Recently I took my Polaris Sportsman 800 (QUAD/ATV) to a new off-road trail system for the day. The trails all were loops and had markers letting you know where each ended up so with that we didn’t think to much about packing a map of the trails or checking our GPS point where we started, we defintly were not thinking about survival or ending up in a survival situation.Anyway, after a few hours of riding we wanted to head back so we decided to go back another way than we had driven there. I decided now was a good time to checkout the GPS and see what road we had stumbled upon (the trail system crosses a couple roads) and if we could stay along it to get back to our trucks. (The road was closed and covered wtih snow, and in other areas we go you can ‘legally’ drive on closed for winter snow roads.) I turned on my Garmin GPS which is supposed to be a very good “technologically” advanced device that could realy save your life in a survival situation, right? WRONG! My GPS would not pickup more than two satelites I finally got a third and got reception for about five minutes and then it was lost.
What I’m saying here is do NOT rely on technology for survival!!! If you go in the woods you should take a map with you and not leave it in the truck like we did!
Further research on this has alerted me that Garmin GPS units actually receive POOR reception compared to other companies… I used my GPS again recently in the clear (no trees) and with clear skys and it STILL could not keep up and would loose reception. TERRIBLE!
So, in the end garmin gps = can’t keep up and gets poor signal and do not rely on technology to save your life in a survival situation. My situation wasn’t life or death but it sure would have saved us some time getting home.