depending on a few factors other than line of sight. where I live, I have never lost a signal...maybe cause its on a military base and the satellites in the sky are positioned favorably to the bases...just think that cover is not the sole reason for signal lost. maybe that area is just not in the best "coverage zone"

ps. if you look at the pic labeled getting ready to ride in MY PAGE, you will see my garmin legend mounted on a ram...pretty trick

 

I bought a handlebar mount for my GPS. Much easier than holding it in my left hand or hanging it around my neck. I took it with me on a pretty long ride and this time it did not lose the signals. I was really surprised because I drove through a lot of wooded areas. I'll have to try it in the area where I lost the signal to see what happens. The trees are pretty dense in that area. I have a two level house and it does not get a signal. I was in a friends one level house and it did pick up the signals. That was a big surprise. The Legend has 12 parallel channels.

VTNoob- I looked at your pics. They look good.

I'm getting familiar with how it works and all the settings.

 

Nah. Being near or on a military base doesn't have anything to do with availability. The sats don't work like that. The technical aspects of the GPS system are quite fascinating for those who enjoy such technical things. All sorts of neat stuff about atomic clocks, relativistic effects, binary phase modulated quadrature pseudo-random sequences, clear access and precision codes, chip rates and all manner of cool engineering hoo-ha. That GPS is more or less the most accurate clock you will ever own with some neat mathematics built in to figure out where you are on the planet. Cool stuff indeed.

Heavy overcast, trees etc will reduce the signal strength to a point where your receiver will not pick it up. The frequencies we are dealing with here - 1200 and 1500 MHz roughly - don't cope with obstructions well and the actual signals are quite weak 20 watts if I remember right. Not much RF energy. In my experience reception has a lot to do with the GPS itself. Some just seem to work better than others. Some GPS units just seem to be a little more sensitive than others due either to receiver design or the antenna configuration the latter being the most important in my humble opinion.

Backing over them with your truck tire will cause massive problems with reception. You don't wanna know how I know that.

 

The tree problem is called green leaf attenuation. In case anyone was curious. It is a problem with most transmitters.
The clouds act as a signal reflector which is what causes your gps units to lose signal in very heavy cloud cover most of the time this will never be an issue.

The difference in your gps units are the amount of rake receivers that come in each model. obviously the more the rcvrs in each unit the more sattelites you can sync up to at any given time. the more sats the more accurate your location will be as well as your speedo if you are using it for that purpose.

Your 1.2 to 1.5gig range should have great penetration capabilities.. well better than a lower MHZ range.... If you took a 800MHZ cordless phone and a 1.2 GHZ cordless phone transmitting at the same wattage and seperated it from the base station by lets say a metal wall your 1.2 GHZ phone would have better signal to it then the 800 MHZ phone but seperate them from the base station with just distance and the 800 would have a better signal the 800 would carry farther but the 1.2 has better penetration due to the smaller sine wave......

anyway enjoy the gps and happy trails [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img]

 

thanks for the clarifications....good info

 

I have a Magellan SporTrac Pro, which I loaded with the Magellan Topo software. Thing works great. I've got it mounted on my handlebar and plugged into the 12 volt plug on my ATV. It gets us out and back every time. I simply love this thing, and my wife and I have become addicted to the Geocaching game. However, since we live in Nevada, trees are rarely a problem. In fact, mountains have sometimes played a significant part in our signal acquiring, but most of the time we have at least 8-10 sats tuned in, WITH the WAAS feature as well.

I can see where there would be problems with trees if you lived in those areas with lots of trees (I used to live in Illinois and we camped in the forests of Wisconsin all the time).

I guess this doesn't help with the original question about GPS's and trees, but I couldn't help chiming in since I love my GPS so much...[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img]

 

I really like my GPS too. I usually carry it along with me because it has a calendar in it. Today I had found myself stuck in traffic for about 15 minutes. I didn't know the area to know if there were any back roads to drive around the traffic. Then I remembered that I had my GPS with me. Instant map!

 

You know it's a bad day when????????

You roll your quad and rip the GPS mount right off. That sucks. No damgae to the GPS, it took the beating like a trooper. Just tucked it under a strap of my backpack I had on the front rack, back in business.
GPS's are great for "tracking" yourself while riding. I mark cool spots on my track (like good camping spots, good spots to take off hunting, etc.).
Always good to have Map and Compass as a backup, and know how to use them.

 

Any of you guys use the Rino combo GPS and radio?

I know they have a 110 model and 120 and soon to be 130, they are pricey but hunting in the backcountry you almost always lose radio signal. Just curious if anybody has used this system and been able to locate a buddy using same system.

 

I have not used that model. I do think it is supposed to locate other people. I think when you click the talk button or something.

Some guy up in the trails had one. He was also commenting how he can locate people he hunts with.