gpsblake

Just did the same WAAS experiment, this time with both the B&W unit and the Legend-C. I ran them both at the same time, a few inches apart for 30 minutes recording every 3 seconds. The B&W drifted with both WAAS enabled and disabled. However, the Legend-C drifted only with WAAS enabled while maintaining an incredible lock without WAAS enabled. Here are a few snapshots of the plots from Delorme Topo downloading the tracks. The scale is the same for all the pictures. Below is Etrex B&W w/waas enabled. I also noticed that the B&W maintains a much less detailed log than the Legend-C. Maybe there is a setting to adjust this on the B&W. Here is the Etrex B&W with waas disabled. A slightly better fix but not much difference. Here is the Legend-C with WAAS enable. It maintained a slightly better fix than the Legend B&W Now here is the surprise. Look at how exact the fix is with WAAS DISABLED on the Legend-C. Almost dead on all the time without any drift. I'll redo the experiments when the new WAAS birds are fully active. I also want to do them on a benchmark that has a adjusted lat/long to check the accuracy.

Maybe it's because 51 is still in the testing stage. It will appear to have the max amount of bar but will suddenly drop and reappear with full signal strength once again. It's not constantly on though. The 51 was always a hollow bar today but in the past,I've noticed it was a filled bar on the display at times. Didn't pick up 48 at all today. It was picking up a weaker WAAS signal also... (33 or 35), I forgot. Perhaps it was using that one to make the corrections with. But the unit was certainly jumping around a lot more today with WAAS on then with it off. I'll do the same test with the Legend B&W later tonight at the same time I redo the test with the Legend-C. If the results are still the same, I'll post graphs of it.

I've enabled WAAS on my Legend-C and have been noticing the unit wandering a lot more when I am standing still. So I did an experiment, I set the track log to log every second, then I set the GPS with WAAS on, let it settle for a few minutes, then recorded the tracks for 15 minutes giving me 900 points. I then did the same thing with WAAS turned off. I then downloaded the tracks to the computer and noticed the track of the unit with WAAS on wondered a great deal more than then when the unit didn't have WAAS turned on. In fact, the biggest variance with WAAS on was up to 80 feet. The biggest variance with WAAS off was 14 feet. The unit said I had 8 feet accuracy with WAAS and 15 feet without. Has anyone else noticed this? Could it be because of the new WAAS birds aren't fully active yet? (I picked up 51 today) and thus screwing up the data? Second thing.. My battery life seems to have dropped by nearly half after I have installed maps from MetroGuide into the unit. I've uploaded about 16megs of the maps. I haven't done any experiments on this yet but it seems the unit is draining batteries much faster. I keep my maps with detail max on them. Anyone else notice this or am I bored and out of my mind today? Cheers.

Had my yellow Etrex for 5 years... works perfectly. Had my Etrex Legend for around 3 years..... display dims out sometimes and requires the "whack" to make it appear normal again. Rubber around the unit has gotten loose, fixed with superglue. Still works well otherwise and this unit has been through a lot, bike crashes, cross-country bike rides, rain, drops etc. Had my Legend-C for about a 18 months... other then the rubber getting loose again and fixing it with super glue, the unit works fine.

I know this was probably mentioned in another thread but costco.com has the 500LE with the topo software for $179, shipping and handling included. The LE is same as the 500 except it uses regular batteries... which can be a plus or a minus depending on how you use it. The only thing I'm not sure of is the coupon thing they are talking about. That makes it even cheaper then the 400. http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?...browse=&s=1

Googled an access code.. Didn't see any discounts at all. Explorist 100 for $119... Explorist 210 for $179... Explorist 500 for $399.. (WTF??) Major overpriced. Maybe you have to be a member of backpacker.com to get the deals.

Explorist units have the buttons right on front of the unit well marked and easy to use and learn. However, if you currently own a Garmin Legend/Venture/Vista B&W unit, you can use their serial cable to upload/download waypoints to the yellow Etrex. A Lowrance GO unit, the lowest priced GPS on the market is also worth looking at. Additional after I typed the above: The Geko 201 might be the idea unit. Smallest on the market, buttons on the front, even has a few games on the unit.

It's a good price if you trust the retailer. Never heard of stootsi.com though. Walmart.com has the 300 for $126.44 online. Here I've noticed the price of the 300 has dropped like a stone over the past couple of months. MSRP at Magellangps.com is $199 Sears.com has it on sale for $218.49..... LOL!!! Here I might pick up one just to use for benchmark hunting.

I have to throw this puppy into the picture. Magellan MobileMapper real time sub-meter accuracy sub-foot accuracy with correction beacon post-processing bluetooth enabled it's also a PDA, so you can browse the web with it around $3600

Take her to a store that has a wide range of GPS'rs and let her play with them in the store. That's the best way to buy. Garmin 60CSX, Garmin 76CSX, Explorist 600 are all candidates if price is no object. Explorist XL also but it doesn't have a electronic magnetic compass. The 600 uses a rechargable batter that you don't have to remove to recharge. All the others can use AA rechargable batteries. She can window shop on the web by going to the manufacters sites. www.magellangps.com www.garmin.com/outdoor/ www.lowrance.com/outdoor/

I used the yellow for quite a while and it always got me to the geocache site so accuracy isn't an issue and mine doesn't even have WAAS. If you don't mind entering the coordinates manually for each cache, it will work & you will have fun with it. But one time I typoed a set of coordinates and nearly got myself stuck in a swamp thinking the geocache was in a swamp (my dumb fault). It's a sturdy little unit but with no bells & whistles. I've dropped mine many times and it still works after 4 plus years. A lot of geocachers started off with this unit with good success. I still use my Yellow unit for geocaching when I am riding my bicycle to the caches while leaving my Legend-C on the bike so it doesn't mess up my bicycling statistics. But I also agree with the others that you probably will want to be able to communicate the GPS with your computer. You can buy the serial cable for the Yellow. But to be honest, by the time you combine the cost of the Yellow with the cost of the Cable, you can probably buy a Etrex Legend B&W for the same price. The way I used to enter coordinates for the Yellow is to print out all the lat/long of my caches, enter the first cache you are going to find... then when you find it, enter the 2nd set of coordinates then go to that cache. Putting in 10 or 20 sets of coordinates manually in one setting really gets to you quick. If you enter one at a time, it only takes about a minute. What others said about the mapping, it will be helpful, but only really only if you spend close to another $100 on mapping software. The basemap that the Venture Cx and all other GPS'rs come with is very, very basic without any detail except for Us highways, major state highways and interstates. I don't think that detail for Canada would be any better. In America, you'll have to fork out about $300 American for a VentureCx + SD card + USB cable + mapping software. The Etrex yellow is under $100 American.

The reason I didn't mention the 60 series. Buying 20 Garmin 60 series units will cost the school THOUSANDS more than buying 20 Explorist 100 units. I'm sure the school is on a real strict budget as are all schools.

I'm actually a Garmin owner right now. However, the Explorist is a much easier unit to teach people to use than Etrex Garmin series if you are introducing them to a GPS. One example, you are telling the class to press the MENU button. On the Explorist units, the MENU button is marked MENU on front of the unit making it real easy to find. On the Etrex, there is no button marked MENU and the instructor will have to probably go to 5 or 10 in the class who can't figure out which button on the Etrex is the MENU button. http://www.importercorp.com/images/EXPLORIST-100.jpg Shows how well marked the buttons are on the Explorist. That along that the Explorist only has a small amount of screens makes it real easy for the novice to use. I'm not saying the Explorist is better. For me, The Explorist is not better because of why I use a GPS. But for teaching newbies, it's a simple unit to master.

A handful of geocaches require you project a waypoint. Here is one example of a cache that uses them. I say about 1-2 percent of geocaches involved projecting a waypoint. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?wp=GCHRQ7 An example of projecting a waypoint is if you want to find a spot that is 400 feet NE from where you are standing. To do this, you project a waypoint to 45 degrees at 400 feet then go to that waypoint. A little bit more complicated but this works also. You can still do these geocaches without projecting a waypoint. Using my example, simply walk 400 feet NE from the waypoint using your GPS compass and when you're arrow points SW 400 feet to the waypoint, you've just did the same thing and will arrive at the same spot as projecting a waypoint.

Garmins are good units but with buttons on the side and a slightly more learning curve to them, I'd go with the Explorist units for your class. Explorist 100 units are priced around 80 bucks on the web now. The 210 will cost you about 50 more bucks per unit ($1,000 for 20 units) if budgeting is a consideration.

If your main purpose is geocaching and with a budget of $150, the Explorist 210 will make a fine unit for you. You can get a color Garmin Venture Cx unit for $150 if you include their rebate into the price. (around $200 before the rebate). Now if you can stretch 50 more dollars into your budget, like the other poster said, the Explorist 400 is a better choice. Magellan is running a special now if you buy the 400, you can get the Topo software for $9.99 which makes it a really good deal. The 400 has waypoint projection plus the ability to use micro SD cards to store countless amounts of information. But regardless of what unit you do get, it will do fine for geocaching.

I live in SC and get WAAS corrections apparently from 48 and 51, even though they are in test mode. I know this because I get the D on my satelitte page for the satellites. 35 keeps making a sneak appearance also but is weak. Accuracy is around 7-9 feet. 51 was showing a solid bar a few days ago, now it's a transparent bar.... 48 has never had a solid bar lock. The one thing I am curious about, it seems that the unit gets a lock on them for about a minute, then loses the lock, then gets it back after another minute like they are being turned off and on. This happens even if I am keeping the unit still in an open farm field here. The satelittes keeps showing D under them even when the WAAS signal drops for a short period. Is this normal or are they simply just testing 48 & 51 before they are fully funcational.

The battery life of the Legend-C is about twice that of the Legend B&W. In other words, battery life isn't an issue with the color units anymore. The display of the color units beats the B&W units hands down, especially at night with the backlight on. The only time I have a little bit of a problem with the color unit is if I am riding my bike with the sun at my back putting a shadow on the unit (usually mid-afternoon) which makes it a little hard to read the map display. I paid 29 bucks for my Tracfone cellphone and it looks great with 256 bit color.

GPS Derek, Sounds like you got a great deal. I would have done the same given the circumstances.... However.... The 60CS does not have the new SIRF chip in it. Only the 60 & 76 series X series (the ones that take a SD chip) have the new SIRF technology. And the 60CS is also discontinued, like the Legend-C is. http://www.garmin.com/outdoor/products.html#mapping However Garmin has a good record of supporting handhelds that are no longer manufactured. You shouldn't have to worry about that. But you did get a great deal which I would have taken also. The 60CS is still a wonderful unit with better reception than the Legend-C in denser environments.

Which Vista are you talking about? The B&W unit, the Vista-C or the Vista-Cx ????? 90 percent of finding geocaches isn't about the unit but about the skills of the finder. Any unit will get you to the geocache but won't help you find it. Okay with that out of the way.... The 60CSx comes with the SIRFIII chip which will keep a lock in deep woods better than the 60Cs which doesn't come with it. And of course, the 60cs doesn't have SD card capability although that's a non-factor unless you are planning to buy and load up tons of mapping. If you are talking about the Vista B&W - get the 60cs. If you are talking about the Vista-C - get the 60cs as long as the price isn't that much more. The display of the 60 is larger than the Vista-C as is the unit. All of Garmin color units come with a geocaching mode including the color Etrex units. If you are talking about the Vista-Cx - then it depends if having a micro SD card is worth it. As far as the quad-helix antenna being better, it's a slight push with them being better in the woods with the exception of the 60CSx (SIRF technology) which is superior. Away from deep woods, all GPS units are equally as accurate, even the lowest priced ones will be within 15 feet accuracy. Quad Helix antennas work best with the unit being held in a veritical position while patch antennas work best in the horizontal position. Another Garmin GPS units to consider that have the Quad-Helix antenna is the Garmin 76 series.

CoyoteRed, I'm not going to turn this into a flame war but I can assure you are 100% misinformed on all accounts. In fact, pictures were posted both on this forum and the iscga website showing exactly that. The pictures even ended up being used by a congressional committee in Columbia regarding the banning of geocaches in SC for the bill H3777. So to say the pictures don't exist is simply wrong. They do. Because of those pictures, geocaching.com decided to do the right thing and banned and archived all cemetery geocaches in South Carolina. I saw the damage myself being done. An example was a micro that was hidden under a stone near a gravesite. Guesss what? Every single stone within a 40 foot radius was picked up or forced out in order to find that cache. Now most geocachers don't do any harm & I don't think any intended to do harm. But the ban done by geocaching.com was the right call.

There should a owners note on the geocache site if it is near a school warning that hunting for the cache during school hours is strongly discouraged. Tihs Cache for example has a disclaimer asking people to only find it after 3pm or on weekends. This one is at a public park next to a school.

Caches in graveyards became such a major problem in South Carolina, the state legislature started drafting a law making it ILLEGAL to place caches in cemetaries and other historic areas. Some of this was in part to a handful of geocachers who would harm the area by tearing up bushes looking for micros, walking all over gravesites (footprints everywhere), and taking pictures disrespecting gravestones. (like taking pictures while laying on top of them). The law didn't pass YET, in part to my fellow South Carolina geocachers pulling geocaches and geocaching.com banning all geocaches in cemetaries in SC. A few stories about it. http://www.jquinton.com/archives/002834.html http://www.scbaptist.org/publicpolicy/arti...-1999359261.htm I can post 100 more.... Therefore, I would advise not placing them in graveyards. While you think that cleverly hidden micro in a gravesite might be a good idea, everyone is going to tear up every little corner & opening up bushes trying to find it.

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=2612117 First of all, is this is a good price? Will this work with the Legend-C? (not the Cx) or do I have to use the older version? How many GPSr's can I load maps to? (I think it's two) How does it compare as a PC program to Delorme Street Atlas? Walmart.com also has Mapsource Topo for 75 bucks. Thanks so much.... I tried searching for answers, seems to be some contradictory information.

Hi Slides, What is going to be your main purpose of owning a GPS? Geocaching? Mapping? Hiking? Bicycling? Other? What is your price range? When we know that, you can get some better opinions. Here are some sites to compare the products http://www.garmin.com/Outdoor/ http://www.magellangps.com/products/product.asp?segID=355 http://www.lowrance.com/Outdoor/ Good luck.