AlunS

The old etrex models with barometric altimeter did this as well, but to a lesser degree. I noticed a glitch like this every time I took it out of the holder and squeezed the case a little. I don't think it was so extreme that it produced a glitch every time I pressed a button though, that's very poor. My current GPS, and Oregon 550t, doesn't suffer from this at all, but has a very solid sturdy case which would explain it.

Yes, I noticed that too. I thought I'd lost the track I saved yesterday but lo and behold it appeared again when I power cycled it.

Yes, it makes surprisingly little difference. Even on a recent hike I did of around 20km with over 1250m of climb it only made about 0.2km difference, about 1% at most, so don't sweat it.

I've been running some tests over the past few days, and have seen some really odd behaviour. For example, today I left it in an outside location that was at about 10 degrees celsius today with the back-light permanently full on, just as a test. It went down from 4 bars to 1 in a little over 1.5 hours and then gave a low battery alarm after a further 45 mins. So, I went to the on-board diagnostics screen to see what the battery voltage was (2.37V as it happens, which to me seems quite a reasonable voltage, certainly not empty, for NiMH cells), and then powered off and on again to get out of the diagnostics screen. Not only did it then come back with 2 bars displaying (remember it had shown Low Battery only a few minutes earlier!), but has now been on for nearly 4.5 hours and is now showing 1 bar and still going strong. A previous test at room temperature (22 celsius) showed a total run time of 8hr 15 mins, but took 1.5 hrs to go from 4->3 and from 3->2, but 2.5 hrs to go from 2->1 and then 1.25 hrs from 1->Low battery. Even after showing Low Battery it then carried on for another 1.5hrs before finally failing. I'm now beginning to suspect the battery indicator is actually connected to an internal random number generator rather than to any battery condition measurement circuitry.

Using 2.70 at the moment. I can't see any mention in the release notes about battery meter stability in the release notes anywhere for the x50 series (there are some for the x00 series though .. maybe they didn't make it through to the x50 series, but that would seem unlikely).

Well, that's the thing .. I'm not sure there actually is a problem with the consumption. The fact that the battery indicator fluctuates between empty and 2 bars while I'm actually using it, plus the fact that batteries that are being shown as nearly empty on the Oregon are showing as full on my Vista indicates to me that there's something up with the discharge curves the Oregon is using to display the indicator.

No kidding ...

I distinctly remember all the problems with the etrex H series (I also have a Vista HCx) when they first came out, and all the problems Garmin seemed to be having getting to grips with the Mediatek chipset, so when I got my Oregon 550t, which I read had yet another different chipset, i assume rather naively that seeing as the Oregon series had been out a while already that they would have sorted any problems out. With my Vista HCx, the odometer distance, and the distance as calculated from my track logs were (after many s/w updates) as near as makes no difference identical. But with my 550t, I'm again noticing discrepancies between the two. OK, not as much as in the early days of the MTK chipset, maybe 5-10%, but annoying nonetheless. I've tried searching here to see if anyone else was having issues, but couldn't find anything.

I've just got an Oregon 550t, and am having some issues with the battery indicator. I'm mainly using 2000mAh Eneloops, which I understand aren't the longest lasting batteries out there, but they were what I was using in my Vista HCx up until now, and I could get a whole days hiking (7-8 hours) out of them, and the Vista's battery indicator would hardly budge from full, maybe one bar from full at most, and that's with quite a lot of use of the backlight (my eyes aren't that great!) Now, with the Oregon, it appears that even with a fully charged set of batteries, it barely stays on 4 bars for 10-15 minutes before it drops to 3. 2 bars seems to appear after a few hours and then it stays on that for ages. Also, if I'm actively using the device, flicking between pages, scrolling the map screen etc., the battery indicator jumps up and down like a yo-yo, sometimes even showing the low battery indicator, but then if I stop, it jumps back up to 2 bars again. What's even weirder, is if I get home and put those batteries in my Vista HCx, it shows a full battery indicator! So, is anyone else having these issues? I've tried several sets of Eneloops, and even the Garmin batteries that came with the unit, all with the same result. EDIT: Also in the Oregon manual there's mention of a special battery type in the setup for Precharged NiMH cells, but that doesn't appear on mine at all, any idea why there should be anything special about the discharge curve for these kinds of batteries?

True, but it's really confined to Northern England though. It's an anglicization of the Scandinavian word fjäll which means mountain. There are many other examples of Scandinavian words appearing in the names of features, or village names in that part of the world. It's all the Vikings' fault, you see

Just to add ... a guy in our hiking club yesterday had a brand new Venture HC which exhibited the same thing, i.e. only showing one version (2.8 as he'd updated it already) on the S/W version page. His was Bravo version 3 too.

Here you go ... Bravo version 2 as you can see. The unit is just short of 1 year old.

This is the s/w version page from my wife's Venture HC ... updated without any problems at all.

In the UK you can get tidal predictions for today and up to 6 days in advance for free from ... http://easytide.ukho.gov.uk/EasyTide/EasyT...SelectPort.aspx So just print out the tide tables for some of the places you want to visit in advance (assuming you're not away from a computer for more than 7 days before your visit to a particular place!). On the other hand, if you're wanting to visit some of these small islands separated by causeways, you can't always rely on tide predictions alone, as you don't really know how much time either side if low tide you have to complete your crossing. In these cases it's best to Google the island in question and see what the recommended crossing times are, for example for Lindisfarne ... http://www.northumberlandlife.org/holy-island/Page2.asp Unfortunately in the UK the UKHO (UK Hydrological Office) have copyright on tide information and it's not public domain (and therefore free to the likes of Garmin) like it would be in the US.

Maybe that's a good thing? Maybe it was the receiver hanging on too long to bad signals that was the cause of the drift problem?

Just updated to system FW 2.80 for my Vista HCx, and got this as well under "additional updates". I have also updated the wife's Venture HC. So yes, it'd definitely for the etrex H series Mediatek chipset, and I assume also Colorado's with the same chipset.

If you use webupdater, there's a GPS chipset update too, which brings it up to 2.80/2.80.

It's the screen that first appears when you switch the unit on. I put my name and contact phone number on it with a kind request to return the unit if found.

Yes, I saw that too. My own take on it was that it was capable of using an installed routable map to route with, but that you could hide that map and display the OS map instead, and see the routing information with that as a backdrop, as it were.

OK, didn't know that. Any idea why they specify the Colorado 300 specifically?

It's finally on the UK Garmin website! http://www.garmin.com/garmin/cms/site/uk/c...armin-gb-active It's still not clear to me from the marketing-babble on the website whether these are actually raster maps or what they are. What did surprise me though was that they say they'll work on the Colorado 300 (only the 300 or others as well is not clear) and I thought the Oregon was the only one capable of displaying raster imagery.

There's no such thing (yet) as CN 2009, NT or otherwise, for Europe as far as I'm aware? It's still 2008 according to the myGarmin website.

Updated mine as well, and the odometer is much improved ... from yesterdays short hike ... Recorded length : 17.4 km Track length (as reported by OziExplorer) : 17.32 km I still reckon the reported "stopped time" is waaaay over estimated by a factor of x2 at least. It reported 1h16m of stopping time in 5h19m, total time when the only significant stop was a 20min lunch break (it was raining too much to stop for any significant time!) But then, every GPSr I've ever owned has over reported stopping time like this.

The clue is in the name ... GLOBAL Position System

You have to remove the bracket itself from the supplied back cover and screw it into the threaded portion on the back of the Vista. The back cover supplied is for older etrex units that don't have the screw threaded part the newer ones have. In your case you can just throw that bit away.