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FiveNines

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Posts posted by FiveNines

  1. I took my gps out for the first time caching in a somewhat wooded area. First of all, i had trouble figuring out which way I was walking on the screen. The arrow was slow to respond to what direction i was walking. And in the woods, I made a few circles because of it. Im reading online that its bad at tracking speeds under 2mph. Also, when i was within 30ft of the cache and standing totally still, I had the cache on the screen rotate 360 degrees around my location. I can say that i ultimately never knew if i was going in the right direction for a good bit of distance. Any body have any clues? user error?

     

    p.s. and I did this with WAAS on and off and had a good satellite fix the whole time.

     

    I'm not sure what you are asking. 30 ft is within the 95% CEP of a consumer-grade handheld GPSr. You won't get a location to within a few inches you know. That's what makes geocaching fun. If your GPSr took to straight to the cache, what's the point? You have to search for it within that 30 ft circle using the clues you have and your knowledge of the terrain.

     

    Your HCx is a high-sensitivity receiver. As such it will receive multipath signals that a lesser-sensitivity receiver would ignore. That causes the position to move around a bit more than a receiver with lesser sensitivity. It's an engineering trade-off. You want a high-sensitivity receiver -- you have to put up with multipath. You want only signals direct from the satellites -- you will completely lose reception when you don't have a clear view of the sky. My old Legend (Blue) loses contact indoors, in a car, in an urban area, or in the woods. When it is in an open area the waypoint it points to is stable and not moving around within the 30 ft circle. It may be off just as much as the HCx mind you -- just that it seems more stable and the waypoint drifts at a slower rate. The HCx waypoint drifts around quite a bit faster within the 30 ft circle, but it has waypoint averaging, can get reception indoors, in a car, in town, in the woods -- anywhere really. It's something I put up with to have a high-sensitivity receiver.

  2. hmmm. Are the maps on the Verizon or Sprint versions as detailed as City Navigator? And can you save maps to your phone so you don't have to be in cell phone range to use them?

    I've never actually used either service, so I may be wrong, but I believe the answer to both your questions is "yes."

    Call up (or visit) a local Verizon or Sprint store and find out for sure.

    I looked into the Verizon service a while back, but I never ended up subscribing ($5 per month) and just used my Nuvi instead.

  3. Why not, instead, have a map 'service' that you subscribe to, and which downloads updates to your GPS unit. If you needed a certain place, say, Vermont, in your GPS, you connect to your PC, it connects to the service, and you get the map you need. Up to date and current.

    Given that you would have to connect the GPS receiver to a data-delivery service, you would have

    to attach the GPS receiver to a cell-phone or something similar. So what you want already exists.

    It's called VZ Navigator in the Verizon Wireless world.

     

    http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/splash/turnbyturn.jsp

     

    There's also a Sprint version.

     

    http://www.nextel.com/en/solutions/gps/navigate.shtml

     

    And others.

  4. Well, I wish it were that simple but there is no 'Welcome Message' option under the setup menu. This is the basic B&W Vista. I'm thinking that the sequence is connected to the startup, combining one or two other buttons with the power button. I just can't recall which ones.

     

    Main Menu-Setup-Welcome Message

     

    It's a little hidden. Here are some screen grabs from my B&W Legend, which should have the same set-up.

     

    Go to the main menu.

     

    mainlye5.gif

     

    And select the icon to the left of the X icon at the top of the menu bar.

     

    ownerxb7.gif

     

    Select it with the click stick and the Owner info page will open.

     

    infovj8.gif

     

    Enter your info there, and select the "Show At Power-up" button and there you go.

    Your info will be on the welcome screen. I recommend giving all the info as

    shown above so someone can return it if it is ever lost.

  5.  

    Some additional info:

     

    When I use the WebUpdater to "reinstall the same version of the upgrade," the WebUpdater identifies my unit with the following info:

     

    "Device Name: MTK GPS Receiver"

     

    So, even without the MTK copyright info on the welcome screen, it appears that there still might be the MTK chip in the unit. It would be interesting to see if those of you who have both software versions of 2.40 get the same result when using the WebUpdater reinstall function.

     

    DD

     

    You mean this screen?

     

    vistaupdatekg7.gif

     

    As you can see above no mention of MTK on mine. The "Device Name" field is blank.

  6. Hello all,

     

    Does anyone know if any CAR GPS system can manually add the longitude and latitude coordinates for the PARKING spot that is listed it the caches? Will this give you turn by turn directions to the PARKING coordinates? Thanks!

     

    Garmin Nuvi 350 can do this. Under "Where to" scroll down and select "Coordinates." Then you enter the coordinates and you can choose to save it or to "Go" to it and have it autoroute you to that location. If you saved it, you can autoroute to it from the "My Locations" items later at any time.

  7.  

    We don't see them often around here but in a 2 weeks trip I came across an Altitude panel along the road showing 660m. I was curious how accurate would be my new Vista HCx. It was right on! I took a picture.

     

     

    The elevation measurement is taken to be ground level. For your GPS to match, as it appears to be held at about 2 meters off of the ground, it should read 662 meters, no? Otherwise it's 2 meters off.

  8. I found this link while searching for the solution to this problem.

     

    http://www.fixya.com/support/t206687-scree..._thin_line_from

     

    I spoke with a Garmin customer service rep. on the phone and he told me they are having a problem with the screens interacting with the WAAS signal, resulting in the blank screen and line. Something about the problem resulting from a change in the WAAS sattelite system, and the problem appeared up a couple weeks ago Currently the only solution is to disable the WAAS (You can do this by going to setup, system, WAAS). I've got my GPS sitting powered on with WAAS disabled right now, and so far so good.

     

    It explains a lot if true and why it happens to multiple units at the same time. But then there's this.

     

    http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...t&p=1834086

     

    The bad ribbon connector contact that causes the display lines is a known problem with the eTrex series and Garmin has sometimes agreed to fix them even after the warranty is expired.
  9. Is one of them set to "lock on road" under map set-up?

     

    Actually, they were both set to "lock on road". I don't want that, do I? On the other hand, they were the same, at least.

     

    No, you don't. Turn that feature off when you are geocaching. It's possible one has a more vigorous "lock on road" algorithm or a differrent map it's using to compute the location of the road. Try again and they should be pretty much in agreement with "lock on road" turned off.

  10. I have the Legend (classic blue) and have had the exact same problem for the last few weeks. I thought the unit had gone bad since it's several years old. But it happened to me exactly as you describe it. Same vertical line on the right and all. I had firmware 3.70 and thought maybe if I downgraded to 3.50 it would change, but it had the same problem needing a battery reset. At one point the unit came back to life having gone through a "hard reset" with all my waypoints and tracks deleted. But most times it simply needs a restart and it recovers gracefully. I put 3.70 back on it and it still blanks out as you described it -- yesterday evening in fact.

  11. Hi i over wrote my garmin etrex legends basemap with the local metroguide hoping for a bettter idea on where a chache is near but i have now decided i want to go back to the basemap that it came with when i bought it. It says I can find it on Garmin.com somewhere if i wanted to go back but i have spent a good 30-45minutes searching for it but no luck can someone point me in the right direction or link me would be better. Thank you.

     

    You didn't overwrite the base map when you added the Metroguide maps. You added the MG maps to the Legend in addition ot the base map. If you turn off the display of the MG maps, you can see the base map. If you ever need the MG maps for more detail you can turn the display of them back on. To turn off (or on) the MG maps go to the map screen, select "Setup Map" from the menu, and then you will see each MG data set. You can click on the check mark to uncheck it. Scroll down for each MG data set you have and uncheck each one. Return to the map view and you will see just the base map. If you need to see the MG maps again, re-do those steps and re-check the parts you want to see. Simple.

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