Hi, I bought an eTrex a couple of month ago. The waterproofness issue was in between also discussed on a usenet GPS group. Some units were reported (not only eTrex, also XL12 and other Non Garmin units) which were not waterproof and died. According to the posters they got replacement no questions asked. Water seems to get in some cases in at the screen window area -Poor quality control-. The fact is, that in almost all handheld units(Garmin, Magellan etc.) the same standard is used, i.e. the battery compartment is most of the time not waterproof, only the electronic. BTW: Same applies to quite a few waterproof VHF radios and their battery trays. I tested my unit in my bathtub for 30 minutes approx. 30cm deep in ice cold water to avoid a surprise in real life. Result: the unit was and is working, but the battery compartment was dry as the inside of the bladder of my hydation pack (reads full of water). I doubt that spray water is a problem, I use to carry the GPS in the pocket of my PFD -so far always a dry battery tray-, but I would expect a swim or a roll to fill up the battery compartment at least partly. Therefore I check the unit after each paddle to avoid the discovery of corroded battery contacts one day. Condensation is anotheer reason to do this. However, I will get a small waterproof back for the unit soon -or use the condom trick and a piece of foam, because it doesn't float (water or no water in the battery tray doesn't matter). So if an eTrex gets deeper than 3 feet underwater during seakayaking it waterproofness doesn't matter anymore -unless you do a fast wet exit and go for it. It will go down to the bottom of the sea and if you don't want to loose contact to your boat and paddle that's the end of the story. As far as I know there is one floating model from Magellan on the market -that's it. All others will dive! The question for me is: What can I expect for 120$ (US)? Waterproofness was not one of the reasons for me to get an Etrex. And I know that full waterproofness is expensiv to get because it is difficult to do if there are knobs, switchs and accessible battery containers involved -just looked for a dive lamp :( , but not to recover overboard equipment. BUT this shouldn't stop companies to give the full story in their adds and not only, if at all, in the small print of the manual or upon request. So it is OK to kick them with this, but don't waste to much energy better used for paddling. My 2 cents Ulli Dr. Ulli Hoeger Dept. Physiology and Biophysics Dalhousie University Halifax, B3H4H7, Nova Scotia Canada Phone I : 902-494-2673 Fax: 902-494-1685 Phone II :902-488-6796 http://is.dal.ca/~uhoeger *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Sat May 20 2000 - 11:27:44 PDT
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