BigGameHoundsmen.com

Now that training seasons have started for bear, Please post any problems you are having with the Astro 220 systems.

You clearly have a hard-on for the garmin. I personally believe its the most important thing to happen to hounds since the beep beep box and these are better. By far.

I'm thinking of getting one myself, however, laws in CA say we can't have them...
Not sure if that includes off season? any insight?
Thx in advance...

I don't need to read the reviews. I have one and have for some time. The point is that this product works and works well for most people. Myself included. I went to a big hunt over the weekend and there were 6 units there and who knows how many collars. No one had a thing bad to say about them and we ran into NO problems other than changing the channels a couple collars were on. 2 of the people I currently hunt with use no other system besides the Garmin. These are bear hunters in the mtns of Utah. I was the only person with beep beep collars on my dogs out of the 6 guys with garmins. I am interested in potential problems with the system but why discourage people from buying a GREAT product?

The only real issues I keep reading about lately is the astro burning out from using high wattage vhf marine radios, I find it funny that in reality its illegal to use those radios in the manner they are being used and people are pissed off cause it seems to be garmins vault....bs, its not there vault, its yours, do something else about it other then bash garmin. The other issue being theres only so many channels the collars can transmit on, well without knowing I pulled up next to a guy that had them on his dogs the other day as well, and low and behold out of probably 8+ collars present, not one intervered.......is it possible, yes , but all you have to do is press enter twice to not change channel and continue tracking your collar, big deal...... Personally I have had no issues with mine nor my buddy, its worked awesome and is the next best thing to come along to hound hunting.

There are plenty of problems with this unit. The biggest problem I can see is this was not thought out well enough, and if it was it wasn't thought out for the hound guys. I have sent mine back to garmin 4 times, the problem is the communication between the astro and the collar and everytime they send me a new unit and it does the same thing. I have 2 astros and 5 collars and there is no rhime or reason for what they do, you can have them side by side and one will get all the collars and the other will get only part of them.
When they work they are the best thing ever but they don't work as much as I would like them too. I have to say that I got my best signal yet, it was 2 1/2 miles ridge top to ridge top. I can live with that but it very seldom happens and this was very short lived. It would be nice if garmin was concerned with the problems but they have been very rude to me and a "I dont give a crap" attitude. I would think they would want to know the problems and work with the guys that have them in the feild using them.
But agian very ,very, very, very nice when they work.
I have to say my best signals have been from a old dc 20 with a cable antena and using my collars in the high teens or low twenties. A different antena tuned to 151 has not worked for me and the long range antenas dont give that much more distance and they are a pain in the back side to take care of (very fragile) and change. I have not used the truck antena because most of my hunting is on horse back.
The radio issue is no big deal to me, I have just turned it off when I use the radio, Radios are legal for me to use.
It is a new age we are stepping into just like the shock collar and the telemetry and it will be very cool when they work out the bugs and get this working right. I think it will be another company that gets it right . garmin just doesn't care.

i just got my unit back from Garmin about a week ago because it burned up because of the high wattage output from my marine band radio. they wer so-so to deal with but like paco said why wouldn't they want to fix this problem. he's right when he says it seems like they don't care about the problem. to me it's a huge problem because if i forget to shut my astro off and jump in the truck and key my mich, i will burn another unti out and Garmin made it loud and clear that they will not fix another one that i send in. they will only fix them once for this problem. now i am sure there are ways around that but you would think they would want to fix the problem. when i got my unit back i just did a drive away test and got 6.44 miles. the collar was on a tree limb under a big heavy canopy oak tree. that was with the truck mount antenna hooked up. i have since bought a new flexible long range antenna to try but haven't done so yet. i too think these things are the best thing ever but like paco said again i think another company is fine tuning and will break the market open for us hound guys at a much more reasonable price. they are just working the bugs out before they have to spend all their time and resources fixing a poorly planned product. don't get me wrong, i won't hunt without mine but would like to see something better for us hound guys.

I just ran them with the other collars. After almost a year of hunting with the garmin however, I sold my beep beep box and now have strictly garmin collars. Not one time in almost a year of hunting did I have to get my old tracking box out to track a dog that had the garmin on. I did have to to track my buddies dogs though. He doesn't have a garmin.

Some of you seem to have info on another company providing a better product. Do you have any idea when it will hit the market? If you can't post the name in an open forum please email it to me and I will contact them in confidence. info@carolinaskydiving.com
Thanks

I agree with Mr. pojack the units start out working great i mean up to 2 miles then with time you can maybe get 200 hundred yards, when they work they are awsome, im wondering what they are doing tio the refurbished units for sale on this site to fix the problems they are having, i know between myself and buddies we have sent back 10 units with no question asked but also no fixing the problem, another thing i was wondering about why dont they keep the id numbering a little more simple for instance you can program 1 but not 11,21,31,41 or 2 but not 12, 22, 32, 42 why wouldnt they just go 1 -10, so what im saying is if you and 3 buddies are hunting together can you each run 10 different collars with unit or will they keep interfearing, sorry for the rambling on thanks for listening, paul

Ive notice that my distance doesnt seem to reach as far as it did. Im very careful about the vhf radio also. Like paco saud when they work they work great. Just need to work a little more. sometimes i can hear the dogs barking and it wont pick the collars up WTF

Well, I just sent mt Asto 220 and 2 collars back to Garmin.
I checked the distance of reception using my external antenna and lost signal at 2 miles.
I have been very careful about using my VHF radio.
Tech support told me to send them in and Garmin would send me all new stuff.
We'll see.
Apparently the new Astro's have some new hardware to prevent the VHF radios from damaging the Astro.