what is the best handheld gps to use for hiking and mountain biking?
I currently use a 3 year old Garmin eTrex. It loses signal as soon as I go into the sparsest treecover. Are the newer more expensive units more sensitive so that they find the signal when in the woods?
Tagged with: garmin etrex • mp2128heli
Filed under: Handheld GPS Systems
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I agree with the former answer to this question. The Garmin handhelds with the x in the model number all use the Sirf III chipset and a sensitive antenna. These models are the 60cx and csx and 76cx and csx and some of the newer etrex series have the x designation. Among our fellow hikers the most popular is the 60csx (I use the cx which does not have an electronic compass and barometric altimeter).
I never lose satellite signals under any kind of forest cover and only rarely in unusual canyons. I highly recommend these models.
On holiday last summer I broke my Garmin GPS 76, and had to use my back-up GPS, and old 12 XL.
On getting home I phoned Garmin, and then asked around on the Internet I was advised to get the GPSMAP 60 CSX. This despite the fact that I don’t have enough sight to be able to use the mapping facility on a GPS. One person who is in search and rescue in America, said that since getting the GPSMAP 60 CSX he had never lost the satellites under the densest of tree cover or in the deepest of canyons.
I live in Surrey the most wooded county in England. There is one path where I have never managed to maintain a signal. The path is 15 ft below the level of the ground either side, and surrounded by dense tree cover from trees about 60 ft high. The GPSMAP 60 CSX still gave me 7 satellites even there.
The only place that I have lost a signal, is when I was recording the route of the bus on which I was traveling. The bus stopped at a bus-stop, with a 20 ft high bank of sand, with trees growing right up to the edge on one side with a 10 ft high bank sand, and large building on the other side. I lost the signal while people boarded the bus. The instant we moved off I got the signal back.
If I’m going out walking for the day, I usually put the GPS on the kitchen table and switch it on, as although it takes a bit longer it will happily pick up the signal indoors. For the rest of the day if I have switched it off at a coffee stop, or lunch time it will usually have position on all the satellites that it has previously been monitoring in less than one second.
As you gather I am delighted with it.
You will have to ask on a group such as Garmin_GPSMap_60Cx_60CSx for a suitable mount for a bike.
Thus is written with voice recognition software & checked with a voice synthesiser & a spell checker. Hopefully there are not to many smelling errors as that kind of error is easy to miss.