GeneralBracket

The closest geocache is .04mi away? That's only about 210ft. That's probably why it was archived. See this... http://www.geocaching.com/articles/requirements.asp #4 under Virtual Cache Posting Guidelines. You should email the person who denied it and explain to them why it should be approved.

quote:I looked at their message board. My god what a bunch of forest nazis a few of them seem to be. I browsed those message boards. I almost forgot how angry some jack@sses out there on the Internet can make me. Ahhhh.. I remember the days when information flowed much more slowly and you didn't have to hear things you didn't like. The days when word of mouth reshaped a story so as to take the edge off. <sigh> The days when ignorance was a virtue. When PC Cops roamed the land and not a feeling was hurt. The days when... umm.. err.. <ahem> Nevermind.

I loooooove my Legend. Highly recommended. I may even get a second one. The Legend is closer to the lower-end Venture on price and closer to the higher-end Vista on features. Newer firmware will get you 1000 waypoints and 10,000 tracklog points. There are also some other feature additions and enhancements in the new firmware.

No help I know, but it seems to be working fine for me.

quote:Now I feel like I have three or four options: 1) Place the cache anyways. 2) Put a proposal before the Township Council 3) Forget the whole thing 4) Vote Libertarian I am still inclined to go with option #2 but wanted to get some feedback as to what should be in the proposal especially given the fact that the only concern they voiced were legal in nature. I'd go for 1 and 4. Of course they'll say no. If they said yes they would in essence be accepting liability for any mishaps that might happen relating to your cache. Thier councel will always take the safe road and recommend a decision that avoids any liability, regardless of the extent. You've really done them a favor in allowing them to disapprove. Now any mishaps that could come from your placing a cache can be placed directly on your shoulders. I'm not completely sure what type of park you're talking about, but the tone seems to be a public city park with playgrounds and baseball fields and such (as opposed to a wilderness park with mountains covering several square miles). If this is the case, place the cache and ignore them. In such a case I doubt I would have even tried to ask. Just make sure the container doesn't resemble some sort of explosive device. Whatever the case, a good rule of thumb is to just read the park rules and stay within your best interpretation of them. Don't go nuts trying to get approval for something so trival. Not to say your cache is trivial. You know what I mean.

quote:Don't know about the legend. But here is my take anyway. I'd take a Vista over a Sport Track. The GPSMAP 76S over the Vista and I'd have to seriously look at the legends mapping ability to take it instead of a Vista or Sport Track. The Lengend and the Vista have the same mapping ability as far as what you can upload goes. The difference between them is the memory. 24MB for the Vista, 8MB for the Legend. The Vista also has a barometer and electronic compass which the Legend does not. But these features are at the expense of battery life. 12hrs for Vista, 18hrs for Legend. Besides these differences, they are identical. Oh... Vista is gray, Legend is blue.

heh heh Never thought of geocaching as something you could be a newbie at. It's not brain surgery. Anyone who's hunted Easter eggs when they were little already has the required experience. Based on that, I'd say you're not a newbie after your first solo find.

I searched again and found topics, but no polls. I guess I'm blind. I have frequented Usenet for a very long time and hence know discussion group protocol. People have very little tolerance there and will jump on you as soon as look at you. Given that, I still observe more hostility here. At least on Usenet it's usually justified. I may be new in THESE forums, but I'm hardly "new". I've been using Geocaching.com for the better part of a year. I only recently signed up. Because I know better, I know that most geocachers aren't the way these forums would leave one to believe they are. Lucky me.

quote:Does anyone bother to do a search before posting?? I did. I saw no such poll. Pardon me. This place is hostile.

Do you get permission before placing a cache? [This message was edited by GeneralUrsus on April 20, 2003 at 11:48 AM.]

I use the Bearing Pointer. The Course Pointer (I'm told) is better suited for aviation and boating. The Bearing Pointer simply points directly to the active waypoint. The funky line you saw is the Course Pointer and Course Deviation Indicator. The further you deviate from your course the more "broken" the line gets to the left or right, giving you some idea of how much correction is needed to reattain your course. The manual briefly describes it, although not adequately. http://www.garmin.com/support/userManual.jsp Armed with the info in the manual you should be able play with it and get the idea.

I almost never plan a geocaching trip, they just seem to happen spur of the moment. Hence, when I get into the field I am sometimes at a loss as to if I should be hunting for a physical cache or not. Sooo... I've been changing the G in GCxxxx myself for quite awile now. That'd sure be a nice feature, but I can make a meaningful conversion of my own if GC.com can't/won't implement it. No biggie. As far as the C goes, who cares? As long as the G stays I can convert to my method to my hearts content.

After some more thought I changed my mind and edited this post. In this particular case I choose to be a mindless consumer. I have no loyalty and will go wherever serves my needs best. There. [This message was edited by GeneralUrsus on April 17, 2003 at 09:33 PM.]

quote:The Vista, as mentioned, doesn't have an averaging feature. One way to work around it is set your tracklog recording to timed, at an interval of anywhere from a second to say five or ten. Let the receiver sit on the cache for awhile then manually average out the track data when you get back to your PC. That's a great idea. Never thought of it. Makes you wonder how terribly difficult it would be for Garmin to write such a routine into the firmware to give these units the ability to average. Couldn't be that much trouble.

I have an eTrex Legend. The Vista and the Legend are basically the same unit except that the Vista has a barometer, electronic compass, and 16 more megs of memory. I love my Lengend. I've used a friends Meridian and can't say I like it much. I'm actually thinking of getting a second Legend, or maybe even a Vista if I feel like spending the extra money.

I use USAPhotoMaps to show tracklogs on aireal photos. Totally cool. It saves them as CSV files and you can also upload them back to your GPS. I just wish it had a more intuitive interface for managing waypoints. Or maybe even integration with EasyGPS. That'd be cool. http://www.jdmcox.com http://dcox116.home.attbi.com/

quote:A rough comparison of capacity vs. current draw of the two types looks something like this: Current Alkaline NiMH 20 mA 2700 mA-hr 2000 mA-hr 100 mA 2200 mA-hr 1950 mA-hr 200 mA 1700 mA-hr 1900 mA-hr 1000 mA 600 mA-hr 1800 mA-hr Most GPS receivers draw around 100-200 mA, so the runtime per charge is similar for alkaline and good NiMH cells. Many digital cameras are up in the 1000 mA range and perform much better with NiMH cells. BTW, the 'great battery shoot-out' article cited by Daddyfish was done using a current of 1000 mA and the results may not apply at the much lower currents used by GPS units. THIS PAGE seems to jive with that. Alkaline batteries tend to last longer in low-draw applications. It also occurs to me that if rechargeable are sensitive to impact (such as dropping) you might not want to use them in a rugged environment. I drop my GPSr (eTrex Legend) occasionally. It's a very hearty unit and has had no ill effects from the impact, but put in some drop-sensitive batteries and... 1. You might think you just busted the GPSr. More importantly... 2. You might end up in the field with no navigation. Given this discussion and all the links to external info, I'd stay with alkaline for your GPSr and use the NiMH for the camera (which is drop-sensitive regardless of the batteries).

I played with this prog for a bit and found it sluggish. Turns out it was pinning the processor at 100% every couple seconds. Didn't hang around to find out why. I don't think I'd call the interface "sleek". At least not compared to USAPhotoMaps. I found it a bit cluttered myself. I'll be sticking with USAPhotoMaps. Thanks anyway.

I hunted long and hard before settling on a receiver. I finally got a Legend and don't regret it at all. About the same time I settled on the Legend, I was dropping $38,000 of my companies money with CDW on a project we had going on. I asked the account rep if he could cut me a deal seeing as how I was making him rich with commissions. He threw it in for free. The moral: Always ask. you never know what can happen.

quote:to my mind the only 'need' for accurate handheld gps recievers is geocaching anyway, if in and emergency situation the hundred meters or so of introduced errors wouldnt mean that much anyway. If you want to call in a strike against a target that is in a populated area you might use a handheld GPS receiver to calculate where the targets coords are so as to minimize collateral damage. Or maybe you're in need of air support or a pickup in an urban area. A few hundered meters off in an area with tall buildings could be bad. I really don't know what I'm talking about (concerning war, having never been in one). It just occurred to me that these might be reasons to have an accurate handheld receiver in a combat situation. Anyone with wartime experience could probably think of several more possibilities.