[aprssig] Garmin Rino

[Rahn]

Mark, I have a Rino 520 color screen..... etc.... It is a neat little 
unit. But in my humble opinion Garmin has some work to do with it yet. I 
have had three in about as many weeks. Garmin's tech support, while not 
speedy, were helpful. 1 simply died, second displayed a date apox. 19 
years 7 1/2 months fast, with no way for the end user to correct like 
the older GPS units had. Took 3 weeks to get a third directly from 
Garmin. And with all that I did some research on the Rino series and it 
seems I have not been the only one experiencing these and a multitude of 
other problems.
I like Garmins GPS units, I think they are truely one of the best. But 
when they built the Rino series they were exploring new territory, for 
Garmin at least, and they have some bugs to work out.
And, you know as well as I, that hams love to tinker with stuff we buy. 
And I am not sure Garmin would be too keen on that.

BUT.... If they ever did come out with a UHF ham freq or even a 2 meter 
model capable of APRS I would probably be all over it.
Here's the catch. With FRS/GMRS they can say "Make sure to buy your 
license before using this radio" and leave it at that. But with hams, we 
would monitor it a bit closer and would probably not allow them to be 
sold at every big box store in the world. So sales would suffer and 
quite frankly, I doubt if the number of potential sales would justify 
R&D costs associated with producing such a model.
Though I would love one, I am not holding my breath.
Rahn
W7DOA

Mark Cheavens wrote:

> Since the subject of Garmin was brought up today....
>
> Has anyone looked at the current series of RINO radios? They have 
> fantastic mapping capabilities!
>
> I wonder if anyone has ever approached Garmin about making a Ham 
> version of the radio....Or if LOTS of us requested it, would they do it?
>
> I for one would LOVE to have a RINO in the UHF ham band! I'll bet that 
> would spark some new interest in RINO decoding!
>
> Seems that RINO decoding has kind of lost any focus in the APRS world 
> as no new development has been done in a while. (Or not that I have 
> seen or found).
>
> Mark
> KC5EVE
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> aprssig mailing list
> aprssig at lists.tapr.org
> https://lists.tapr.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/aprssig
>


-- 
Rahn Abbott
W7DOA
73