GPS Help?

[Trout]

I was planning on buying a new GPS to replace a my twelve year old Garmin 45 (mainly used for boating). The Garmin GPSMAP 60csx looked very nice. Then I came across the DeLorme Earthmate PN-20 and it also looked very interesting & comes with some realy nice maping/topo software. Just wondering if anyone has some real world experience with these two units & could give some relative comparisons? Thanks in advance for any info/experences & comparisons you might have.

 

[DougPaul]

Just wondering if anyone has some real world experience with these two units & could give some relative comparisons?.

I have experience with the 60csx and am happy with it. No experience with the other one.

There are quite a few 60csx owners on this BBS.

I have also seen reports that delorme's digital maps are inferior to Garmin's. Make sure you check out the maps and software before choosing a GPS because you can only load maps from the same manufacturer.

Doug

 

[MichaelJ]

LOVE my 60csx. I picked up a 1GB microSD card and bought both topo and street maps. The topo is decent and the street maps are routable on the GPS itself. I could have used just a 512MB card; I loaded all of NY & New England plus Colorado and it took up less than that.

I don't use the Garmin PC software except to load the maps onto the GPS. Then I use GPS Babel (open source software) for transferring tracks and waypoints to Google Earth or Natl Geo Topo.

 

[KevCon223]

I have the older 60cs. The best I've had so far. Plus, the Garmin Mapsource software is great!! I have almost all the topo's for the Northeast stored in the unit.
Kevin

 

[kmorgan]

I have the older 60cs. The best I've had so far. Plus, the Garmin Mapsource software is great!! I have almost all the topo's for the Northeast stored in the unit.
Kevin

I have this unit also. I too love it, it's my 4th Garmin unit. I also invested in an external antenna for it which I mounted to the hand hold on the top of my pack with a couple of plastic wire ties. This allows me to keep the unit inside the pack and get a better signal to boot since it's an amplified antenna.

You can check out the antenna here: https://secure.navsphere.com/product_info.php?products_id=1024 the GPS I bought on Amazon.

Kevin

 

[DougPaul]

I have the older 60cs. The best I've had so far. Plus, the Garmin Mapsource software is great!! I have almost all the topo's for the Northeast stored in the unit.
Kevin

I also have the 60cs--a good unit. The 60csx is a very significant improvment over the 60cs in its ability to receive the satellites in less-than-ideal (ie real world) conditions. The memory card is also a significant improvment too--I bought a 2GB card and have road, 100K topo, and 25K topo maps for everything east of Chicago loaded.

I had the 60cs and was holding off purchasing the 60csx until I looked at the results from the first GPS bakeoff: http://www.vftt.org/forums/showthread.php?t=14406. The second bakeoff confirmed the improvment: http://www.vftt.org/forums/showthread.php?t=15025. Basically, the recorded track from a shoulder-mounted 60csx was as good as the track from a 60cs with a top-of-the-head mounted external antenna. I now only bother with the external antenna for the 60csx when explicitly mapping a route. IMO, the track from a shoulder or top-of-the-pack mounted 60csx is good enough for anything else.

Doug

 

[Peakbagr]

I've had the Garmin 60CSX since April and I couldn't ask for anything more.
I don't believe its EVER lost a signal, and that means, under thick canopy, snow, rain, or inbetween large rocks.
When I lit it up the first time, it initialized ourside for a few minutes, and I took it into my basement (2 small windows 40' away) and was seeing 7 birds.

Alan

...just thought of one thing. The 60CSx is fussy with high drain lithium batteries. With its earliest firmware, it would easily take lithiums. I upgraded the firmware and it won't work with lithiums. The Garmin techs said to stick the lithiums in another device for a minute(like a small flashlight), take them out and they then run fine. Apparently there is a slightly higher voltage readings the lithiums emit and the unit shuts down when it encounters them.
So, for summer, rechargeables. For winter, lithiums.

 

[kmorgan]

Basically, the recorded track from a shoulder-mounted 60csx was as good as the track from a 60cs with a top-of-the-head mounted external antenna. I now only bother with the external antenna for the 60csx when explicitly mapping a route. IMO, the track from a shoulder or top-of-the-pack mounted 60csx is good enough for anything else.

Doug

Perhaps, but it's nice to have the external mounted antenna if you need to use the GPS in a hand held mode for route seeking. You needn't worry about the GPS's position causing a loss of signal.

Another good tip is to set the track interval to a distance rather than time.

Kevin

 

[DougPaul]

Perhaps, but it's nice to have the external mounted antenna if you need to use the GPS in a hand held mode for route seeking. You needn't worry about the GPS's position causing a loss of signal.

You obviously haven't tried a 60csx. It will often (generally?) pick up satellites better with its internal antenna than will the 60cs with an external antenna. I can use it anywhere in my house including many spots where the 60cs doesn't stand a chance. The difference is because the 60csx uses the SIRF Star III GPS chipset which is far more sensitive than the Garmin GPS chipset in the 60cs.

I have read a claim from someone who likes the 60csx because he can hang it from his belt and still get a good track--try that with your 60cs... (I don't recommend it, but it seemed to float his boat.)

Another good tip is to set the track interval to a distance rather than time.

Depends on what you are doing. For the bakeoff #2 I used a purely time-interval based track recording because anything which used location would have biased the measurements of track repeatability. If you are averaging, you should also use time-only. For just plain recording a track while hiking, I just use auto-normal.

Doug

 

[DougPaul]

...just thought of one thing. The 60CSx is fussy with high drain lithium batteries. With its earliest firmware, it would easily take lithiums. I upgraded the firmware and it won't work with lithiums. The Garmin techs said to stick the lithiums in another device for a minute(like a small flashlight), take them out and they then run fine. Apparently there is a slightly higher voltage readings the lithiums emit and the unit shuts down when it encounters them.
So, for summer, rechargeables. For winter, lithiums.

IMO, this is a hardware design flaw (shame on Garmin...). AFAIK, it is not affected by the software version (but I have not experimented with it myself.) Brand new lithiums put out a slightly higher voltage and the voltage converters in the 60csx cannot handle it. (Older models are fine with new lithiums.)

I use lithiums or NiMHs any time of year depending on other factors. When I called in the coordinates of my accident site, the GPS was running on NiMHs. The spares were lithium.

Doug