For the longest time, I resisted geting a GPS. Any soldier worth his stripes should be able to figure out his ground position to within 100m just by comparing the ground to his map, and maybe shooting a bearing with his compass.
But then I picked up a cheapie Garmin Etrex, and while it doesn't replace the map and terrain reading skills (by a long shot) the ability to generate an exact position fix at a moment's notice comes in very handy, especially when one is operating in an unfamilliar area. GPS may be a crutch, but it is an *effective* crutch.
There were a few small problems with the Etrex though. It was very sensitive to sky view, such that it often lost signal inside a vehicle unless it was on the dash. It didn't do mapping, and it would eat AA batteries at a ferocious rate. With the newer, fancier units on the market, I started thinking about upgrading.
Many of the troops in my unit have Rino 120 FRS/GPS units. It can be handy to have an additional means of communication other than the issue radios, and the position reporting function was interesting, so I bought a Rino 520 - specifically a 520 vice a 530 because of reports of better battery life, and the extra geegaws on the 530 didn't seem to have much practical purpose.
Wow!
1) The 520 has tons of memory, such that I could upload topo maps for every area I was likely to operate in and still have room to spare. The detail and accuracy has been outstanding, and having street names (which the issue 1:50k maps lack) has been a godsend.
2) It is much less sensitive to sky cover than the Etrex was. It'll still lose signal if (say) stuffed in a glovebox, but it'll work on your lap in a vehicle, where the Etrex would not.
3) The "breadcrumb" track mapping means I can record everywhere I go, and then download the tracks to my computer later via Mapsource - which can then be overlaid on satellite imagery via Google Earth (which has already proven useful in proving that I was at a certain place at a certain time)
4) The routing function and the turn-by-turn instructions were recently tested on a 900km road move, and worked - although the unit made a couple of odd suggestions, and I think it may have been hampered by not having detail maps loaded for the entire route.
5) It has a nifty "alarm clock" mode, where you set the alarm, and the unit shuts off - and then turns itself on and screeches at the appropriate time. Cool!
6) The data pages are customizable, meaning you can set up pages that contain just the info you need.
7) The radio and position location/transmit functions work exactly as advertised. I don't yet have a good feel for the max range of the radio (even in 5W mode) but it's not huge. The speaker gets all distorted at max volume, but when used with an earbud it is just fine. My gut tells me the radio is fair to good.
8) The only real concern I've had has been battery life and the fact that it uses a proprietary batty pack that must be recharged from wall current - which can be tough to find sometimes. But so far, battery life has been exceptional (a three day exercise with heavy radio use only dropped to 60%, and a 2-day road move with the radio turned off finished at 90% used) and an add-on pack that uses normal AA batteries (at the cost of dropping max transmit power to 2W) is availible.
Overall, this is a great unit, and highly recommended.
DG
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Garmin Rino 520 Handheld GPS Navigator and 2-Way RadioProduct Description: No matter where your outdoor activities take you, the Rino 520 keeps you on track and in touch. This rugged, two-way radio with GPS packs a bold color display, 12-mile communication range, and turn-by-turn directions -- giving you peace of mind in the great outdoors. Exclusive position-reporting capability and a host of other unique features, make the 520 one of the best all-in-one two-way radio and GPS receivers around. As with other members of the Rino family, the 520's patented location-reporting feature allows you to send and receive GPS positions with other Rino users in your group. One call to your partner's Rino, and your location shows up on the map page. You can even poll another Rino user's location in emergency situations. Additional features unique to the 520 include:Whopping 5 watts of transmit power (transmit power limited to 2 watts in Canada with a range up to 8 miles). Bold color TFT display makes it easy to see and navigate to family or friends with Rinos at an amusement park, lake, or other outdoor group activity. Automatic route generation, off-route recalculation, turn-by-turn directions with alert tones, and icon-driven menus for finding points of interest (when combined with Garmin's optional MapSource City Select software) navigate you safely to your next outdoor adventure. Mini USB and 56 megabytes of internal memory for rapid download and lots of map storage of Garmin's entire line of outdoor cartography. Rechargeable internal lithium-ion battery provides up to 16 hours of outdoor use. Customize map data for your adventures on land or sea with Garmin's entire line of optional outdoor cartography including U.S. Topo 24K, U.S. Topo, Recreational Lakes with Fishing Hot Spots, and BlueChart. Rino 520: Two-way radio with GPS keeping you on track and in touch.
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I work at a university in California as a maintenance worker.My boss and I have to keep in touch in order to best meet the needs of our housing residents.Before we used the Cobra Micro Talk 1 we relied on our campuspager system.This was not an effective method since we had to find campusphones and wait until the other person responded to the page.With theMicro Talk 1 we are able to connect quickly and effectively.We can nowcommunicate in seconds instead of minutes. The battery life is long becauseof the stand-bye feature, we have been able to use them for several weeksbefore the batteries run low.The only down side to the Micro Talk 1 isthat we sometimes have to deal with other radio traffic because of thetwo-channel limitation.
