GPS Weather

[realshelby]

I recently bought a Garmin C550 for my truck. It came with a free 3 month subscription to the "traffic" programming. I think it is $1.50 per month to continue.

It got me to thinking about the real time weather you can get from the satellite feeds. I assume this is thru the XM reciever? Has anyone here used this service? I would like some input on it.

[lopaca]

I have the street pilot 2820 with traffic and weather. Naturally, weather is not a real big issue here in the L.A. area but nice to have on long road trips out of state. The traffic on the other hand.....

 

Is well worth it as we have traffic 24/7 now and everywhere. It has saved me quite a bit of hours overall with re-routing around the jams. After all the money I spend on my bike, to me the little extra for traffic and weather is just not that big a deal. Now if I were counting all my pennies (probably should be) I would dump the weather.

 

Really depends on where and how you ride. I don't know if that helps but that's the story I'm sticking with.

[bobbybob]

I have the weather on my Garmin GPSMAP 478--it s 29.95/mo. You must have the GXM-30 antenna to receive it. I use it often to avoid rain & thunderstorms in the warmer months. It shows real-time NEXRAD weather radar overlaid across your course. I like it.

[ShovelStrokeEd]

My face shield and the sky usually tell me all I need to know.

 

30 bucks is almost 2 tanks of gas depending on where in the country I happen to be.

[markgoodrich]

I think there's a one time charge of fifty bucks to activate the radar service, and then it's about thirty bucks a month. You can do a month to month thing...we signed up for the month of June, then discontinued it, being assured by the XM telephone rep we could sign up again without the activation fee, any time we want to. We don't use it around home, just on long trips. Found it to be very useful on a ten day to Colorado, dodged some major storms in the Texas panhandle. I thought it was well worth it for the trip, but it's not something I need for regular local use.

[tallman]

There is a combo weather and traffic package.

The weather is real time temps and conditions that are print form and/or display on map.

You can search for "this location", "near here", or other areas.

I then have weather radar on my cell phone.

Cell phone is $2.95 a month and the Garmin is $3.95.

Works pretty well and not very expensive.

I can call up the radar to show me what is beyond the horizon, then use the weather feature for local specificis in that region.

The weather radar on the phone has zoom feature so it pretty much covers what I need.

The weather feature will show alerts on the GPS screen. There have been times that all looks well up ahead. Meanwhile behind me is a horrible storm. GPS alert has saved me from serious weather that developed unexpectedly. It also shows flood warning, etc.

The traffic feature has come in handy when traveling. Often helps avoid bad snafu.

Although, once or twice I was already mired in the mess when it let me know that I was skewered.

Overall,

[Mark_Hogan]

When I bought my '07 RT, I ordered the BMW Nav III, which I regret now. I'm a pilot and wouldn't fly without the weather in the plane. So when I started researching XM for the bike, I was very disappointed to find it wouldn't work due to BMW's relationship with Sirius. I did get the FM traffic which is great, but I think I'm going to get a different gps so that I can add the XM weather, traffic and radio. Look for the post selling my Nav III

[Switz]

My Garmin GPSMAP 378 with GXM-30 antenna receives real time radar weather images on the screen along with XM radio. I transfer the unit between the Gold Wing and the RT. The Autocom system on the RT is lousy, with no readily available volume control and the sound is audible for voice above about 45 mph.

[Mark_Hogan]

You don't like your Autocom? I've been planning mine for a while...what's up?

[Christian_rider]

I had this discussion with some folks before. Garmin and its partners do a lot of weather radar for diffrent applications such as shipping and off shore fishing. Big money for that radar equipment. Now if they develope and sell GPS with this advanced weather service and radar images they cut their own profit from the sale of weather radar. Weather can be over the GPS much like the cell phone services but why do it and losse their profit?

[edbremer]

When I saw R1200RT, Goldwing and Autocom in the same post it got me curious. What kind of helmet headsets are you using? The reason I ask is that I use J&M in my Goldwing helmets but have been warned that they will not work well with the Autocom. Sorry, don't mean to hijack this !

[realshelby]

I've made some progress so I'll pass on the details for those interested. When you go to the XM site the only weather package that I could make sense of was the one for ground radar. $99 per month! I never thought to look under the marine or aviation banners. Here is what you do....go to XM, find and click on the weather section. Go to Marine. The Skywatch selection is the one that should work. $9.99 per month. I spent some time on the phone Saturday with XM rep. Had everything ready to go and then she says she can't do it. Something about the Zumo comes up that may be a problem . Told me to call Garmin. After talking to them I think the problem is with the BMW Zumos out in the market. They cannot do XM and therein lies the problem. Mine is not a BMW model so I should be OK. Have not called back to get the subscription. She said the unit had to be turned on for at least 45 minutes and be stationary. The way mine is wired I don't have power to the GXM 30 unless the key/engine is ON. I may have to find a quick way to hot wire the GXM 30 for this procedure.

[Chris K]

. Have not called back to get the subscription. She said the unit had to be turned on for at least 45 minutes and be stationary. The way mine is wired I don't have power to the GXM 30 unless the key/engine is ON. I may have to find a quick way to hot wire the GXM 30 for this procedure.

I would not worry about leaving the key in the on position for that period of time. I has been my experience that both times it has taken less than 15 minutes to activate the XM service. You could always run an extenstion cord out to the bike and use the wall charger for the GPS.

[MarkEngland]

I've made some progress so I'll pass on the details for those interested. When you go to the XM site the only weather package that I could make sense of was the one for ground radar. $99 per month! I never thought to look under the marine or aviation banners. Here is what you do....go to XM, find and click on the weather section. Go to Marine. The Skywatch selection is the one that should work. $9.99 per month.

 

Thanks. I ordered mine today for my Garmin 2820 to see how it works this weekend riding to Death Valley.

[WestTX RT]

Mark,

Let us know what the difference between the Radar Summary and the Doppler Radar is.

Thanks,

[johnlt]

My Garmin GPSMAP 378 with GXM-30 antenna receives real time radar weather images on the screen along with XM radio. I transfer the unit between the Gold Wing and the RT. The Autocom system on the RT is lousy, with no readily available volume control and the sound is audible for voice above about 45 mph.

 

Something sounds wrong. My autocom transfers the Garmin audio quite loudly. I can hear it easily above 100mph with helmet speakers and with AZ Al's in ear speakers, I have to turn down the volume which I do using the Garmin "soft" volume control on the unit.

[bobbybob]

Mark,

Let us know what the difference between the Radar Summary and the Doppler Radar is.

Thanks,

 

I just found out today what the diff. is. The "radar summary" is updated every 15 mins vs. 5 mins for the "hih-rez doppler" version. The screen presentation on the "summary" will also not show as much detail as the 5 min. update since it is a "summary". However--for $9.99 it is certainly better than none, although I can tell you that even with the hi-rez 5 min. kind you have to be conservative, lest ye ride slap into a big storm. On several occasions the storm was on me about 10 mins. before i thought it would be. So I learned how to "read" it!