michaelnel

I have, with a 60csx and a 62s, and it makes a little difference in sensitivity, none in prec/acc. None at all. Zero. Nada.

He's on my shoulder right now. We just finished a little preening session, he has new feathers coming in all over and needs help with the ones on the back of his head and neck. Normally their mates do that for each other, but for almost 20 years I've been his mate, so it's my job now. ;-)

Never mind, I totally misunderstood the thread again. I'm staying out of this one from now on.

Very little that I can tell. And it doesn't affect precision or accuracy at all.

That's not true either. You may get the highest sensitivity with the antenna vertical, but certainly not the highest accuracy or precision. The 60 and 62 work great laid out horizontally, that doesn't affect accuracy or precision at all. Are you just making this stuff up as you go along?

There are a series of gcs in San Francisco that involve you going to the starting coordinates and then projecting the final waypoint given a bearing and distance. I know how to do that on a Garmin GPSR and have solved some of these. I don't see a way to do it in the gc android app. I used GSAK to project the waypoints and it created a child waypoint for each of the projected ones, no problem. But then when I export the .gpx file with these child waypoints and import them into the gc android app, I don't see any child waypoints. I know I can instead have GSAK simply replace the starting coordinates with the final calculated ones, and that is probably what I will do for now, but in general, how do people deal with child waypoints in the gc app?

Walt, are some drinds flaccid?

I thought they used EGNOS in Europe, not WAAS.

Use WAAS if you are in North America. Occasionally Garmin gets the firmware right and WAAS will give you enhanced accuracy.

It's the difference between the thrill of a new device and little experience with it and the disgust with the device after having struggled with it. Yeah, right. :laughing: We're talking about the company that seldom gets a solid firmware release out until the product has been out for a year or more. This is one GPSR I won't miss.

I am not familiar with that brand. However, the issue with mine wasn't so much using the Zagg screen protector (although I did not like the "sticky" feel when dragging my finger across it), it was with REMOVING it. Based on my experience, I would go with Garmin's 3 pack of protectors that are designed for the device. Using anything else puts you in unchartered waters.

Ooops. Reading comprehension problem here. I was describing how to read them on the Android, totally missed the fact that the issue is on the Garmin. I agree they need to be in Garmin/GPX, but they CAN be on the uSD card as long as you create those directories. I don't know how to use Astro or how to do this without a computer, sorry.

Put the unzipped PQ .gpx files in the root directory of your uSD card. I do it when the phone is usb connected in "disk drive" (usb mass storage) mode. Then fire up the gc app, go to MENU -> Settings -> "Search for GPX files on the SD Card". It will take a while to parse it, but let it sit. When it finishes, you'll find the data under "Offline Lists" on the main screen of the app.

Many GPSRs such as the older GPSMap 60csx don't have a 3 axis compass, but they do have an electronic compass that works perfectly well while you're standing still... but you have to hold the GPSR level. With a 3 axis compass, you don't have to hold it level. GPSRs with no electronic compass use the GPS track to establish direction, and those do NOT give accurate readings when stopped. That's why they have mostly been replaced by electronic compasses in newer units.

The 62S is certainly the best Garmin GPS I have owned. But when I bought mine they were on sale at REI for $279. I wouldn't pay the current market price for one, and there is no other Garmin GPS available right now I would want to buy. Why do you guys need to get all snarky and personal about this stuff? I don't like the Montana. That's no reflection on any of you. You are all welcome to like it or not like it.

That's what I decided to do, leave it open. Although I doubt I will buy another Garmin GPS in the near future.

I loaded up some maps and gcs and wps and took it for a walk. Super screen, very sunlight readable. Heavy and cumbersome. Locked up on me three times in an hour, once to where I had to pull the battery pack out to recover. Compass is wacko, pointing backwards and every whichaway when turn by turn routing is on, and when direct routing is on the map rotates around for no reason while I am walking in a straight line for blocks at a time. Same old stuff. Garmin shipped it to me with firmware v2.40 on it but I didn't bother to update it to 2.50 or 2.60 because I know from previous experience they have the same problems, and 2.60 is actually worse. I used my smartphone at the same time and it worked flawlessly. I reset it to factory defaults, removed the maps and wps and gcs, and it's now packed for shipping and sitting by the door waiting for UPS to pick it up Monday morning.

I'm not trying to punish them. I just no longer want to own a Montana. But I really don't know why you care, it has no effect on you one way or the other. BTW, I just received the replacement and went onto the mygarmin site to switch the map and birdseye registration over to the new serial number, and after entering the new number and hitting "continue", it goes to a page that says: "Sorry, our site is down for maintenance. Please check back soon!"

Yep, that's my intention all right.

Why would anyone calculate it at all? Geeks!

They're right over there, by that rock.

I raised hell at Garmin about this by sending email to every garmin.com address I could find. One of them was Investor Relations, and a woman who is Director of Investor Relations emailed me back saying she was passing it along to the Director of Support. The same day I got a call back from one of the Managers in Garmin Product Support. He apologized profusely for the way this was handled and issued me a FULL credit for all of the charges they had billed me for ($173.60 including tax). He said that as far as he was concerned, the plastic cover breaking while a screen protector was being removed indicates a defect in the product. I accepted his apology and am now awaiting the return of my Montana. Nice to know that if you get past the front line people there you can get to someone reasonable.

What features can't you use? Are you talking about searching for Points Of Interest (POIs) like restaurants, ATMs, gas stations and the like? Most free maps aren't going to have much of that stuff, and even the paid Garmin Topo maps don't have much of that. Garmin's City Navigator does, but it's not a topo. If you want help, you need to be more specific about what you want from a map other than just that it needs to be free.

When my GPSR is dancing around, I like to back off from GZ 50 feet or so and then sight bearing/distance to GZ from several locations in a circle around it. I usually find that although the indicated distance will vary, it usually points to about the same place from various different angles. Then I have to use geosense to find it.

I have an HTC Inspire 4G (Android) phone with the Geocaching.com app, an Otterbox Defender Series case, and an external 4800mAh battery pack. In the Otterbox it's as rugged as a handheld GPSR (if not more so), the external battery pack gives me more runtime than most GPSRs, and the gc app works better than the firmware in any GPSR I have seen. My only criticism really is that the screen is hard to read in bright sunlight, but I can still read it if I shade it with my hand. In shade or overcast the display is gorgeous (4.3" and 480x800 pixels, vs the Garmin Montana's 4" 272x480 pixels). The Montana's display wins by a mile for bright sunlight readability, but falls short in every other respect. I can download cache info at 4G data speeds or preload gpx files from pocket queries at home. If I've had the foresight to load the PQs at home it doesn't matter if I don't have cell coverage onsite when caching, but since I am mostly an urban cacher I almost always have cell coverage. Accuracy seems on a par with the Montana (OK, but not outstanding). Neither is as accurate as my GPSMap 60csx or 62S GPSRs. On-road GPS capabilities using Google's "Navigation" app are FAR, FAR superior to using Garmin's City Navigator on a Montana. You don't have to buy maps for the phone either. All this, plus an 8MP camera that has a flash and can do 720P HD movies, a terrific fast phone that has superb internet capabilities, in a package way smaller and lighter than a Montana. The more I use this phone, the less I miss my Garmin Montana which is now headed back to me via the slowest and cheapest method Garmin could find. I think the days of dedicated GPSRs are numbered. If I were at Garmin I don't think I'd be buying any green bananas.