admo1972

Make sure you have the USB drivers installed, AND make sure to download the newsest version of MapSource. Rest assured, I finally got Mapsource to see my Garmin Vista, and it's on a Mac, running Windows XP, using a Palm serial - USB adapter. Took forever until I found the Palm drivers to make my GPSr visible to Mapsource.

Why not just use the generic waypoint mark for "entering", and whatever the next symbol down as the exit. So every enter is just "mark", every exit is "mark-scroll down one".

That link is where I started, too. I haven't used Mac Simple GPS, as I have been entering waypoints manually in my GPS. If hot syncing your Palm continues to give you problems, you can try TheMissingSynch. It's shareware, but from what I hear worth every penny. But at a minimum, Cachemate and MacCMConvert is all you need (assuming that you get your hot synching worked out).

I've been using a palm TX, way overkill fo rcaching (128MB internal, and 1 2gb memory card). But man does it rock as far as using cachemate (thousands of caches can be searched and sorted in seconds). I do have an older Palm IIIx (with a measly 4MB ram) that miraculously started working again after years of being dead (after batteries inside corroded over everything). I am looking to try and use the IIIx for caching. Maybe some variation of using the TX at home and in the car, and bringing the IIIx on the trail or something. The TX just seems too expensive and fragile to be trecking through the woods with.

The dock is not metal. I think it is all wood, with just a metal ladder, bolts, etc.

If I understand your question, I offer the following: Every geocache should contain a logbook. It is understood and often isn't listed in the description. After you find the geocache, you come back to geocaching.com, and log your find as "found it", not "left a note". If the owner is "watching" his cache, he will get an email that you found it. Later, if you wish to add more info on the log, then you use the "write note" option. I hope this answers your question, although I may have misunderstood and wasted your time...

I have a Garmin eTrex Vista. This weekend, in a very unscientific test, I found the following: Then held in hand, at chest height, slightly inclnded to the ground with some tree cover and much of the sky blocked by my house, unit very quickly had an accuracy of about 15 feet. When set down on a dock, extending about 20 feet into a lake with an almost 360 degree unobstructed view of the sky, accuracy was no better than 60 feet even after left there a while. Picking it up did not improve accuracy at all. So it seems that bodies of water greatly affect accuracy. Is this true? Are signals bouncing off the water, confusing my little GPSr?

I think you "adopt" them? Not sure the exact proceedure.

That's actually not true. The GPS knows the rough position of the satellites because in your GPSr has an almanac of which sats are in the sky at any moment. This is why it takes the GPS so long to acquire sats on it's first use, or if you travel hundreds of miles between uses.

Seriously, marking and editing is such a large part of using a GPS, it amazes me that more emphasis isn't given to it in manuals (at least in the one I got for my Garmin Vista. I had read the manual Thursday night, and went right out on Friday to look for my first cache. When I got to my parking spot, I decided to enter the coordinates of the cache. The most intuitive place I though tfor entering a waypoint was on the navigate screen (the compass). Nope. Next I tried the map. Nope. Lastly I went to the main menu. Mark didn't seem right to me, as I didn't care to mark my current location, but another location. Took another few minutes to figure out I can edit the marked coordinates. :sigh: It is kind of funny how second nature it is now to mark waypoints, but when using it the first time, it seemed impossibly distant to get it done.

While my experience in caching is only about a month, I also say this from year of experience in publishing. Geocaching is simply too limited a subject for a dedicated magazine, in my opinion. Now, a geocaching column or even section in a broader GPS magazine would be the way to go, if it hasn't been done already.

Simply mark your location (main menu - mark), and then edit the fields as you wish (icon o fwaypoint, name of waypoint, and coordinated of waypoint).

I just don't think it would be interesting enough for it to be a whole magazine every month. Look! Another tupperware under a dead tree! Now, perhaps getting a dedicated column to geocaching in an already established magazine. I don't know much about what is out there, but GPS World looks like it could be good. Just my $0.02.

My knowledge of the satellites and such is a bit limited, but I'll tell you what I think. Entering the coordinates at home and turning it off for a while is fine. You do get better accuracy if it is left on, but only to a point. Your GPSr will be ready to navigate once it has 4 satellites I believe. But, the longer it is on, the better chance you have of acquiring that 5th or 6th satellite which will improve your accuracy. Of cource, you can always lose satellite if it drops below the horizon, block by a cliff or tree cover, etc. I generally put in coordinates at home, and turn off the GPS if I know I won't refer to it for a while. If the cache is 2 miles down a trail, I'll turn it off for 10 minutes or so, then turn it on and leave it on for the rest of the hunt. The speed at which you are moving should not affect your accuracy. The car itself may inhibit good, accurate results, via blocking a good portion of the sky, or have satellite signals bouncing off your car or other cars. But this may be minimal.

Just to confuse this a bit, there is also absolute and relative berings. Absolute bearing is what is described here. An absolute bering of 90 degrees is 90 degrees right of North. Relative bering would be a bearing as relative to the viewer. So if I am facing east (90 degrees absolute) and need to go on a relative bearing of 90 degrees, I'd have to actually walk due south (180 degrees). But, if you are not given whether is is absolute or relative, assume it is absolute. I think I have read too many Tom Clancy novels when I was younger.

Well, it isn't that simple. First off, that requires the purchase of Parallells (I choose to boot into Windows for free). Second, it requires a purchase of Windows XP or Vista. I use XP Pro. Third, exactly what software do you need Windows for of which there isn't a Mac equivelent? I am actually curious. One thing I may be using Windows for is loading maps onto my GPSr. But I am wondering if there is anything else you use.

MacCMConvert won't decode hints. It puts the whole log into CacheMate. In cachemate, just go to the hints tab, and click decode to see the decoded hint. What mac did you get? As you can see in my sig, I got a Mac Pro last August and just love it.

Become a Premium member (just $3/month or $30/year), and you can build pocket queries. You can actually run a query that brings up only new caches in a radius around the specific coordinates of your house!

What you can do is pick your own profile, and click on "send a message". Then in Lookup user, enter soop. They you need to click pick a user. Then you can look at the profile. It's is a bit convoluted, and perhaps there is an easier way that someone else can share. Soop Member Since: Monday, January 09, 2006 Status: Member Last Visit: Monday, January 09, 2006 Email Address: Send message Location: Lafayette, LA

I've never used battery saver mode. It seems the "problem" is that I never gave the GPSr enough time to acquire the WAAS satellite. For the record, I've until yesterday, left WAAS on, no battery saver mode off, and I have never seen any bar on sats 33 and 34, nor have any of the regular sats had the "D" in the bar, indicating that their info has been corrected (the differential and all that, iososphere stuff).

Thanks for the replies! It does sound like that if I did choose to buy Topo, I'd be able to get some decent use out of it, perhaps just needing to do some manual uploading of areas I plan to travel to before I go. Thanks, and anyone knows roughly the amount a Vista will hold (obviously depending on area) that would be great.

And a segment is a fixed area of land? So is the only choice simply the number of segments to upload, rather than sacrificing detail for area or area for detail? And about what is the area of a segment?

Keep in mind I have a garmin Vista. While it has the ability to have maps uploaded to it, the 24MB fixed memory I am sure is inadequate for much. So how exactly does the MapSourse TOPO US work in relation to my Vista if I were to buy it new or used. I assume there is a application that is run on a PC (I use a mac, but I also can boot into XP if needed). But what then. How would I get maps to my Vista? Obviously, I can't put the whole US on it. But then what options are there? Would I put on small areas? Can I put on larger areas but with less detail? As you can see, I have little to no idea how I would make it work, and what the experience would be like with such a limited GPSr.

I don't quite follow (I'll have to recheck my manual to see later). If I read that correctly, it would seem an argument against having it on. Having WAAS off saver battery life. How much, I don't know. WAAS originates from ground stations in North America, but the WAAS signal comes from 2 dedicated satellites in geostationary oribt, one over the Atlantic and one over the Pacific. Most GPSr with WAAS capability have that option turned off by default. So if you didn't know you runit could be turned off, it is probably off now, and you need to go and turn it on.

Recently, I've always turned on WAAS hoping that my position would be more accurate. But on closer investigation, I don't think my Vista has ever actually acquired a WAAS sattellite (never seen a bar on sats 33 or higher, the WAAS satellites, if I recall the numbers correctly). I'm guessing that being at roughly 40 degrees latitude, the WAAS geostationary satellites are just too far south for my receiver to get them, unless I sit out on a big lake or a cornfield. Has anyone actuially acquired WAAS satellites from this latitude in wooded areas and such?