Reception with Garmin Units

[geootters]

All you owners of Garmin units please ring in on how your reception in is in all conditions. How is your reception if any in deep woods or any other enviorment. I know the 60csx is the best but have heard that explorist reception is better and just trying to figure a few things out with reception issues and if anyone with Cx's have had any reception issues. Mostly trying to figure out how the venture cx is in the deep woods.

 

Thanks for the input.

[rhitchco]

I just recently upgraded from an Etrex Vista to a 60CSx. The Vista was a fine unit, but it would struggle under heavy wet tree cover, losing signal every now and then. The 60CSx is worlds better...simply amazing. It even works indoors in many places.

[+munro290]

A friend of mine has a legend cx and I have a ex 500, under dense tree cover he keeps losing signal where mine is strong. Last weekend though I was trying to mark a cache in an open field, my 500 kept losing the sat lock. This is the first time this has happened although it was snowing and very low cloudy. I dont know if it was the snow or something else.

[+kohldad]

On a recent outing, my 60CSx never missed a beat despite heavy foilage. Turned on my eMap and had 1 satellite showing grey. Another time was in a heavy rain under canopy so thick you couldn't see the clouds, checked the satellite page and still had 6 satellites with sufficient strength.

 

Worst mistake I've done in the last two months was buy a new GPS unit so my kids could use my old one, which they haven't touched. Best thing I did was spend the extra money for the SiRF chipset.

[+Night Stalker]

I have only used my new 60CX in a wooded area once so far and that was while geocaching with Corp of Discovery in Chicago. The woods were very heavy, and I did not lose my signal at any time. I did notice that I was off as much as 20' on most of the caches, but this is within reason and can be attributed to error on the part of the hider or combined error between the hiders GPS. On one of the caches I was at 0 feet when I found the cache so I assume that means I had good satellite lock even in the thick woods. The real test will be the next time I am sent to Houston, TX. My 60CS had fits in the woods there.

[Ring]

put it this way, im locked on 8 sats INSIDE my house with a 16ft accuracy right now..

 

my other 4 gps's wont even get a lock near a window..

[geootters]

Alright, If you read the heading of the topic I don't believe it says anything about 60csx except for a little bit in the actually body of the text and I already said I KNOW the reception is good with the 60csx.

 

I am wandering about the venture cx, vista cx, and legend cx operates in thick tree cover. That is the question and so anyone with feedback on those three units it would be greatly appreciated.

 

I know everyone likes to brag about the 60csx but that is not for this topic for right now.

 

Thanks everyone who replies on the three units up for discussion.

[+rstickle]

I am wandering about the venture cx, vista cx, and legend cx operates in thick tree cover. That is the question and so anyone with feedback on those three units it would be greatly appreciated.

 

OK, I had a Legend (Not Cx) and it was SO bad I replaced it within 6 months. I did a 10k hike in deep woods, when I had a signal it was at 30+ meters, and the total distance registered was about 4.5 k for the hike. I did, however, reach speeds in excess of 300 KPH!

 

Rick

[+briansnat]

I've geocached alongside users of a Vista CX and Legend CX. Their reception under trees is far superior to the old B/W eTrex units and was better than my 60CS in most cases.

 

So I'd have to say that reception of these units is pretty good. Their recpetion may not rise to the levels of the 60 and 70 CSX models, but they certainly get the job done.

[jonners]

If you've got a cup of coffee and an hour to spare, you might want to look over this thread, on about page 9 or 10 at the moment.

 

"Garmin Etrex Legend Cx"

 

It's all about reception issues. The Legend/Venture/Vista have the same receiver.

[Ring]

put it this way, im locked on 8 sats INSIDE my house with a 16ft accuracy right now..

 

my other 4 gps's wont even get a lock near a window..

 

mine is the legend cx

[+Renegade Knight]

Alright, If you read the heading of the topic I don't believe it says anything about 60csx except for a little bit in the actually body of the text and I already said I KNOW the reception is good with the 60csx. ...

 

Do you always bit the hand that feeds you, or are you a nice person otherwise?

 

An open discussion in an open forum on an open question invites comments. Those comments may or may not be quite what you have in mind. Your job is to be NICE and try and steer the thread back to the couse you would like to take. Either that or yell at people and get yourself labled as a Jerk.

 

My 2 cents are below.

 

Your 3 GPS units in question have better reception than the ones they replace. Does that help? Probably not.

Magellan GPSs also lie about having reception when they don't. Whoops that issue was a sport track thing and may or may not have been fixed with the Explorists GPSs. That probably doesn't help either. But now you know Magellans are suspect. Hmmm...a forest service study perhaps? Oh wait that covered older Garmins and Magellans where Garmin trounced the living snot out of Magellan in a controlled study. Dang that don't help either.

 

Bottom line. Without that controlled study you have observation and experience that is sketchy at best. All newer GPSs get better reception than the older ones for a number of reasons. Buy your GPS based on features. The Magellan won't be better or worse enough to worry about.