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It is good business for you and Garmin because I have allready ordered 3 new antenneas.Best regardsKari Hertzberg Garmin Astro GPS Dog Tracking SystemThe products are very good exept the transmitter for the dog, because the antenna is very soon damage or loosen very easy so that it get lost. I have lost one allready and my friend have got it damaged.
This is understandable as it was delivered in the States, but there should be an option to change this as there are many of us having stuff delivered in US, and then brought home to Europe. Everything was delivered to my full satisfaction except for one thing. The charger was delivered with adapter for US.
The Garmin Astro is best choice for hunting dog tracking.Yours Kai Finland My best buy for a long time. And Amazon and the seller did all very well and quick.
More counterweight would probably help, but he's usually got his head down to the ground and it could easily be a nuisance for him.Although the dog unit is supposed to be waterproof, I did encounter severe problems when he decided to cross a small river. come to think of it however, maybe it *is* broken and it's just not visible to me.Aside from the dog collar issues, I love the handheld unit. He loves to track rabbits and deer and for that purpose this Astro worked great. It took awhile (maybe 15 minutes) but after it dried out again, the reporting went back to normal and was right on. I bought this Garmin setup after looking for a GPS based dog tracking for a long time.
I intend to investigate what was going on, and maybe I just have a defective unit. After a very watchful eye the first time I used it, I found that it worked far beyond my expectations. My dog never broke an antenna like others are reporting. I'm still finding features that I didn't know it had, and it is far beyond my previous model (GPS 12). He doesn't swim so I didn't expect this to ever be a problem, but this time it was shallow enough for him to cross and it seems to have gotten the collar unit wet enough to be a problem. Eventually it crept up to reporting him as 600 and even 900 yards away (I could still see him).
Competing models either require monthly subscription (through cellular phone system) or were dog tracking *only*. GPS always gave me a distance and position on the map, and the compass always pointed right at him. The compass indicator started pointing in what appeared to be random directions. The Garmin handheld unit is useful as a standalone GPS device, with the benefit of communicating with the dog GPS unit.I don't hunt, but rather intended to use this to allow my dog to run free while walking him. I can't determine if the GPS reception was affected or the RF communication with the handheld unit, but it started indicating that he was 100-200 yards away, even though he still was within eyesight. I tried both the backpack and the collar, and actually had better results with the collar even though it would often swing to the side or bottom of his neck.
In the area I walk there is much vegetation and he can easily be out of site as little as 20 yards away. Occasionally it would lose either GPS reception or RF communcation, but it would always come back in 10-15 seconds.
All of the stress and worry of not knowing where the dog is is gone. My dog will be chasing something 200 yards away, well out of sight and hearing range, and it works great. Because my dog doesn't stray for more than 200-300 yards, I haven't had a chance to test the full range, but within those yards and in very hilly terrain it's tracked flawlessly. I purchased the astro primarily for hiking with my dog in the wooded dunes of West Michigan. It surpassed my expectations.
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