Owners of RVGarmin gps

luvlabs wrote:
Do you think maybe you set your height wrong in the setup screen? Or forgot to set it?

I've driven that same route with my 13' high motorhome (really 12'6") and never had a bleep.

I have the correct measurements in the setup. We are under 12 ft. high. The crazy part about it telling me to exit from I-40 was I had been through Oklahoma City but going the opposite direction a month before with no warnings from the Garmin. My first thought was they had started work on a bridge but when the 18 wheelers weren't exiting I decided to just follow one of them. Never did see any bridge construction. I still use it when on the interstates mainly to tell distance to a destination. I never trust it any more but use a trucker's atlas and it has never been wrong. The Garmin was wrong many, many times.

Ever since TomTom took me down a 13 percent downgrade in the Catskills, I have a healthy disrespect for GPS. I still have the TomTom, the DW uses it. When she says "TomTom wants you to turn" I just keep going. It's mostly so she can check the speed without being obvious.

I use Waze and and Copilot RV phone apps on my tablet for traffic and guidance. I check the route on Google maps and/or Google Earth before hand and keep a mental route in my head so when the app says to do something, I can use the TLAR method (That Looks About Right).

If the route involves terrain, I use the mountain guides. And as if all this isn't enough, the DW always has the paper atlas out.

There have been a few times when I just needed to pull over to make sense of what's going on. The most notable was when headed to Sylvan Lake CG in New York. The directions said to get off I-84 at exit 15 and then follow this road then that. None of the road signs made sense and the circle of our position error was increasing in radius. I pulled over and punched the address into the GPS. We were 75 miles from the cammpground. We took exit 15 in Connecticut, not NY.

Ralph Cramden wrote:
I love the comments that it's still a great device but only a tool to be used with an atlas or other device. An electric circular saw with a dull blade and fried armature is also only a tool, to be turned with a stick while taking 2 hours to naw through a 2x4.

ROTFLMAO

PenMan wrote:

johnhicks wrote:
Gee, my RV-760 does just fine. Of course I've learned how to set it up and how to plot a route using Basecamp. It takes a little effort.

If you're not willing to put in the effort any gps or app will most assuredly lead you astray down a cow path through a farmer's back 40.

So please, learn how it works.

I know how it works. Poorly. I had a good route planned, straight down I-40 from Tennessee to New Mexico. Entering Oklahoma City my Garmin instructed me to exit as there was a low bridge ahead (yeah right, on I-40). The semis in front of me weren't exiting so I followed them. All the way to New Mexico there was not a low bridge even though my Garmin kept insisting (many, many times) that I needed to exit. Piece of junk. I now use a trucker's atlas.

Poorly Indeed. I bought the 760 RVTLM when it first came out, actually pre ordered before it was released and paid a premium. What a piece of junk. Enter your parameters then jump off the interstate to get "RV accessibility unknown" about 50% of the time on secondary roads. I am 100% sure I need not worry about RV accessibility on the Interstate. Then despite updating maps every time they come out the RV specific database is also worthless. It located campgrounds miles away from where they are actually located and might direct you to gas stations that have been closed for 5 years. Possibly to a washed out bridge from 2011 that will never be rebuilt. I have even went as far as emailing Garmin a few times when discrepancies are found which were acknowledged, yet the same errors exist on the latest database updates 3 years later. I love the comments that it's still a great device but only a tool to be used with an atlas or other device. An electric circular saw with a dull blade and fried armature is also only a tool, to be turned with a stick while taking 2 hours to naw through a 2x4.

bobkatmsu wrote:

Executive wrote:
IMO, the 770 is very reliable, but like anything else, it's simply another tool in our toolbox. Like anything else, it takes some time to master. I plan my route ahead of time and if not sure I plug in Google maps and check it. Google maps gives me a birds eye view of where and on what kinds of roads I'll be traveling. I also don't rely on street addresses. I pull up the GPS coordinates off Google Maps and use those. This method puts me in exactly the correct spot I want to be in when I get where I'm going. Finally, while Base Camp is helpful, it does take a lot of brain power to master. (I gave up :) YMMV).....Dennis

Dennis, couple questions. 1) when you were setting up parameters did you include your toad as part of your over all length? 2)Do you use coach mode or car mode for directions?

1. No, I only use the length of the coach.
2. I use coach mode. Car will send you on 'short cuts'.
3. Set your parameters carefully. Include all roads you do NOT want to travel on. We avoid freeways, toll roads etc. Only real issue has been weight. At 50,000 # we're overweight on some bridges...Dennis

Proximity warnings are just that, by proximity. If I-40 passed in close proximity to that low bridge you'd get a warning. Probably a bit better than a low buzzcut.

I've seen those occasionally and once confirming there wasn't a low bridge along my route (but there was one in close proximity) I told it I was a car and proceeded normally.

I believe in setup somewhere you can reduce the range or turn it off entirely. It's doing what it's programmed (and you via setup) tell it to do.

On the other hand, I tried to plot a route across southern Louisiana and it flat-out refused. Didn't tell me why, which was frustrating. An inspection with Google Earth revealed a 12'3" bridge, which was several inches too short. I would've had to back up miles on a two-lane road across swamp to turn around. Google Maps was perfectly happy with it.

On that note, Google Maps happily routed me down farm-to-martket roads in east Texas, some one-lane and some unpaved one-lane. Of course I wasn't in the RV; I would never use a car nav app for an RV.

Do you think maybe you set your height wrong in the setup screen? Or forgot to set it?

I've driven that same route with my 13' high motorhome (really 12'6") and never had a bleep.

johnhicks wrote:
Gee, my RV-760 does just fine. Of course I've learned how to set it up and how to plot a route using Basecamp. It takes a little effort.

If you're not willing to put in the effort any gps or app will most assuredly lead you astray down a cow path through a farmer's back 40.

So please, learn how it works.

I know how it works. Poorly. I had a good route planned, straight down I-40 from Tennessee to New Mexico. Entering Oklahoma City my Garmin instructed me to exit as there was a low bridge ahead (yeah right, on I-40). The semis in front of me weren't exiting so I followed them. All the way to New Mexico there was not a low bridge even though my Garmin kept insisting (many, many times) that I needed to exit. Piece of junk. I now use a trucker's atlas.

I have the 760 and I like it BUT I always know where I am going and how I will get there before I go. You can never rely on a GPS. Most of the time, it is correct but it is not 100%. We use Google maps and we have a truckers atlas, We check routes on both if we are not sure.

As I sat reading this thread, I had a thought, isn't it amazing that in a few short years we have gone from folding maps and atlases to an electronic devise a lot thicker but no bigger than the wallet I carried in my suit coats years ago.

In the sixties and seventies while we were tent camping with the girls, we relied on folded maps to go from point "A" to point "B". But often had to stop somewhere and get a local area folding map or get oral instructions from a "Gas Station Attendant" to find a specific location.

I bought our first GPS in 2011 before we left on a trip that ended up being 10 weeks and 12,500 miles long. We learned the settings of that first GPS were more complicated than imagined. I'm a little hesitant to jump in and explore what each setting really does but I finally found the setting that while excellent for highway driving, took us off at the first exit for a town and sent us down local streets to get to a campground on the other side of town just a quarter mile from the exit we could have taken and have missed all those stop signs and signals. We learned that the settings for "No Left Turn" or "No U Turn" could send us miles out of our way.

Some miscreant stole that and all of my portable travel electronics.

So today we have two GPS devises. One is in my DW's vehicle and one is in my office and can be used in any vehicle we are traveling in. When we're in the MoHo we use both, sort of a cross check at times and just a verification of our route at other times. Besides I like to check my speed and other data given by the GPS, especially when the DW falls asleep and has the GPS on mute and I miss an important turn.

I haven't found the need for trucker maps or atlases nor for an RV or Truckers GPS and I'm sure that someday I'll run afoul of a low bridge or narrow bridge I don't want to traverse with the Winnie, but they are amazing instruments to see and I wonder about who gathered and coded all of that information in a little 3" television receiver.

It is even more amazing that we have driven across this contry and see sights like Registry of the Desert where we saw pictures of folks from the tens, twenties and thirties who didn't have a map showing how to get anywhere, in many cases the only information was in a book they read and the AAA signs placed before there were DOTs.

It sort of keeps my RV live style where I'm driving a house around and following the directions some little black box voices, in perspective. Not much to complain about "EH".