"Off Course" Data Field - Does It Work For You?

[Phoenix]

I've been using the H1 for 3 months now, a couple of times a week.

Throughout all the firmware updates, I have never got this data field working properly.

I get a variety of behaviours. Most common is it appears for the first few minutes then just shows no data for the rest of the hike. Sometimes it just never shows any data, even at the start of a hike. Once, it showed no data until the last five minutes of a hike. Has always worked perfectly on 66 and 67.

I've opened a case with Garmin but they can't reproduce the issue. So, I'm interested if this data field works for other people. Good or bad, I'd like to hear what your experience is.

[RFtinkerer]

Well, I started a short hike today to experiment. I created a course on the unit and began to navigate on it. The off course data field showed nothing. I took another path away from the course, then after about 300 ft or so the unit triggered off-course, showed L 300 or whatever since I was left of my path. It continued to update off course data as expected. I took the other path which eventually merged back into the course and once on course was back the data field showed nothing.

I stopped navigating, chose TracBack, started navigating back. Then the off course constantly showed a deviation but the values were very close since I was following it, it kept toggling L and R within 10 feet showing the data even though I was *technically* on course.

2 different routing techiques with 2 different results.

[RFtinkerer]

The TracBack navigation showing the small off course values confused me, so I repeated the experiment today. I was thinking over the off course warning I had, which I checked yesterday and it was 0.5 miles from when I expanded it for boating. I set it today to 0.05 miles. I created/navigated a course out, then used TracBack with routing option enabled like yesterday. The off course data field operated as expected this time, not triggering data until I was actually off course. I can't explain why yesterday was different and off course showed up much earlier than 0.5 miles, but maybe Garmin just thinks 0.5 miles is a stupid value and defaults to another.

[Phoenix]

Thanks for taking the time to try this.

I stopped navigating, chose TracBack, started navigating back. Then the off course constantly showed a deviation but the values were very close since I was following it, it kept toggling L and R within 10 feet showing the data even though I was *technically* on course.

This is what it is supposed to do. Will even show "0" when you are dead on the track but will always display data. This is how it has worked for me for years on a variety of GPSMAP models.

Well, I started a short hike today to experiment. I created a course on the unit and began to navigate on it. The off course data field showed nothing. I took another path away from the course, then after about 300 ft or so the unit triggered off-course, showed L 300 or whatever since I was left of my path. It continued to update off course data as expected. I took the other path which eventually merged back into the course and once on course was back the data field showed nothing.

This is a variation of what I get. The off course data should never show nothing (all dashes), which is what I get for 95%+ of the time.

[RFtinkerer]

Interesting, I wasn't quite sure what it was supposed to do since I had never used it. ...I can understand if it did one thing or the other but it doing both on the same hike is rather strange. The only thing I know I changed between the experiments was changing the off course distance from 0.5 to 0.05 miles. I saw your post on the Garmin forum, hopefully it gets more responses or at least some attention.

[Phoenix]

Sorry for the delay replying, I missed your post.

The only thing I know I changed between the experiments was changing the off course distance from 0.5 to 0.05 miles.

...and I believe that is exactly the reason.

I discovered something by accident this weekend. The default "off course" setting seems to be 20m on my device. That is the point where the unit displays the "off course" or "on course" popup. When the device is "off course" the data field actually displays the required data. When the device is "on course", the data field goes blank again. This is different to my 67 which shows the data whether the device is "on course" or not. I'm going to ring Garmin again and ask about this behaviour.

Where did you change the off course distance, I've searched everywhere, both online and on the device, and can't find anything.