Pat Mayse Lake DC-30 Dog Tracks

[lightrail]

I'm using Google Earth v. 5.2.1.1588 and Garmin MapSource v. 6.15.11, my Astro and DC-30 firmware are all up to date as of this time. Shown is an area of reed grass just northeast of Camp Kiwanis along Pat Mayse lake (north of Paris Tx). Also shown is a Google Earth image of the same area with tracks from a single dog. (The tracks to the left are from the dog waiting for me to get suited up.) I've had problems downloading tracks from my DC-30s. With the Astro, if you select a dog collar, then hit the menu button, there are several options for managing that particular DC-30 including downloading the tracks stored on it. The Garmin manual says the tracks stored on the collar contain more detail than the tracks from the collar stored on the Astro. However, I usually have problems downloading tracks this way.

At any rate, shown in the Google Earth image is a set of tracks from a single dog running after hogs in that reed grass. I downloaded the track from the collar, then exported the track as a .gpx file. When I loaded the .gpx file into Google Earth, it apparently interpolated and dropped a whole bunch of points (it's the blue line shown). But MapSource 6.15.11 has an option under "View" to show tracks in Google Earth. So I did that and the same track is shown with square boxes connected by white lines. It's shown on top of the .gpx import. The Google .gpx import (blue line) is missleading. Viewing the track in Google Earth using MapSource worked better than importing the track as a .gpx file. It's just a little messy.

About half the attempts I make to download tracks from collars fail. MapSource tells me the track is not valid, to delete the track and try over. I do, and it never works.

I've noticed also that tracks from collars stored on the Astro are often missing segments of tracks when I load tracks from the Astro directly into Google Earth.

It would be great is MapSource would load Google Earth images as backgrounds.