The Finalese territory (Liguria, Italy) is famous all over Europe for its nature, its prehistoric sites, and starting from the '80, for the precipitous cliffs where hundreds of climbers congregate each weekend, all the year round. Among the best places is the Conche Plateau, limited to the west by the Aquila Valley, a wide canyon about 200 meters deep. The accesses to the plateau top are difficult places for the GPS: the vertical walls limit the clear view of the sky, the dense foliage of the scrub hinders the satellites visibility. When the number of received satellites decrease and the radio signal weakens, the accuracy in fixing the position decreases very quickly.

I choose this place to tests my new GPSMAP-60-CSX, following the steep path leading to the Bric Pianarella top. Specifications seem always good on the advertising brochures but any device must be judged in real-world conditions. This time Garmin succeed in producing a very valid hiking tool. My new Garmin never failed to fix the position. It always maintained a precision of few meters, tipically 5 meters of DOP, without the help of an external antenna. Actually the SirfStar-III chipset and the particular good protuding antenna of the GPSMAP-60-CSX proved to be a valid combination on the field, my own field, not the one chosen by the Garmin retailer... Anyway, at the moment I shot the above photography in the scrub, my body, the backpack and the camera, all together or singularly, intercepted part of the satellites signals making the position accuracy to degrade very quickly.

The sort of knot that appeared on the track sampled according to time represents this event. I was not moving with the GPS: the shown movement is completely apparent. Thus, in order to obtain clean and good tracks is very important to install an external antenna, possibly above the head. The better method, in the forest, is to wear a hat holding the antenna on the nape.

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