Garmin Astro Review

[blackpaws]

i have been trying to contact Garmin for 2 days and can't get through to the tech support. i am sure mine is burned up from my VHF radio so i am trying to send it back. if i can't get a hold of them i am bringing it back to Cabelas where i bought it and let them deal with it. i don't have time to sit on the phone for an hour to wait for the next availlable person to take my call. i had good luck with mine before it got burned up. was getting over 2 miles with stock antenna and gradually got worse.

[Mr.pacojack]

[walker83]

Alright I usually just sit the side lines on these discussions and almost all others and enjoy the reading and entertainment, I dont know pacojack from adam and I am sure that he is a hell of a guy that hunts hard, knows dogs and uses his equipment hard and has a pretty good read on what is what. That said I also love marshall systems and think they are great, are they any better than johnson? are walkers better than plotts as bear dogs? I think you could ask how long is a rope and get the same response. I have noticed that Paco sure has a thing for Marshall, is always defending them, and always on the phone with them or so it seems. I have run one of these garmins this last season and it has its flaws just like marshall radio systems(pacojack might tell you otherwise) but I love the hell out of it. I run a tracking collar with it and wouldnt consider running without one. I dont think that I have ever read that they are the replacement for a tracking system, just like dogs, people and just about everything else, if you recognize strenghts and weakness and apply their strenghts things would be a hell of alot better. My opinion of the garmin system is that its strengths far outway its weakness, use it for them and be aware of the potential problems and make the most of your time on the mountain.

[Dads dogboy]

Walker83,

AMEN, & Thank You!!!!!!!!!!

CJC

[Mr.pacojack]

Sorry Guys I misunderstood the topic I thought is was a Garmin Astro Review not a Garmin Astro ONLY POSITIVE Review. I took my posts off so it can be a all POSITIVE review
Dads dogboy, didn't you pm me telling me how you are on your third system and are having the same proplems as me?

[Hound 1]

The Astro has many Pro's and just as many Con's. This system helps us out a ton as far as training young dogs goes, you can see who is doing what, and what you need to do to fix the problem. You can see where they are headed and get in clsoer to the dogs.
I was lion hunting this morning and went under a small tree and my Garmin Long Range Antenna barley hit a small tree branch, and yeah that was all for that $65 investment, and the damn chargers on the collars I have had to modify the hell out of each charger and custom fit for each one.
The Astro is not the replacment for the telemetry collars and tracking systems, but is a nice addition for me.
What if I plugged my garmin into my yagi antenna?

[Bearkiller]

On the modified antenna's for the dc-20. Do they move the gps antenna to the top too? Or just the radio. On the dc-30 the gps is on top. I don't see the point in changing the antenna if its just the radio. I have one dog that doesn't seem to be able to keep the dc-20 up. Even with e collar ran as a counter balance. I'd buy these new antenna's if they really work.

[Hound 1]

One more complaint that I have is the dogs will be in front of me and the update will come that they are treed. The dogs were out a long way last week and the tree signal kept coming up so I started walking, no tree, still cold trailing, can you change this or what?

[tman308]

The DC-30 Collar isn't like the radio telemetry collars with the mercury switch. The DC-30 just uses the lack of movement from a small area. So basically if your dog is working out a track and keeps circling around in small circles it will show treed. The only thing you can do is to turn that feature off.

[Mr.pacojack]

Has anyone got the 151 tuned whip antena and used it on their 220? I ordered 2 and got them int he mail today but I have not got my 220 BACK from Garmin YET. Just wondering how good they worked or if it was the same?

[sheimer]

I ordered the antennas for the DC20's to move the collar under their neck and turned the dogs out. One worked flawlessly and the other lost GPS signal after about 3 hours and never got it back. Both dogs were lost for several days as the batteries went dead before I could get to the dogs. The last several signals were from 6.1 miles away. This was with the factory antenna on the 220 and the updated antennas on the collars. The dogs were in rough country, just hapened to be about 3000 feet higher than me on a ridge.

Scott

[Mr.pacojack]

I have a brand new( never used on a dog) Astro 220 and 2 collars and extras for sale in the Classifieds

[Bodi]

G'Day Fella's

I am a hound hunter from Australia, we mainly hunt Sambar deer with Bloodhounds and Beagles. I have read the whole way through this thread. I came to the section on the differing frequencies and thought I had found nirvana!! I have 5 DC 30's and 5 DC20's and have had them for about 12 months. I changed the ID's on the DC 30's to the lowest bank during the week and couldn't wait to try it out on the weekend. Last year my unit was working pretty well. A few drop outs here or there but still well worth the while.

That was until Yesterday. The Astro 220 hardly picked up a collar all day and it wasn't until the hounds were visible that the unit picked them up. Absolutely bloody useless. I could hear a hound making its way out a ridge yet the Astro couldn't even pick it up. At one stage it showed a consistent signal for my best dog Bundy. However the symbol didnt move on the screen, even though I knew he was back tracking himself away from me. I thought maybe the collar had come off. When I went into the Bundy collar itself on the details screen the unit had full battery strength and GPS signal but no radio comms at all. I walked into the scrub to where the unit said the collar was and got zoomed right in so that the unit said I was on top of the collar. Couldn't find it. Walked around and aorund for a coupe of hours with no luck. I even went back to the vehicle and drove away about a Kilometer and the unit showed me moving away and the distance getting out to a Kilometer. Drove back and the unit still sent me to the same place but not a collar to be seen. Just then one of the boys called me to say they had picked Bundy up. About 3 kilometers away from where I was and that he had the collar on him and it was blinking twice, indicating that it still had a satellite fix.Stuffed if I know what the hell the unit was up to, but shit it wasted a lot of time.

The boys picked up the other dogs and I had the kids walk down the track with the other four DC30's. 80 meters and they lost Comms contact completely even though the kids said the collars were still double blinking. 80 bloody meters!!! And I tried the roof mounted antennae as well with no improvement. Towards the end of last season I was consitently getting 10 miles or better in pretty steep terrain. Stuffed if I know whats going on. Looks like I will have to send the lot back to Garmin which is a pain as it will take several weeks to get them back.

Any ideas you guys? The first hunt of the year two weeks ago the collars weren't workin very well either. Could only pick up one dog so I am not sure that it has anything to do with the frequency changes. I didn't get a chance to try the DC20's. I upgraded their software over the net last week also as it was supposed to fix a lot of their problems.

Dont get me wrong. I love the Astro 220 and the DC30's are a huge improvement over the DC20's but now it is completely F---ing usless and I cant trust it at all. Consistancy seems to be there greatest problem as there were quite a few hunters on this web page that had encountered the same problem and had to send them back to Garmin, in some instances several times.

Obviously to send them back from here will take a lot more time and cost in postage. I cant work out whats wrong. If the Unit and collar are close, say 20 meters, it shows full GPS reception and Full Radio Comms. However as you get past 40 meters the Comms starts to drop, losing it completely at 80m. Help Please!!!!!!!!

Bodi

[sheimer]

If I'm following your post correctly, all of your collars are functioning the same, right? That leads me to believe that it is the astro that is the issue. Remove your antenna and see if this makes any difference. I put on another antenna on mine and didn't notice that it was missing the little post in the middle and it did exactly what you are describing. If it was just one collar I would suspect a collar, but how it is all of them, it has to be the hand held. If removing your antenna doesn't change anything, that means that your antenna is not doing any good and therefor must have a bad connection or there is a bad connection inside of the astro for the antenna. If removing the antenna changes something, well I guess I don't know what to say. Good luck and let us know if this fixes anything.

Scott

[Plotts]

Bodi have you gone online and updated your 220 and collars? Garmin continually puts out software updates and maybe there is a fix for your problem somewhere in the software update package. Just a thought. Hope it works for you.