Garmin Venture

[mackey]

Hi, we bought a Garmin Venture about a year ago and it seems to work fine EXCEPT when you get close to your destination waypoint the needle will point all kinds of directions. Sometimes when 2-3 miles out the needle points the correct direction but the floating "needle body line" doesn't line up with the head and tail of the needle. We can only find caches by walking in a direction where the distance decreases. Even that seems "iffy" at times. Thought maybe the battery was a bit low but not sure. Anybody else experiencing this?

Bill

[DaBadger]

quote:

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Originally posted by mackey:

Hi, we bought a Garmin Venture about a year ago and it seems to work fine EXCEPT when you get close to your destination waypoint the needle will point all kinds of directions. Sometimes when 2-3 miles out the needle points the correct direction but the floating "needle body line" doesn't line up with the head and tail of the needle. We can only find caches by walking in a direction where the distance decreases. Even that seems "iffy" at times. Thought maybe the battery was a bit low but not sure. Anybody else experiencing this?

Bill

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You're seeing the Course Pointer. Use the second thing in the options menu on the Navigation page and select "bearing pointer". That will give you a solid arrow that should always point to the destination.

[mackey]

Da Badger,

 

Thank you.

 

Bill

[+Renegade Knight]

Also when you get close to the cache the arrow doesnt' work for a couple of reasons.

 

1) You have to be moving above a certain speed for your GPS to keep tabs on your bearing. Getting close slows you down.

2) When you are close your GPS is only accurate to within 20-40'. If you are closer than that your 'known' position can bounce every which direction around the position of the cache (which doesn't bounce since it's a known point). Every time it thinks you have moved relative to the cache it will give you a new dirrectional arrow. Add in number one and a GPS is pretty much worthless at pointing you the right way when you are close, unless it has a built in compass.

 

With my gps I can get to within 14' before my arrow wigs out. From there it's pretty easy to triangulate and get 4-5' away from where it thinks I'm supposed to be. Then we find the cache 30' over anyway.

 

Running up hillsides is the exception to this rule. I tend to end up 30' away when it starts to wig out due to being too dadgum tired to keep moving that last 15 feet up the cliff, er... hill.