Rino 530 HCx - Units are several 100 feet off

[+Orienteering]

I recently purchased three Rino 530 HCx, so my children can go geocaching on a very long leash. The Rino 530 HCx allows us to communicate via walkie talkie and we can see each other's position on our screen.

We have now used it for three weekend geocaching excursions and all three weekends have been very disappointing. Basically what happens is that the Rinos tend to drift off when walking at a slow speed. As a result it is extremly hard for the children to find caches. I would always find the cache with our old 60CSx while the three Rinos would show that they are anything between 50 and 300 feet away. BUT the Rinos would almost always peep after a couple of minutes while we were at the cache, filling out the log and looking through the items. What happens every time with all three Rinos is that once they are put down on the ground - so the kids have their hands free to go through the items in the cache - the location on the map screen would slowly drift in a straight line towards the cache until it is almost there (most times within 10-25 feet).

 

Does anyone else have similar observations? I noticed on the board that owners of Vista HCx and Colarado units complain about similar effects. We run the newest firmware 2.5 for the Rinos. These units are basically useless for us if there is no firmware update that fixes this problem.

[+Sputnik 57]

If a GPSr is regularly 30 to 300 feet off, I would suspect that the Datum is set to NAD27 instead of WGS84. Those two datums are often a few hundred feet apart in the US. But the units drifting to within 10 feet of the cache does not sound like datum problem. If you have a good view of the sky and WAAS reception, you should be within 20 or 30 feet every time.

[QuigleyJones]

Have you got the latest software version?

[+Orienteering]

Have you got the latest software version?

Yes, I upgraded the firmware on all three Rinos before using them.

 

We use them with

- Compass on

- WAAS on

- Backlight turns automatically on whenever a button is pressed

[+Orienteering]

I talked to Garmin and their rep Steven told me to autolocate the Rinos and turn on WAAS. WAAS was already enabled and I followed his instructions to autolocate the units (hold call button while turning them on).

 

I now went on a 1 mile walk with my good old 60 CSx and a Rino 530 HCx around a course with seven caches. Here is a screenshot of the two tracks. Does anyone else see behavior like this? I saw some posts for Vista HCx and Colorado units that seem to have similar problems. If Garmin can't fix that problem I will have to return the three Rinos. They are useless for geocaching as it stands. Or does anyone here have any idea what could help.

 

Uuups - now I can't figure out how to insert the sceenshot. "Insert image" does't give me a popup to browse for the picture but wants a URL. Any advise?

[+Red90]

You can not upload images here. You need to host it elsewhere (Photobucket or similar) and link to here.