montana 650t

Just got my GPS Montana 650t. can anyone tell me how to load the maps and just a quick over view of how to use it to track trails and anything else I need to know

simoniz has one and it sure was impressive and nice. You may want to pm him. He can tell you.

You'll like it. I don't have access to my PC that has BaseCamp loaded so I'd recommend just playing with the 650T and BaseCamp. Some people use other programs than BaseCamp, but this is the most used program for Garmin GPS units. There are online tutorials that will help you out. Try searching on "Garmin BaseCamp Tutorial". This will help. I found that BaseCamp is not very intuitive but once you play with it you'll figure it out.

Note: BaseCamp is a free download from Garmin website

The links below are for wiki sites for both Basecamp and Montana.


Montana

Wiki Basecamp

Just got my 650T and want to use it friday. Loaded basecamp, and the WV trails from BOBT. You da man. I will be in an area that we do alot of exploring and finding trails others have ridden in the area of woodville if anyone knows that. My buddy has some property there. Question is: will the topo maps and saving tracks do the trick so we can ride another day, or would I be ahead to get the birds eye software so I can actually see trais. Always wonder if there is one 50 feet from us that we cant see, etc, or that the way we are trying to go wil end uo at a river etc and not worth going. Any help? No knowledge other than what I have googled, and watched on tutorials, but really want to know it. Thanks

I have Birds Eye and really don't use it. For exploring I use Google Earth. Currently the satellite view of a lot of WV was taken in March so there are no leaves on the trees and you can see most all of the trails. You can draw trails on Google Earth and convert them to Garmin .gdb tracks and then view them on your computer with a Topo background map. You can them transfer them to your Montana. I have gotten most all of the new HM Ivy Branch trails this way along with a bunch of East Lynn trails, I'm going to be riding them in a month and wanted tracks so I know what is over that hill. Below is a link to a video I made for some other people that shows how to draw a track in Google Earth and convert it to a Garmin Track. I use MapSource for this but it will work with Basecamp.

GE Track Drawing Video

Crap, forgot to mention I am a Mac user. Link says its windows. Ill google it. Thanks again.

I sent you a PM with my email address, email me and I will send you the tracks I have made, you can open them up in Basecamp or Mapsource and view in GE and see if it is the same place.

Just Google "convert .kmz to .gpx", there are several programs that will convert from GE to gpx. Not sure how many work on a Mac.

Will do. Shot you an email. Thanks.

BobT wrote:

I sent you a PM with my email address, email me and I will send you the tracks I have made, you can open them up in Basecamp or Mapsource and view in GE and see if it is the same place.

Just Google "convert .kmz to .gpx", there are several programs that will convert from GE to gpx. Not sure how many work on a Mac.

I did not have to convert. They loaded right to my basecamp and on the Garmin. I will se how they work. It saved them as a bunch of short individual trails instead of one long ride. I will play with it and see how it goes. Thanks again. Off to ride tomorrow and Sat.

The Montana 650t is awesome. After loading the maps and going on a ride with bobby last weekend i can track everything we did to bobT maps. Took pictures of rest areas and when i got home and loaded back on basecamp everything shows up prefected. The only problem i see with it is when you sitting still for a period of time it makes a bunch of turns and weird logs on the tracking. Just go into basecamp and delete them and you have a perfect ride for the next time and you are by yourself.

Impulse, you did not have to convert them because I already had before I sent them to you. What I sent you was 40 individual tracks and that is what was loaded onto your Montana. A lot of GPSr's will only show one track at a time, a few will show 20 at at time. You can't load tracks on a Nuvi. This is why I make the maps, this way you can have all of them showing at the same time. The WV ATV Map is made up of over 500 individual tracks which would be worthless on a GPSr. Personally I don't have any tracks on my Montana unless I have drawn one on GE that I want to explore.