Loaded. Radio/GPS

I purchased this system with the intent of using it in the mountains of Colorado. Colorado offers a lot in the way of outdoors. It offers beautiful scenery and many types of sports like rock climbing, skiing, snow shoeing, mountain climbing, hiking, fishing and white-water rafting. Colorado also offers rapid weather changes, steep drops, swift river currents, and the remote, but not unheard of, possibility of attack from a bear, rattlesnake or mountain lion. Couple this with limited access and communication with emergency services and you can have a simple injury turn into death. That being said I wanted to know where I was and have the ability to communicate with someone should I have a medical or mentally challenged (lost/play tag with mountain lion) situation. The Rino (Radio Integrated Navigation for Outdoors) 530 2-way radio seems to offer a lot in this category along with it fat price tag. I am focusing this review on the main features since there are so many, but basically its loaded with them and I mean loaded.

You get access to a wide array of features that can be very useful in an outdoor situation. I consider these to be some of the most important:

7 radio NOAA weather channels with a weather alert function
7 FRS (Family Radio Service) channels, 0.5 watts of power
15 GMRS (General Mobile Radio Service) + 8 GMRS that operate on Repeaters (GMRS channels require FCC license to operate on, $80).
Up to 5 watts of power for longer range transmissions on GMRS, up to 14 miles (Canada is limited to 2 watts and no repeater)
56MB memory for downloadable maps and customized way-points
It’s waterproof to 1 meter for 30 minutes
It monitors barometric pressure and plots it on a graph
Operating temperature from minus 4 to 140 degrees F
Menus that can be customized
Up to 16 hours of battery life.
Dozens of satellites for accurate geo-locations
Auto waypoint tracking
Compass
Ambient temperature reading
2.2 inch color TFT display
Weight is 10.3 oz
Unit dimensions: 7.5”H x 2.3”W x 1.8”D
Allows sending and receiving the locations of your and other Rino units.


The package included the GPS/Radio, Lithium-Ion rechargeable battery with home charger, a belt clip, lanyard, manual, quick start guide, Map source trip and waypoint software, and PC USB cable.

The unit is set up kind of like a PC Windows type of display. The top bar shows the battery state, an icon that shows none/2/3D positioning, sound muted, and the status of other options that you can turn on. There are two small boxes at the top right that let you see options for the current page and one that has a quick customizable list of drop-down main menu pages. There is a thumb button that lets you cycle through the menus and you can push it to select. On either side is a button that you can use to zoom in or out on the map page or raise and lower the volume/squelch.

This unit is very complicated and requires a fair amount of time to familiarize your self with its 5 main display windows. I have spent hours learning about its many functions but you can get the basics down fairly quick by just playing with it after reading the quick start guide. Garmin recommends a full charge before using it the first time, which they claim can take up to 6 hours on its completely empty 8.4 volt lithium-ion rechargeable battery. Then it’s recommended that you find an area clear of obstructions to calibrate the GPS function, altimeter and compass.

Calibrating the GPS took about the 5 minutes as they state. Your body will block some of the satellite signals so it is best to hold it away from your body. The satellite page shows a representation of the satellites as if you are looking straight up with two concentric rings. The outer ring represents the horizon and the inner ring represents 45 degrees up from your location with the very center of the circle being directly above you. The satellites are numbered and displayed in these circles as they are positioned around you. You also have the option to color each of the satellites and the bottom of the page has a signal strength bar, the higher the bar the stronger the signal. 3 or more satellites are required for accurate geo-location and I usually get about 6 of them but have had 12. At the top of the page is your geographic location in what ever type of format you like (there are dozens) along with the accuracy of the unit (mine is displaying 9ft with 6 satellites). The satellites are uniquely numbered and I see up to 48 right now.

The compass page gives the typical over head view of a compass with North, East, West, and South marked as well as 2 two digit number in between each direction to indicate direction in degrees. Calibrating it was simple. Just select the calibrate function and hold it level while slowly turning. It will tell you if you are turning too fast or slow. You can shoot an azimuth by holding it level and looking at it from the rear. The thumb button is the center and you have two white marks on wither side of it to ensure you are looking straight through the middle of it. I guess this is accurate enough but I am used to using very accurate compasses when I was in the Army and this just seems to basic, then again it’s a GPS so who cares. The compass also has a line of dots that run through the center. This is the same type of navigation technique used in aircraft on the Horizontal Situation Indicator (HSI). You have an azimuth that you want to stay on and the line of dots drift left or right to indicate the direction you need to travel to get back on azimuth. As with other pages you have the option to put data fields on the page. Once you turn them on you can select them and select what you want the fields to display. Here there are dozens of options and this is were you would display the temperature (I had to call Garmin to figure this out since the manual was lacking in this area).

The map page can be show from above your location or in highway mode that is represented from above and behind your location (this only shows loaded routs). Your position is an elongated triangle that points in the direction you are traveling. The maps that come with the unit are very basic and mainly show the major highways. The background colors are customizable and have auto day/night settings. Like most maps there is a size scale at the bottom left of the screen.

The altitude page shows a graph as seen from the side and seems to be fairly accurate. It uses barometric pressure to measure and I would suspect the GPS even though they don’t say so. You can calibrate the altimeter but you need to know the elevation or the accurate barometric pressure that can be obtained from NOAA reports on the radio. If it has a sensor to detect barometric pressure then why do you need NOAA’s pressure readings, I don’t know. This page shows and records rates of accent and decent.

The radio page shows a customized icon, welcome message (mine is my FCC callsign), the channel, squelch code, GPS signal strength, Radio power at half watt/2 watt/5watt, in screen menu buttons for scanning radio frequencies, monitoring and weather as well as the date and time at the bottom of the screen. At the top is an icon that displays if you are receiving or transmitting.

The main menu page has icons for many other features, like setup, calendar, routs, games, find function, and others. It has hunting and fishing calendar that provides optimum times for fishing and hunting. This is something that I think most hunters and fishermen would know anyway but its there. This can be programmed out to future dates as well. It also shows the sunrise and set times in addition there the moon rise/set times with the phase it is in.

There are several city, marine and topographical maps that can be purchased at a steep price. For more than 100 dollars you can get very detailed maps for download from you PC to the unit. You select large squares of the map that you want downloaded. On these maps (and the one included) you can build routs/waypoints that can be downloaded to the unit.

The manual could use some work. This unit is very complicated and I was completely lost looking for a way to display the temperature. Calling Garmin got me squared away but it has so many options that aren’t in the manual. None the less, the manual shows a lot and it can be downloaded form www.garmin.com. I recommend going to it if you want to know the more minor details of the system.

Performance:

You turn the unit on and off with a button that is between the GPS and Radio antennas. Pushing it in once and holding it for a few seconds turns it on, pushing it again increases the light level of the display and pushing it again maxes its light level. The radio defaults on and I haven’t found a way to make the unit turn on with the radio off. Both the GPS and Radio do this.

It performs very well with accuracy down to a few meters, which is good enough. It does a good job at measuring speed. We drove with it on I-70 from Denver to Vail, CO and it said about what the speedometer in the car said. I held the unit either on my knee or on the chair next to me and it kept tack of about 5-6 satellites, holding it in the dash gave it about double the satellites. The location was right on with the exits.

It does have a good user interface considering its many options.

The color display can be difficult to read when its not lit up, even in daylight. You can adjust the intensity levels but the brighter the lighting the faster the battery is drained.

The temperature sensor is actually in the battery. When I spoke to the Garmin rep about it he said it was one of the coolest places on the unit and less likely to get a false reading from the units own heat. Unfortunately your hand will warm it up and he said it takes about 45 minutes after being held to get the right reading.

The upper back of the radio/GPS has a female screw opening that lets you attach a slotted round device for mounting the belt-clip or auto mounts. When I got the Rino the belt clip was broken and it doesn’t look like a strong design. It has a strong flat metal spring that slides into plastic groves in the clip to provide tension. It was these plastic groves that were broken. Garmin sent me a new one for free via UPS. Customer service seems very good.

A twisting D-Ring holds the battery to the unit and seems secure enough.

The lanyard can be attached to the top of the unit or the bottom of the battery.

You need to customize it to your own needs and once that is done its fairly simple to use.

You can use headphones with it and it has an adjustable voice activated feature (VOX).




As far as using it in an emergency there is no guarantee that emergency services are monitoring your channels but from what I have found on the internet many claim they do and that’s worth the feature. 5 watts of power help reach out, especially in the mountains. Even if you can’t reach emergency services hopefully someone can hear you and take down your GPS position. The frequency of 462.675mhz is one that I have found on the internet as more commonly used for emergencies but from what I have read none are dedicated. Check with the local law enforcement, park services, or emergency services in the area you are going to to see if there is a freq that is monitored (there may not be). I also would never put all my eggs in one basket. If I plan on getting to far off traveled routs then I would make sure I had an accurate map of the area and a compass since neither require batteries and satellites to work. This unit is a bit of a luxury for navigation. With practice a map and compass are just as accurate yet more time consuming and susceptible to human error. Human error increases with fatigue, injury and dehydration, which is where the luxury can be very helpful.

For the record it’s probably cheaper to get a separate GPS unit and a 5-watt marine radio. In hindsight I would have preferred to do this. Many of the neat little features are not necessary and I will probably not use them. It retails for $535 but I picked it up for $394 at Newegg.com.

I would go to a place that sells the unit and play around with it first. Have the sales person walk you through its features.

Update:

I have decided to downgrade this one star due to the faulty belt clip design. It broke on me again and I think its a simple thing that should be well made on this unit and it is not.