. This allows you fine tune your travel toward the point in question. Here it is encouraging me to veer to the left, which I will do as soon as I get around the corner.

You can also see at a glance your speed and bearing, and compare that to the direction and distance to your destination.