Heads up before you buy the new GPS

[Wise Old Owl]

Garmin just introduced a new Legend & Vista Etrex called HCX to fix some of the problems that plagued the older versions. The older versions lacked sensitivity amongst cow pastures to find satellites when walking up or down a 300 foot hill in Pennsylvania. When you got home the support softwares offered through Gar. or Topo- National Geographic would fill in the blanks and give you a "fixed" distance.

Last month I picked up a Vista HCX and was surprised what a difference on both color screen & programming does to the "old" support software. The GPS was better - Well That is the good news.

This is very important.

My Dad & I walked the trails in Ricketts Glenn this week and discovered a technical disaster with the new product. He jokes about his Swiss made Pedometer being more accurate as we hike an old loggers path up the hill to the top. I had been very carefull to install an additional micro SD card & all the topo it could handle and after such a long climb the distance on the HCX was 6/10's of a mile. His Pedometer said 1.6 miles!

I didn't believe it as most meters are junk and then he pointed out a park sign that said 1.8 miles to the parking lot. We Had climbed some 900 feet and I had lost a mile or more. The previous day the GPS had got the distance wrong again, as we climbed the waterfalls and I did not think anything of it. So today I called Garmin's CS. and they told me there is a known problem with the GPS finding the true distance. (Math) that there will be an update eventually and to register the product and there will be a fix..... Hmmm. Although disappointed as I am, please realize that I am very skeptical of Garmin coming thru.

1. Garmin products are better than some competition
2. Spending the additional money on a chip $20 and topo $120 will solve the problem.
3 Registering the product will help.

4 Going back to a cheap compass and map, and looking for white blazes is still the better answer.

What do you think?

Thoughtfully yours - Mark

[Sly]

This is very important.

I had been very carefull to install an additional micro SD card & all the topo it could handle and after such a long climb the distance on the HCX was 6/10's of a mile. His Pedometer said 1.6 miles!

I didn't believe it as most meters are junk and then he pointed out a park sign that said 1.8 miles to the parking lot.

What do you think?

Thoughtfully yours - Mark

Ah, don't GPS's measure point to point as the crow flies?

[Cuffs]

Garmins X models have been out for over a year now... old, but good, news.

[Toolshed]

Are you sure you didn;t lose sat signals on the climb? The trex Vista (My first GPS for about 4 years) had horrible reception and I would lose the track frequently. I have a Map76CSX that blows the Etrex away in performance. I am very happy with it.

[Cuffs]

So jealous of DSoTM!! I have the 76CS... just dying to upgrade to the X!!!

[wrongway_08]

I'll stick to just reading the milage markers.
If I pay all that money for a GPS, it better be more reliable then a free wooden mile marker.

[JAK]

I could see them being more accurate, percentage wise, over long distances but perhaps not over short distances. I don't carry one hiking, but they are most useful if you find yourself lost after not having been navigating for some time and this haven't even a clue which grid square you might be in. Driving on unfamiliar logging roads for example, I thing the best tool is map and odometer, but a GPS is great if you get lost after not having paid attention. Done that. On foot if I am off trail I try and pay a little closer attention, but if I find myself having turned around inside my head and out, a GPS would have been very handy. Done that also. But I've managed OK by stopping and thinking where I might be, and then walking to sight of a landmark from there to test that hypothesis. If I ever do get a GPS, it would be for doing all that really cool heart rate monitoring and fitness stuff, or for hiking in places somewhat bigger and more difficult than my wee neck of the woods.

[The Old Fhart]

mark swarbrick-"I had been very carefull to install an additional micro SD card & all the topo it could handle and after such a long climb the distance on the HCX was 6/10's of a mile. His Pedometer said 1.6 miles!"

If you ask the GPS to give you the distance (straight line) to a waypoint, that will almost always be noticeably less than the trail or road that goes every which way to get to that same waypoint. If you have a GPS that had a trip odometer it could display the actual walking distance to the waypoint far closer than the pedometer. The pedometer has to be calibrated to your average step distance and when you climb a hill that step distance will generally be much shorter than when you are walking on the level so that will introduce errors.

The GPS is measuring the difference between where you were and where you are, probably every minute, and adding all those short segments together to get a good approximation of the actual total distance. If you were to lose satellite lock when you go through a tunnel or whatever, the GPS will calculate the change in distance from the previous point to when it regained lock and there may be a slightly greater error.

On the Garmin 60CSx you can download the 'track' of where you've hiked and overlay this information onto Google earth to see exactly where you've been. You can also have it display a elevation profile of your trip as well. The track info that the GPS logs every minute can be displayed to give you the time, speed, change in elevation, direction, etc, of where you were every single minute of the trip. Your added SD card and software has no effect on these calculations.

I have the Garmin Map60CSx which is a different shape but the same insides as the Map 76CSx and they work great. The new SIRF receiver can even maintain satellite lock in some buildings so losing the signal is almost never a problem. I have a 1Gb micro SD card with both the street mapping and topo software for the entire east coast from GA to ME loaded with some room to spare. I have used it on road trips and finding a couple of thousand geocaches and both the straight line and actual walking distances reported are quite accurate. If you understand what it is telling you , it is generally quite accurate.

[Slosteppin]

Old Fhart, that was a very good explanation.

I've been using Garmin units for over 12 years. The one I have now is the garmin 60 C, I don't think the Csx was out yet when I got mine. I wish I had waited since the 60 C does not take the cards.
I had a chance to play with a 76 CSX a few weeks ago. They seem to have about the same capabilities to me. Both can give you the distance you walk in a day. Most people that have either one probably know to set the distance back to 0 if they want to record a distance. That is my major use on day hikes.

Other than the screen size, the big difference between the 60 and 76 models seems to be the antenna. The "finger" type antenna on the 60 series will pick up sattelites quicker in tree cover. The more standard flat antenna on the 76 series will work better in open areas because it can pick up sattelites closer to the horizon.

Slosteppin

[Toolshed]

So jealous of DSoTM!! I have the 76CS... just dying to upgrade to the X!!!

I ahve a 2 gig chip in it, but I can only upload 2025 map segments (of any maps total). Still waiting for Garmin to to increase that.

I picked it up deeply discounted at my local LLBean after some clerk wrote the 76 CSX Model number down on a sign and priced it at $199 and put it in front of the greyscale 76.

I woldn't rush out and buy one just yet, though, unless that is specifically what you want. With all the rebates I am seeing now, I wonder if Garmin is ready to introduce a newer model....

[Skyline]

How did we ever navigate in the woods before GPS?

[Toolshed]

How did we ever navigate in the woods before GPS?

Woods?
I use mine for biking (Great when doing unknown or little known circuits) Kayaking (In a fog or mist), Road trips - Tells me every service available at each exit along with all interstate rest stop distances (awesome when you have kids and want to plan a bathroom break). Tells me where I am in the air (the 76CSX works great, while the Etrex Vista did not receive signals well through the airplane skin.) Careful though, don't want the stewardess taking it away from you. Same with my discreet little AM/FM radio and headphones. I can tell where we are by what radio stations I am picking up as we fly close to cities. Again, since it is a receiver, they CAN take it away from you.


As a toy, I also attach it to my lawn mower every so often - Interesting to see how far you have to travel to mow 4.5 acres.
I use it to check the speedometers of my vehicles as well as see how fast our neighbors Quads, dirt bikes and go karts can really go.

When fishing from a boat in a lake, you can also create waypoints where you have had success.
I also use mine to create waypoints of great legal campsites along the AT with easier access for my cub scout troop.