320 satillite live image
Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2011 5:31 pm
wondering what u have to do, can u just download it from garmin or do u have to buy the card for it, cant really make sense of it.I see cards for sale then downloads also
The direct download, or card are essentially the same. They both give you the same thing. Directly from the Garmin site you can activate right after purchase and begin your download. WIth the card you get an activation number to be able to start making the downloads.
Mind you these are not LIVE images. Nothing out there I know of available to the public gives you this. Rather you are downloading satellite images from when ever they were taken. Some are going to be more current than others, and it all depends on when the pics were taken of the area you hunt. Although there has been some more recent images taken of areas that currently are not available to Garmin as of yet for whatever reason that may be. I would guess they will be updated when they are made available to Garmin.
I have noticed recently. That one of my hunting areas has slighlty older images. Using the new google earth timeline I was able to establish the pic date. Google has a 2010 image, and Garmin right now only has the 2008 image. This may or may not be the case in your area. Really for me at least this does not make much of a difference. In fact the older images may be better as they were taken early spring vs the middle summer. Making some things easier to see with the lack of leaf cover.
Also know that this is a download. You have to download the images in pieces. The server only allows you to download a max of 250mb of info at a time. Depending on the detail level you choose will dictate how large of an area you can cover at one time. I have heard guys complain they can only download one county to use. This goes back to my previous sentence. However you can continue to download more areas up to the limit of the storage space you have on the Garmin. Which is only then limited by the size of the memory card you choose. So if you want a lot of images get a much bigger chip. Although the cost of these chips will go up.
I have also found that the the access time of the info is faster if you store them on the units internal memory which is roughly 2gb. From the factory with preloaded maps this will be 1.7gb. But you can delete some of them to increase storage capacity. On my personal unit. I keep the sat images on the unit, and the topo maps on a 2gb chip. The internal memory is enough for the areas I hunt mostly. If I go to another state or something I can just download those images. There is sat maps of the grand canyon that can be deleted for example.
I hope this makes some sense and helps you out.