RHINO -combined GPS/CB review

RHINO 520 Review

Had a fun mission recently , to work out presents for a group of management
and they all had to have the same things. The P.A. would have got gold watches
and ties but seemed eager to get out of a potentially political situation so I made
a casual suggestion and quickly owned the issue.

If I was to get involved then at least they would get "real presents".

Knowing they all had some interest in outdoor activites but were not quite into
real 4wding , I came up with the idea of getting everyone a touring type GPS.

After quite some investigation, got a bunch of Nuvi 660 's (probably the best in car touring type Navigator) and loaded them up with all available acessories and realized we were still nearly $1000 each under budget.

A perfect accessory to the car navigator would be a HHeld GPS or a CB Radio and that's where the Garmin Rhino 520 comes in.
Its a full 5watt handheld UHF cb and a mapping GPS all in one neat package.
Just great to take on a short walk in the bush or strange shopping centre
and be able to call or navigate your way back to the car.

One feature I did not like was the on/off button which is between the 2 aerials on
top of the unit and its hard to get your finger in to turn in on/off.

However its one hell of a unit , solidily built, waterproof , has vibration call alerts like a phone and can even take full automatic route software (but screens a bit TO small for in car use). Stores 10,00 track points - has temperature/clock/calendar/trip computer/calculator............(read the brochure for rest).

While small the Rhino 's full color screen is of quite high resolution and easy to read hand held. I had them loaded with tracks4Australia mapping and general result was quite useable.

They have this cute feature of being able to transmit there location to another similar product. One of the recipients was so taken with the unit that he has since got another and this feature works really well for them. Press a couple of buttons and your location, distance and bearing magically appears on your wifes unit.

All these features do have a penalty and that is "will one remember how to use them" or will they be novelty value and end up disused.

Waypoint Bomber - Someone had to do it , this GPS/Radio comes with a game in which you guess and then transmit co-ordinates of where you would like a bomb to go off , and the remote unit picks it up and _Affordable_Storage_Drawers.aspx an explosion on its screen.
You keep blasting at each other until you get a hit - and it knows when a hit has
occurred and the game is over.

UHF CB radio - this part of the unit works very well except I prefer a rotary volume control to up/down keys.
With a full 5 watts out and a reasonable aerial it has quite a range although its sensitivity didn't quite match the Uniden UH075 which I use as a reference CB.

All in all a very effective unit that means you no longer need to carry 2 seperate devices, and makes a great backup unit.

Robin Miller