[aprssig] Why is my AvMap G6 flaky?

[J T]

Perhaps replace it with a Garmin Montana 600-series?  Touchscreen, street routing, APRS support via NMEA I/O.

-Jerome, W0JRT

--- On Fri, 1/4/13, Andrew P. <andrewemt at hotmail.com> wrote:

From: Andrew P. <andrewemt at hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: [aprssig] Why is my AvMap G6 flaky?
To: "aprssig at tapr.org " <aprssig at tapr.org>
Date: Friday, January 4, 2013, 9:58 AM

Followup to all:

My problem with the AvMap G6 isn't GPS reception; when it starts up, it seems to get a good GPS lock pretty quickly and track accurately (although it appears to be inconsistent in using Snap-to-Road when I go into parking lots). My problem was getting the thing to start at all.

I did try Lawrence's suggestion; I had two deep-cycle batteries behind a battery isolator from the vehicle's regular power system (these batteries are primarily there to run my Engel DC-powered portable refrigerator without flattening the main vehicle low-voltage battery), so I plugged the AvMap's DC power cord into the DC outlets connected to the auxiliary batteries, and it seemed to start up much more reliably (although still slowly).

But that still didn't affect the AvMap's inability to calculate more than one trip routing per power-up. If I tried to change my destination, it would always fail with "Error calculating the path" until I power-cycled the AvMap. Oddly enough, when I deviated from the AvMap's chosen course (several times I tried switching to "shortest route" instead of "fastest time", and that routing always wanted to get my onto dinky side-streets), it was able to successfully re-calculate to account for my disobedience. It just couldn't deal with a new destination without a power cycle.

Much weirdness, and significant disappointment. If the touchscreen wasn't dying on my old Magellan GPS, I would go back to it, because it was more reliable and faster than the AvMap (and significantly cheaper, too). Good thing I knew where I was going, and was only using the AvMap as a GPS source for the Kenwood and for arrival time estimates.

Andrew Pavlin, KA2DDO

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