Rand McNally RV GPS

[KO]

I just bought the RV GPS from Camping World. I drive Florida to Yuma AZ solo twice a year ( 4 trips). As I have no copilot, my GPS is very important to me. I liked the 7 inch screen and campground feature.
I have used it twice in my car for test drives. In both cases the unit made me take some really round about way to get to my destination. The last one, I was at Target and had to turn on the main drag and should have gone straight down the road for 7 miles. The unit tried to get me to turn left at several stop lights. It did correct itself when I did not obey. And yes it was set for car not RV.

I also programmed it to go for Tampa to Yuma. It directed me to get off the interstate and drive some highway for about 40 miles and the to get back on the interstate.

I know GPS are noted for their capacity to take you out to lala land, but this unit is really scaring me!

Anyone else having this type issue with this unit?

[Bumpyroad]

mpierce wrote:
ALWAYS check your route against a paper map! GPS is great, but they ALL do some really stupid things at times!

Their best function is to get you back to your RV, motel, or whatever! Go exploring, and you can get "home".

mine came in very handy this past summer when I had to find a specific restaurant in one of those areas with all the winding streets, etc. In fact the wife, who usually disagrees with everything I say, do, or buy, said that we wouldn't have found it without the GPS.
bumpy

[mpierce]

ALWAYS check your route against a paper map! GPS is great, but they ALL do some really stupid things at times!

Their best function is to get you back to your RV, motel, or whatever! Go exploring, and you can get "home".

[dbates]

I too use MS Streets & Trips to plan and modify (much easier than GPS to track & change) my trips then upload it to my Garman GPS. Just learned from this forum how to upload MS to GPS and it was GREAT this summer.

Dave

[JohnD222]

In preferences, you can set a preference for fastest route or shortest route. The only way to find out how much longer it will take to get there via the shortest route is to compare (i.e., do not use the "quick route" function as this only calculates and displays the preference you have set up. After gps calculates both routes, you can select either fastest or shortest. That does not impact the preference you have set.

Unfortunately, the logic is flawed in the calculation of times for shortest routes. It will often route you through city streets with lots of traffic and traffic lights rather than routing you via a 65 mph bypass that is just 4 miles longer.

A map and step by step routing is essential, and you can't do that effectively when driving.

My preference is now faster-this keeps me on bypasses, but unfortunately almost always on interstates. Usually the evening before travel I look at the planned fastest route, note the travel time, and, if i don't like the route, I force a stopover (via) at a town a little more than half way down the road i think i want to go on instead. Recalculate route with via. Using fastest route again. Hopefully this will show total fastest time taking that scenic route through the via, but sometimes it sends me down the highway then back to the via, even though there are no low bridges or weight restrictions on the road to the via.

revump wrote:
We have the 7710. Sometimes, it gives you the shortest route that takes you through some unusual places. It has settings that come keep you from doing that.

[revump]

We have the 7710. Sometimes, it gives you the shortest route that takes you through some unusual places. It has settings that come keep you from doing that.

[Bill_Satellite]

Rand McNally used to have an excellent mapping program for your computer called TripMaker. They stopped supporting this back in 2002 but I still like it better than any other option out there. I wish they would update and release that program as I think it would give Streets and Trips a real run for the money.

[diveman52]

First you need to plan with a real map, than use the GPS for and approximate route.

[AEmerson]

I work directly with Rand McNally on the GPS unit and have contacted them to get some answers regarding these issues. Please PM me if you have additional details to share. Thanks.

[1775]

I bought the RVND-7715. I set the height of my RV in at 12 feet (just to be sure to give extra clearance to my 9' RV). It was routing me onto a highway with a 7'10" height restriction with the height set at 12 feet. I contacted Rand McNally and got a stock response and no answer as to why or what to do about it. The GPS went back to the store the next day!

I never plan a trip without doing it on the computer first but there are times when I would like to stray from the route while on the trip, and want a GPS that will not get me into trouble. The Rand was not the one.

[Bumpyroad]

az99 wrote:
Still nothing better than MS Streets and Trips or similar program to plan your route and see where it is taking you. Then you can make changes to fit the way you want to go.

Blindly trusting almost any GPS will get you into trouble or at least waste a lot of fuel far too many times.

x2, I would never blindly trust my GPS to plan my trip. I plan mine out in the trailer life trip planner so I can adjust it as I see fit, want to.
bumpy

[az99]

Still nothing better than MS Streets and Trips or similar program to plan your route and see where it is taking you. Then you can make changes to fit the way you want to go.

Blindly trusting almost any GPS will get you into trouble or at least waste a lot of fuel far too many times.

[JohnD222]

I too have these strange routings. I do know that i can set priority for fastest or shortest routes and it is supposed to automatically use my preference. Sometimes i think it forgets my preference. So now i ask it to compare routes before telling it to "go.". Unfortunately, the shortest route very often does take you off the highway, or put you through the center of a stop light ridden business route through town versus staying on the interstate by using a by-pass. I would think that predictive traffic or real traffic, or traffic everywhere, the latter two being extra cost items, would adjust for this, but they do not.

Now i could understand this for a shortest route that takes a lot more time than the fastest, but this is not the case. Something is clearly wrong with the logic used. On my non rv garmin i could set assumptions for city driving (15-20), county roads (45-55), and interstate (60), you are stuck with rand's default. Rand's adjust trip length feature in theory should fix this, but it does it to entire route not by road type. It does work if all you do is 90-100% interstate for the trip..

Regarding three right turns versus one left. Detailed manual discusses this, saying it recognizes that some rvs are more difficult to turn left, but rands solution is pick a different rv type in your rv settings. You must guess how much smaller of an rv you need to get access to normal left turns. This should be an avoid in city. Or always avoid feature, but it would be better as a knowledgeable of the route logic feature. I don't think anyone has that detailed road knowledge.

[lvnrdream]

We have about the same problem with our 7710. We were in the left turn lane at an intersection we know and the GPS is telling us to go straight and make three right turns. We had several other similar instances. Now we compare the 7710's route with google maps before leaving. JMO but I think Rand McNally is over rated.

[TechWriter]

KO wrote:
I just bought the RV GPS from Camping World . . . the unit made me take some really round about way to get to my destination.

Anyone else having this type issue with this unit?

Yep, both my 7710 and now 7720 have this "feature".

Turning the "avoid dirt roads" feature on or off doesn't seem to matter.

We're relying more and more on the CoPilot Live app on our iPad.