I am wonddering if my GPS will work in South America ( Brazil )
I have a Garmin eTrex-Legend. Nothing special, just wonder if its gonna work ok down there.

My mom just got back from Canada and she said their GPS did not work.

Odd...any tips on finding out?

I was going to be heavily relying on this while I was down there.

Call Garmin support. I think you need to load software and basemaps.

Thanks G, I was afraid of that.

I will do some checking around.

I am glad this was brought to my attention before I leave.

I know they should work in the northern hemisphere anyway. Many of the Garmin car GPS come with Canada and Europe base maps. My Nuvi 250 has Canada. I almost bought the one that had Europe but I never drive there. I'm always driven around by others.

Tj

I really just want it to connect to the sat. and mark my way points, and input way points for me to go to.

I have a lot of info to put in manually using google earth.

I do not need topos.

I do need the streets and hwys in Brazil.

I work as a marine electronics technician and carry a Garmin 12XLP everywhere I go. I have used it to check against equipment on boats in Sought America, Asia and the Middle East.

All you have to know is how to re-initiate your GPS. IE: If you travel from NY to Saudi, you have to know how to tell it it's been moved or else it will be trying to locate the same satellites it was viewing in NY. The satellites send almanac data to the receiver in the GPS so it knows what it should see. If you move it a long distance it can get confused.

The other big thing you need to know is how to set the time offset. GPS time is GMT. You need to know how to get the GPS to read out the correct local time or once again, it can't find it's position.

Make sense?

Yes that makes sense.
How would I go about re-initiate my GPS?
I can figure out the GPS time I think.
Here is the link to the pdf file for the manual.
Not finding anything to re-initiate it.
http://www8.garmin.com/manuals/eTrexLegend_OwnersManual.pdf

Look at page 6 in the manual. Your looking for the info on "new location". You should be able to chose from a map your approximate location. Another thing you can do is use Google Earth to view the new location and use the cursor to read the Lat and Long. If you can input the new location and set to the local time, you should have no problems. If you rely on the auto function to find your new location after you have moved a large distance, you might as well go get a beer because it may take a while.

Hope this helps.

Great that does help.
I have a big list already of Lat and Long. of places selected for waypoints for me to get from point to point.
Should be a piece of cake then.

I used my Garmin Legand in Afganistan, Germany, Kuwait, and Qutar. It worked in all of those places. It took up to 20 minutes the first time to get a good Sat lock but after that no longer than normal. I was using the world map so I did not get a great picture of the roads but I could see larger towns and cities and the general direction they were in relation to my location.

I am back now and mine worked fine in Brazil.
Used it many times over there since that place is a nightmare to drive around in.

Glad it all worked out for you. I'm leaving on another trip overseas on Monday and I've been tearing up the house because I can't find my freak'n Garmin!

I'm digging up an old thread because I thought I could help. The easiest way to re-initiate a Garmin GPS is to hold the zoom out button and turn on the unit. You can let go a few seconds after the unit turns on. It will take up to 15 minutes to lock on to the satellites like it did when first turned on.

it should work but just location no maps
My Garmin mod5 don't work now after being in the SandBox??? Just a blank screen I didn't have time to look in to further. back to the box.

Mine worked on in Brazil.
What I did was let it track me in the plane, all the way to Brazil so it would work.

I did not bother to do this on the way.
Never turned the GPS back on until a few weeks ago when I went hunting.
And then it did not work.
It was still trying to locate the satellites in the southern hemisphere.

So I simply had to pull up the menu and drag the arrow to set the new location on the display map to my current location.
And all is well now.

For future reference, you can do what I suggested or you can hit the menu button while youre in the satellite page or the map page and choose a new location.