Geokashers

Hi Night Stalker, Great note! I'm gripless. After reading your note I played around a bit and I didn't have the necessary maps loaded! I had tested this out before heading out on a vacation to the midwest....but all my testing was local so I didn't have any problems with the one local map I had loaded! Argh! I've loaded 2/3s of the US maps (175 areas) and it takes up 923MB of my 1GB card. Took a long time to download all the maps but in the end I was able to find Phoenix! Yeah! Thanks so much! So for the switching between geocaching and road directions what's the easiest way to change between 'follow road' and 'off road'? Is this the same thing as the Map setup 'Lock on Road yes/no'? To get to the 'Lock on road' stuff I have to navigate through all sorts of windows and screens to change it each time. So I'm guessing that 'follow road' or 'off road' is different (?) and that you can add it to a menu for ease of change? Should the 'Go to Line' be 'Course' or 'Bearing'? Any other options I should be setting? I have orientation set to 'North Up'. Other than that and the changing of the page sequence that's displayed I am using the factory defaults... Sorry if these are really dumb questions! I think I'm 'almost there'! Thanks again...the help I've received so far has been excellent!

Mapsource? You need City Navigator to be able to route with the 60CSX. It's MapSource City Navigator that I have. Sorry I wasn't specific enough. Hope the additional info helps. Thanks!

Oops....if I try to navigate to Phoenix right now....and I start to type in a city name....I enter a 'P' and the only city diapleyed is Patterson, CA. There are no other 'P' cities displayed. Help!

Hi, I'm pretty new to Geocaching still and I'm still trying to figure out how everything works together. I have a Garmin GPSMap 60CSx and purchased Mapsource for it. I'm mostly geocaching so I'm using it with the 'Lock on Road' setting off so that I can get to the Geocache Navigation screen. But I can't seem to get the navigation piece of it to work. I was out of state and wanted to navigate to Phoenix, Arizona from the middle of New Mexico and when I wanted to type in the name it only seemed to know about Pleasanton, California if I remember correctly. I could use it to navigate! In fact I couldn't even see the street level maps. I just went through the map setup screen and saw how there are a couple city names in there....and none were selected. I just selected Modesto and now I can see some street names when I zoom in far enough. So I'm kinda lost. Do I need to be switching 'modes' when trying to geocache vs navigation? Any other settings that the pros would recommend? Also, I purchased Mapsource a month or so ago....and it seems as if the software was already a year old and out of date. There are several businesses listed on the maps that are no longer there or have moved. Are we supposed to be able to buy the software and then get an update with it or.....are we stuck? How often is the software updated? Thanks in advance for any help!

I checked out that link and it was awesome! Thanks so much! Question though....on the PDA when I'm looking through all the caches I can sort by Name or Wpt. When I search by Wpt I think it may really be sorting by the waypoint name/number but I'm still seeing the cache name and not the waypoint name. In the link provided it shows an example and in that example it shows up as the waypoint name. I'm using GSAK. Do I just need to select a different option or....? Great stuff! If you have a palm the link you want is: http://smittyware.com/palm/cachemate/ To make it list waypoint names (GCXXXX) look at the bottom right hand corner of your screen when the caches are up there is a small section that Reads: Sort By: Name | Wpt make sure it is dark around Wpt and not name. If that doesn't work, click CacheMate on the top left, on the far right click options, select list options, make sure a check is by Display Waypoint as name, and by When sorted by Waypoint. Also if you have GSAK you do not need CMConvert, just tell GSAK to export in CacheMate (PDB) format. Got it! The List Options directions were great...and that got me what I needed! Thanks so much for the reply! I'm now paperless.....and hope to remain so once I get the PDA, my GPSr, and myself out into the field together at the same time for the first time! Thanks! One more thing. Now I've got all this great info on my Palm. I'll get new information whenever I (re)run PQs. So before I load this new information into the Palm....do I need to delete all the old information? If so....how might that be done? I always delete everything from the GPSr bfeore loading updated/new information so thought I'd have to do the same thing with the Palm. Thanks!

I checked out that link and it was awesome! Thanks so much! Question though....on the PDA when I'm looking through all the caches I can sort by Name or Wpt. When I search by Wpt I think it may really be sorting by the waypoint name/number but I'm still seeing the cache name and not the waypoint name. In the link provided it shows an example and in that example it shows up as the waypoint name. I'm using GSAK. Do I just need to select a different option or....? Great stuff! If you have a palm the link you want is: http://smittyware.com/palm/cachemate/ To make it list waypoint names (GCXXXX) look at the bottom right hand corner of your screen when the caches are up there is a small section that Reads: Sort By: Name | Wpt make sure it is dark around Wpt and not name. If that doesn't work, click CacheMate on the top left, on the far right click options, select list options, make sure a check is by Display Waypoint as name, and by When sorted by Waypoint. Also if you have GSAK you do not need CMConvert, just tell GSAK to export in CacheMate (PDB) format. Got it! The List Options directions were great...and that got me what I needed! Thanks so much for the reply! I'm now paperless.....and hope to remain so once I get the PDA, my GPSr, and myself out into the field together at the same time for the first time! Thanks!

I checked out that link and it was awesome! Thanks so much! Question though....on the PDA when I'm looking through all the caches I can sort by Name or Wpt. When I search by Wpt I think it may really be sorting by the waypoint name/number but I'm still seeing the cache name and not the waypoint name. In the link provided it shows an example and in that example it shows up as the waypoint name. I'm using GSAK. Do I just need to select a different option or....? Great stuff!

Hi, I have the same questions but for the Palm Tungsten E2. I just purchased CacheMate (Palm OS) and have yet to receive the registration email. Once I do what will I need to do? Does this go on both the Palm and the desktop? I use GSAK for putting stuff on my GPSr. Do I somehow use GSAK along with CacheMate to get the web info into my Palm? I've never used a Palm before so this is a new ballgame for me. And to get new log information I just run a new query or...? Thanks in advance for any help anyone could lend! Thanks!

How does one do the screen capture for a web cam cache?? I know I can do a alt-printscrn and capture the entire screen....but that gets a lot of stuff outside the web cam (at least for the GCC173 cache!). I saw in the logs that folks are getting just the web cam shot so....how does on do this? Yes....I know that I have to call someone to have them to the real work ... Thanks! John

Just adding the question emoticon since I didn't do that last night. I'd like to add an additional question. If I'm travelling down the road and glancing over at the 60 CSx once on awhile....and see that a cache is near (from the basic map function that comes with the unit)....do I have to push the FIND button to then go locate the cache or is there a way to do a 'GO TO' from that map page? Thanks! John You don't need an expensive PDA. An old second-hand unit is which most cachers start out with. They are usually available quite cheaply on ebay, garage sales etc. My suggestion would be to get one with at least 8MB of memory - this will store info on about 2500 - 3000 caches. You will need a cable to connect it to your PC - either serial or USB depending on the PDA. Premium membership of Geocaching.com ($30 pa) enables one to request lists of caches (called PQ's) be sent direct to your email address. These PQ .gpx files are then loaded into a program on your PC and from there are sent on to your gps at the press of a button. A couple of programs that can send cache waypoints from your PC to your gps are Easygps(free) and GSAK($25). GSAK is the more versatile in that it can export cache data to PDAs and many mapping products as well. To go 'paperless' you will also need a program in your PDA to read the cache data. Cachemate ($8) is one a lot of cachers use, others use HTML readers. Research this forum for recommended PDAs and how to go paperless. Happy caching.

OK...so I just started geocaching and I just bought a GPSMAP 60CSx. I've heard about pocket queries so I created a pocket query....but I didn't want it to run on a particular day. I want to be able to run it right before I head out the door so that I have the most up-to-date info. So I 'Preview' the PQs....and in this 'Running Pocket Query' page I can only select 1-20 (of my 500) returned records to put into a gpx file. But I want to load all 500! So I started fooling around with GSAK.....and I seem to get some results but I haven't yet been able to get them onto my GPSr. Actually....I saw my results on the GPSr but then I hit the road only to discover later on that I didn't save them. Gotta figure that step out. So I'm confused. I don't need to do anything on geocaching.com as far as creating gpx files to be able to use GSAK right? Why/when would you want to create gpx files on geocaching.com vs GSAK and visa versa? Just trying to figure out where one tool ends and the next begins! How to seasoned geocachers do this? I'd like to always get the latest info. Do I wipe everything out before I'm going to go caching (ie all the 'old' data) and then reload the newest 500 caches every time? I'm working on getting the PDA....but for now I'd just like to be able to load the cache information so I can get away from the manual entry that I have with my Garmin foretrex 101. Also, I saw someone looking at cache locations where streets were shown and you could have the tool determine the driving route to take to get to the caches most efficiently (gas is expensive!). I didn't get the name of that tool/product. Does anyone know what this product is? Thanks in advance for your help! mhjlyle@yahoo.com John You don't need an expensive PDA. An old second-hand unit is which most cachers start out with. They are usually available quite cheaply on ebay, garage sales etc. My suggestion would be to get one with at least 8MB of memory - this will store info on about 2500 - 3000 caches. You will need a cable to connect it to your PC - either serial or USB depending on the PDA. Premium membership of Geocaching.com ($30 pa) enables one to request lists of caches (called PQ's) be sent direct to your email address. These PQ .gpx files are then loaded into a program on your PC and from there are sent on to your gps at the press of a button. A couple of programs that can send cache waypoints from your PC to your gps are Easygps(free) and GSAK($25). GSAK is the more versatile in that it can export cache data to PDAs and many mapping products as well. To go 'paperless' you will also need a program in your PDA to read the cache data. Cachemate ($8) is one a lot of cachers use, others use HTML readers. Research this forum for recommended PDAs and how to go paperless. Happy caching.