George

Hi Greg, I went for a short ride today. I was up at the club at 8:00, I thought you may show up. It was a very busy ride. They had a big bicycle run going on and then with all the traffic, it was a zoo. I wish we could get together during the week once and a while. I'll catch up to you later, take care.

If the new Garmin doesn't work out, I'll go back to my old way.
That way did work, for a lot of miles.

BluesDawg

Maybe I spoke too soon. It did it again today. The total distance and avg speed are right, but the map starts 7 or 8 miles into the ride. Strange stuff.
https://connect.garmin.com/activity/84077545

It is aggrevating, but the lack of a barometric altimeter is still more of a problem with the model than the inconsistent performance. I may get a 500 one of these days. I'd really like the 800, but that's too pricy for a gadget for me.

I would not hesitate to take a refurb model as a warranty replacement for a defective unit I bought at deep discount. I bought a refurb Garmin Nuvi for my wife to use in the car and it has been flawless. Saved me a lot of $.

George

I think they told me it would be another $75 for the refurbished one. I'll have to kick that one around. I'm really wondering why I ordered another now. I'm thinking they had so much problem with the 305 that they came out with the 410. I don't know though, but reading the Garmin forum a lot of people are having all kinds of problems with the 305. I have a friend that wants to sell me a 500 edge for $150, that's a year old. I said what's wrong with it. He said it's blue and he wants a black one. I think he's my friend anyhow.

jppe

I used to download the data and keep intricate details of every ride. I do a lot of different rides so having the ability to see the route, grades of roads, cadence, etc was very helpful. However I just got lazy a couple years ago and quit tracking everything. It would be very easy if I just took advantage of the software that is now available. My home PC wound up with some viruses and I've lost the ability to upload the data to Garmin like I used to and have not taken the time to fix it. I do like the Garmin for the ability to see lots of data during the ride, see the maps and also keep track of the elevation. When doing climbs it is useful to know how close the top of a climb I might be. I also like that it is easy for me to move it from bike to bike.


As I mentioned, a friend who is on my TT board sent his 305 to the fella in California for less than $50 got his fixed and he is now really happy with it.

George

Thanks Joe, if you would, could you PM your friends e-mail address or how I could contact him. I really like the 305 when it's working right, but every time I try to upload, it freezes. Maybe I could talk to your Friend and he can set me straight on what to do. Thanks again.

Hermes

George, When you purchased the 305, did you check for firmware updates from the Garmin website? You may have older buggy software.

George

Yes Rich I took all the updates. They had a real big one 2 weeks ago. It made it upload faster, but it froze up again.

ItsJustAHill

Gave up on the Forerunner 305 after experiencing some of the same issues. During the Tour of Napa Valley last year, it also kept dropping the signal when in tree cover, so mileage numbers were worthless. Gave up, went to a Cateye Adventure and am much happier (except for trying to read the tiny grade readout with 50 year old eyes).

alcanoe

I wonder, did you but it at a cheap price recently? The 305 has (had?) the latest and highest sensitivity GPS receiver. My earlier two GPS recivers would drop out under trees. They were totally useless in the woods.

The 305 is superb under trees. I ride under hardwood tree cover in the mountains and pine forest cover in N Florida and it never misses a beat for signal strength and location. The recorded track on Google Earth gives a continuous track with no gaps which matches the trail maps.

However, GPS technology does not do distance travelled very well. If you have a lot of elevation change or many turns/mile, it will apparently underestimate the milage. On the trails I ride, it runs 10 to 15 % low. The trails have very few straight sections and lots of tight turns and run up and down continuously: much more so than roads. On the roads I tried (relatively level), it was accurate trees or not.

I compared it's accuracy to a Garmin e-trex receiver (top model of e-trex) which also has the sensitive GPS chip (and a separate altimeter, but the test was in Florida), and it actually did better in the woods than the e-trex. The difference is probably due to a different equations used to estimate distance travelled.

I compared the Forerunner 305 to my F150 odometer (calibrated against I-state road markers) for two miles on a flat road with few turns and they agreed within 1%. I use the 305 to calibrate my cyclometer over a 1-miles staight course and use my cyclometer to measure distance. When I ride familiar trails, I turn the GPS off and use the accessory cadence/rpm sensor calibrated with the GPS to do milage as well.

I bought the 305 as recording 5-zone heart rate monitor so for me it's perfect since I've had several years of flawless performance so far. These newer cheap ones sound risky.


Al

P51

If you are connecting your 305 to a powered USB hub, try connecting it to one of the USB ports on the computer instead. That improved my rate of successful uploads a lot.

George

Thanks that's how I've been doing it. To the computer usb ports that is.

dendawg

I just upgraded from my edge 305 to an edge 800. FWIW on my 305, because I had the speed and cadence sensor, it would start measuring speed and distance when I started the timer, but mapping info doesn't kick in until it finds the satellites, and locks to them. Sometimes as much as 3 miles of riding.

I did my 1st century yesterday with both mounted. Distance on the 305 was 3/10 mile less than the 800, and speeds on the 800 were consistanly slightly higher. While both have barometric altimeters, the 305 showed 9806' of vertical vs 8315 on the 800. Since the 800 is a 3rd generation I would hope it was more accurate than my 5 year old 305.

chinarider

Just turn it on a few minutes before you start riding and wait until the little icon on top indicates its locked in. Interesting comparison between the 305 & 800. I wonder if you'd have similar discrepancies between 2 different 305s or 2 800s.

KDGast

I have an Edge 305, Edge 605 and Forerunner 305. No problems with any of them.