GPSr going haywire?

[+imajeep]

I saw something on the forums about this a year ago, but I thought I'd share a problem I ran into, and its solution. Ever since my wife and I got back out to cache this spring (three weeks ago--it was a very snowy winter in Chicago), I noticed my GPSr (a Garmin GPSMap 60CSx) behaving oddly. It did okay for urban caches, but it went haywire every time in went after a forest hide. It got to the point where I was recalibrating the compass every five minutes, and that still wouldn't keep it on track.

 

Old hands have already figured out my problem, but it took me a little longer. On one half-mile hike in the woods today, the GPSr almost completely broke down. The needle swung wildly, it pointed the wrong way, and it wouldn't register any movement, even if I tuned a complete circle. No matter what I did, I got the "Hold Level" warning. I finally sat down on a log and started going through every setting on the unit. I found my problem in Main Menu > Setup > Map. There are several pages in Map Setup. The first page has an option called 'Lock On Road', and somehow, that option had gotten set to 'On' on my unit. So, no matter where I went, the GPSr locked onto the nearest road and tried its best to show me as being on that road. I'll bet it was as frustrated as I was!

 

I set the 'Lock On Road' option to 'Off', and the problem disappeared immediately. Oh--and I discovered the cache I was hunting was in the log I was sitting on. The moral of the story is this: If you have a Garmin 60CSx and it misbehaves or bahaves strangely, check the 'Lock On Road' setting before doing anything else, like hurling the unit off a cliff.

[+GOT GPS?]

Thanks for the post here, I just went into Map setup on my 60CSx and found a few problems, after having done a full reset the other day. I found LOCK ON ROAD turned ON, and fixed a bunch of other settings also.