Product: Garmin eTrex 20 Worldwide Handheld GPS Navigator
Cheapest place to Buy: Amazon.com
Display: 2.2 inches
Guarantee: One year
My Rating: 9 out of 10
My little Garmin eTrex 20 Worldwide Handheld GPS Navigator Overview.
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I recently came across a very handy portable GPS navigation system.
Long story short. We were in the winter fishing on Lake Peipsi in Estonia. To attain the good fishing spots, you had to walk at least five kilometers from shore on the ice-covered lake.
Me, as always, had an iPhone loaded with Navionics Marine cartography. I also had a portable phone charger in a pocket.
As experience shows, if constantly running with navigation, the phone battery is discharged relatively quickly. When returning to the coastline, we faced a heavy snowstorm and constantly checked your movement with the help of GPS navigation.
I was not even halfway gone when my iPhone died. The reason, as I found out later, was the low temperatures and high winds. Luckily one of our company was next to me. And I was lucky that he had a Garmin eTrex 20 Worldwide Handheld GPS Navigator. I even did not know about it. I had always relied on my iPhone.
This navigation aid has helped us perfectly reach the base, and we were able to get warm and drink hot tea — me as a passionate enthusiast of different GPS equipment very interested in this Garmin GPS navigation device.
What I would like to say from the beginning. The temperature was around -20 Celsius (-4 Fahrenheit) and Garmin eTrex 20 worked perfectly. The next day I went fishing together with Garmin’s owner and asked him to test it a bit as much in such circumstances it can be done.
And I would add that this particular model is Discontinued by manufacturer. It was first released back in 2011. However, judging by the wide range of demand, it is trading at the relatively wide range. Still, there are new and used Garmin eTrex 20 Worldwide Handheld GPS Navigators available on the market. It can be found on Amazon or Ebay.
Several times a Garmin fell into the snow, and I had to search for it, but when it is dug out of the snow and wiped dry, the display lit up and continued to show us the way to Yesterday’s fishing spots.
Two AA-size batteries and they keep running all day long, even hanging on the neck in the cold. You can carry the pocket full of batteries and not worries to stay without navigation aid.
A couple of months ago I was playing with one of Magellan handheld GPS navigator.
One of the things that I liked the Garmin apparatus more compared with Magellan was much quicker finding of satellites. It is perhaps also because Garmin is also able to use Russian GLONASS satellites signals. Accuracy is perfect.
You can find a lot of user feedback on the Internet. So I will not go into detail. I will search for other offers, but I think that will purchase this Garmin device, perhaps even second-hand. Although the price for the new one even in Amazon.com is very democratic.
Someone interested in such feature as Geocaching eTrex 20 also supports it. It is like hide-and-seek game but in a high-tech version.
Good luck fishing and always find the right spot!
I have never been ice fishing but hopefully one day I will get to experience it.
Having a gps for finding your fishing spots on a frozen lake sounds like a really good idea. Can I ask you though, do you also take an Eprib in case you get into trouble on the ice?
I think it would be a great idea to have these on your site as well as they go hand in hand just in case something goes wrong.
You can never be to careful these days,
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Hi and thanks for stopping by!
What a great idea about EPIRB! Have to check is it available for individual use and what about registration fees or so on. But I think that GPS tracking devices or simply iPhone Find My Phone access to wife or kids could a solution. Though when out of cell phone range then could be a problem. Definitely using EPIRB, stands for Emergency position indicating radio beacons for security reason is good idea.
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