Garmin GPS failure with a side by side comparison

[bigboarstopper]

Just got back from an out of state hunt. My partner and I both had garmin GPS recievers and collars on our dogs. His hand held unit worked fantastic up to about 2 miles in hilly country. Mine would lose signal within 400-500 yards on all recieving collars. Both reciever units were connected to the same dogs. My gps reciever hasent been exposed to excessive ammounts of VHF wattage or interferance.

Im beginning to understand what the gripe is all about. It seems that a side by side comparison in the field between seperate gps recievers will show a widely different result. 90% of the time I had nothing but question marks for the location of the dogs while my partners gps had the dogs located 90% of the time for the same tracked dogs.

There has been a lot of talk about losing signals with the garmins. While I understand the concept of "line of sight" the side by side comparison shows that each Garmin reciever isnt equal to the other.

Im kinda screwed at this time. Ive had the unit too long to return it and the unit basically worked as well as it did when I first bought it. I assumed at the time that the loss of signal had to do with "line of sight". Now with the comparison in the field. It shows that peoples gripes about signal failure may not be due to line of sight but inconsistant performance from one reciever to the next.

Has anybody else been able to make this comparison besides me? What was your result?

[ncmailman]

I've had the same problem with my Garmin. My nephew's box generally picks up 3 times better than mine. I hung 2 collars in a tree mine lost signal at 1.05 miles. Tried my nephew's his lost signal at 3.5 miles. I sent mine back to Garmin and then tried mine again. This time I lost signal at around 1.5 miles. I don't know if mine is real sorry or his is real good. I guess I need to be thankful that mine picks up at 1.5 instead of 1.05. It's still handy to know exactly where your dog is when it does work. Good to know I'm not the only one with this problem.

[Jason Waterhouse]

Sounds like you might be on to something hear. I thought the same thing this past summer with me and my partners garmins.

[doghunter]

I am one of the ones that have sent my Garmin back over 10 times. Now I think they repair your unit (replace the board) and send it back. Before they started fixing the units they would keep yours and send you a remanufactured unit. Every time I get one back I hang it in the same tree and each day going to and from work I check it. I have been able to tell a big difference from one unit to another. But the last time they fixed my unit it came back tracking at .08 of a mile max. I sent it back again and told them it had not lost anymore range and was repaired (I was down to 800 yards prior to sending it in) but the range stunk. They repaired it again and now I am getting 2 miles with the long range antenna steady.

one thing i am sure of is they wont tell you the anser even if they know. or take any advise from us hunters that use them everyday.

I say again come on Marshall and I hope the guys at Marshall are reading these post.