Garmin Montana

After posting this and seeing all the screenshots together, something jumped out at me that's sort of funny.... I was doing a good job of minding the speed limit!

Steve are you a Ham radio operator.
Or it that part of your job?

Fred

I have seen countless posts about this issue since firmware 4.70 was released, and I have experienced the behavior myself to this day (I am running 5.40).

I suspect this is part of how they accomplished "Improved map performance in densely-populated urban areas." in 4.70, and has been unchanged since.

Both.

These tests were business related. Testing goals were for low bandwidth data link for DGPS correction signals. Pretty amazing, with a good antenna at about 20' on the 5W base, I was getting over 30miles of range over relatively flat ground to my 4x4's roof mounted antenna. I expected much less than that. I've been suggesting the business band antennas we were using were pretty crappy and got a good amateur antenna that cost 1/10 what they do and with simple modifications (shortening the elements) performs way better. Only getting 5-10miles with the other ones.


Most of the ham stuff (extra) is when I'm out in the backcountry. Great for vehicle to vehicle and I've got HF/6m/2m/70cm in the 4x4 and a nice HT with the moto or for a loaner. I got into it when we used 2m for communication when we flew hang gliders.

I used to be in good shape and not worry much about having to hike out if I had a mechanical failure. I have medical challenges that stop me from hiking a long ways and I've carried an HT for emergency use since the dangle-diving days. I have found very few places where I can't hit a repeater in the southwest even though there's plenty of places cellular is useless. HF in the 4x4 is amazing. We were overnighting a few weeks ago in some very remote desert surrounded by mountains. Within a minute of firing up the radio I got Anchorage. It may not be close to home but it's someone that would be better than no one in a pinch! Both radios are "opened" and can [in emergency] work business, marine, FRS/GMRS, a lot of forest service and other emergency service frequencies. Pretty much most old school things that are still analog below 500MHz.

So maybe 4.6 is better - at least with regards to this issue? I might give it a try. I've been finding this very annoying.

I used to be into to ina a big way also Extra here too.
Some of your story very similar to mine.
Used to hike a lot some pretty long distance

Hurt my knee while out on a very long hike and struggled to get back to my truck.
Back is now getting bad do to work heavy lifting...I just hope to keep riding.

Thanks
for the info
Fred

If you've got a rig going we may have to try an HF contact...before the cycle is over. I can pretty much work everything 40m on up on either a base or the mobile although the base stuff is put away.

Just having all the little stuff that sort of falls apart due to age is bad enough. Didn't slow me down all that much until I was maimed and that was nature's little way of saying "it's time for you to slow 'er on down, Hoss!" At least I still can ride and get out to the backcountry even if 4x4 instead...

Ever since I installed my new maps for life update....

i had problems with it crashing. last time was when putting 300 mile routes in it. But I thought I got through that.

Anyway, today I am 50 miles from home and click my icon for "home".
I am in ADV profile which avoids highways.

what I do is go the direction I want to, than let the GPS reroute, and I might follow it.

Anyway, every time it reroutes, it would shut off. I would restart it and finaly I got to the point where it said "no routeable maps for you area". Then came up blue. I zoom out to see i am off the west coast of Africa (I am in SE PA)

so as I head home it still changes the pointer to reflect my direction of travel, but I am out in the ocean.
Than I hit the home icon again, and it reboots.
Now it shows my correct location :huh

How should I proceed in fixing this problem? I guess if I need to start from scratch, reload my map, recreate my profiles I would be OK with that. I do have 2 other maps on the device, one is those free topo maps of PA and another is one I created of stone roads in PA (both have been on the GPS for 2 years with no problems.

Problem started in late september when I installed a new version of OS and the life time map updates.

Which firmware version are you running, and what is your map speed set to?

Sorry, not much help. I guess I got to to get the GPS.
But its the latest firmware, and the map speed is what ever is default.

funny thing is this did not start until I installed the lifetime maps (replacing one that was over 1 year old).

5.40
map speed normal

Did you make a backup copy of your old map?

Please send an error report to Garmin and include files from your GPSr as outlined here.

update.

on the garmin internal memory, I see the following.
gmapsupp.img dated 2/17/12 disk image file 1,629,472kb (I think this unit is around 2 years old, so this is newer than my maps would have been I updated on 9/19

on the data card I see the following
city navigator north america NT 2014.2 9.19.2013 1,977.888kb
plus my 2 maps patopo and stoneroad.

So this looks to me like I got 2 garmin NA maps on the device? a 2/17/12 version and a 9/19.2012 version?

I think I want my city NAV on the GPS memory and maybe my personal maps on the data card?

That's probably the issue right there!

Safely archive the older map, and reboot the Montana and retest.

Quickest way to try this is to change the extension of the map you want to remove from *.img to *.zip (do not remove, just change extension) - then reboot and test.

Why not just run Javawa Device Manager on the GPS? It'll almost certainly tell you what's wrong. Likely the two maps, but there could also be some other reason as well.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

trying to download it, but Comcast sucks tonight. Something changed my 50Mbps to 3/4 Mbps.

on the internal memory,/garmin/ I have the following
gmapsupp.img dated 2/17/2012. 1,629,472Kb. Is that my old maps?
than on my data card I see this. /garmin/
City Navigator North America NT 2014.2.img 9/19/14 1,977.888

do i rename gmapsupp.img to gmapsupp.zip (and back it up somewhere else), than copy city navigator north america nt 2014.2 from the SD card to the montana memory?

Well it's not big by any standard so keep trying. It's really an essential tool.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

Rename the old map, but there's nothing that says the other map needs to be moved to the GPS.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

Leave everything where it is, and rename the gmapsupp.img to gmapsupp.zip.

Then, reboot and test. If all is OK, later you can rename the gmapsupp.zip back to gmapsupp.img and copy it to a safe place on your computer for archival purposes.

If you have any gmapsupp.unl or gmapsupp.gma (etc) files, copy them also.