GeckoGeek

Strickly speaking, NMEA 0183 defines the interface as well as all the other stuff. So if it's USB, it can't be NMEA 0183 compliant.

OK maybe not the surveyor, but at least think like the guys doing the work. They have a job to do but they are not going to make it harder on themselves then necissary. Just another data point to help determine the most probable placement.

Hmmm. Thanks. OK, I'll just wait until it's out there enough that there's a good feel for what the real-world difference is.

Thanks. I thought they used sightings, but wasn't sure of the details. But the point is the mark is going to be somewhere "line-of-sight friendly". One does have to account for new structures or vegetation that might have grown too high since the mark was set, but the guys aren't going to make this more difficult then they have to. That too is a clue.

I assume you mean it's at the center of the arc rather then the center point of the circle the arc defines. Would I be wrong in guessing that it tends to be on the outside of the curve so it would have a better sight-line down the roadway in both directions?

Sorry, I've been away for awile - quite awhile. And the search feature is broken. Can someone clue me in to what the big furry deal this new chip set is about? What is the improvement?

My guess is that the PC completely powered off. The message is the monitor saying "I'm not getting a signal". I'd say one of two things. Either that cable is shorting out something in the USB, or some static electricity "zapped" the computer into complete shutdown. It happens.

Someone once talked about "thinking like a surveyor". I'd like to know how the height of the mark is determined. I thought it was by sighting to other benchmarks in the area. If so, and one could guess what marks were used, then it would help to guess where this mark might be located so as to have a view of a pole placed on top of the other mark. Also, am I reading the datasheet right in that this mark could be as far as 180 meters away from the coordinates?

Any chance you remember what that menu setting is?

When dealing with SCALED coordinates, the description should be given preference. There are a number of errors that can creep in. First, the description it used to find a point on a map and that is translated into the coordinates. Who knows if the located themselves accurately on the paper or if that feature was accurately placed when the map was drawn. What's accurate about this mark is it's height. From the description, I don't think this is set in just a "bolder" but in a rock face that would be a rather permanent mark. That rock cliff sounds like a possibility. Note that it was set in the 30's and hasn't been recovered since. Personally I'd search both places. If it is on the cliff, it could be covered with erosion from above. Good luck.

I've been away from this site for about a year and a new round of models have come out. But before I do remember reading posts that Magellan tended to come from the factory with a particular feature set that would tend to hide loss of lock from the user for awhile. It gave a false impression that it was locked when it fact it would lead you astray. Just repeating from old posts. Garmin does charge top dollar, but you can find cheaper accessories like cables and whatnot.

Palm IIIxe count? I have a pack that I picked up on close-out from Radio Shack a year ago. I think it was about $12 and had the battery, a cigarette lighter cord that charged it though the battery door and the AC adapter to cigarette lighter. (The latter by itself is probably worth that much.) Yeah, if you don't pay attention to the battery meter, you don't get much warning. But I've not lost data yet. One day I'll figure out how the change the battery meter. I saw the sequence on the thread, now if I can just figure out how to do "shortcut"..... Hmm, it doesn't seem to do anything.

As long as the phone is on, regardless of the kind of phone - AGPS or whatever, the provider has a fair idea of where you are. Not GPS accuracy, but an idea. Probably good enough to make or break an alibi. Note that not all providers went with GPS. Some went with smarter towers to do more accurate triangulation.

I should add, it is possible in some situations to track a receiver. Most receiver designs use a local oscillator that if not well shielded can be received. This was done in WWII to help wipe out the German U-Boats as well as used today in the VG-2 radar detector detector. But trying to locate a specific "transmitter" from a overhead satellite is going to be a really good trick. And since "they" have no easy means of knowing who owns a particular GPS, that not going to be a very cost effective means of tracking if it's possible at all. Not when you compare it to the cell phone. Ever wonder why your cell phone's standby time is measured in hours when a pager from the '80s would last a whole month on a AAA battery? It's because a cell phone transmits, even when not in a call. And the transmitted information includes it's phone number and electronic serial number (ESN). Add to that the government's mandate for E911 to allow emergency operators to know where you are, and you've got a known tracking system up and running. A far better way to track someone. So forget about the GPS, worry about the phone.

Indeed. The units that take AAA are generally monochrome and don't always have a great backlight. As such, they are not alway easy to read except in good light. OTOH, a rechargeable unit usually is set up that way because it's got a power-sucking color display that can be much easer to read unless in full sun. Bottom line, display is a bigger factor, and that may force the choice on battery.

As everyone else has said, bogus. There are a couple of things that might have led to this. First of all I was reading a Tom Clancy Op-Center book that suggested the GPS system could track it's users. That and other stupid mistakes caused me to discover the Tom Clancy doesn't write the Op-Center series, he's just the concept author. Apparently it's some other hack who I don't think knows anything about technology is writing it. Apparently the Op-Center is controlled by Tom's Ex-wife and Tom has nothing to do with it anymore. [/rant] Anyway, the point is it ended up in a "Tom Clancy" book so it must be true, right? The second point is that if someone got ahold of your GPS and you didn't clear the track, they would know where you've been. The fact the tracking isn't real-time is one of those details that get lost in the re-telling of stories. Last, as all the others pointed out, there IS a way of tracking if you connect the GPS to a transmitter. Most news articles just talk about "GPS Tracking" re-iterating how it uses satellite and all that canned yada-yada with little to no mention about how the GPS data gets back to the person doing the tracking (two-way radio? How dull.), so it just feeds the misconception. As for your friend, since it's hard to prove a negative, ask him to prove to you he's correct. He can try go to Wikipedia and see if he can find it. Or you might just make it easy on yourself and tell him you can only be tracked if a black helicopter is within a mile of you.

Goto here and download the appropriate Desktop software (found just under HotSync at mid page). The software should install reasonably easy and the Palm will then sync to your computer. Then you're set to get started. You'll probably want some software on the palm. You could just load the pages but it wouldn't be as useful. I've used CacheMate and liked it. It's an inexpensive but not free program.

Just to clarify a few things. If you're using a USB to serial converter, then you are syncing via serial port. The fact that serial port is at the end of a USB cable is irrelevant. The USB option in hotsync is only for Palms that came out of the box equipped to connect to a USB port. As for what COM port to use, it depends on what COM port the serial cable installed itself as. You can either try until it works, or poke around in Device Manager to find out what it's installed as.

Yes, the Palm must be set to serial. Likewise the Palm Desktop needs to have serial activated and using the correct COM port. If you've got IR on your computer (many laptops do) you might try an IR link. I think it's faster then serial.

What do you bet that if a odometer was the easier way to go that someone would have found a way to add one? I work hard at being lazy and I'll bet those guys aren't a whole lot different. For the ones where they only needed an approximate distance, maybe they estimated it from the number of rail junctions after a milepost. (Give new meaning to "3 kicks north" )

There are special trucks that are adapted to running on the rails. Although unless the surveyors worked for the railroad, I don't think it too likely they would have one of those.

I donno. There's a AOL 2.5 disk that's up to $4 on eBay. And it's got a full day of trading ahead of it.

Unless NGS has changed it's policy in my absence, it requires that the mark be found, but found in a destroyed condition before it can be declared destroy. A classic example is if the disk and the object it's suck in has obviously been moved from it's position. I believe the theory is that it's much too easy to overlook something so small. So for NGS, you'd probably have to declare it a "not found" and post your reasoning so that any surveyor can make their own call. Landmark type of objects such as towers require only a photo showing they are gone. As for the accuracy, a mark that has location (not height) adjusted should be right where your GPS says it is. Those marks are more accurate then a consumer GPS. The number of digits in such a GPS can only define a box of about 6 ft square, so I'd factor that in my accuracy. If you find an adjusted mark way off, I'd first check my GPS and make sure I was on the right settings. If everything checked, and the error was well outside the GPS error range I'd report it. It's possible that someone made a data entry error when the records were computerized. However, any marks that say location is scaled - look out. Someone read that from and map and could easily be hundreds of yards off.

I would suggest USAPhotoMap. The price is right and your downloaded tracks can be displayed on a topo or aerial photo. The data is saved as a CSV so it's easy to play with the data.

Will Geotoad do benchmarking? We've been waiting for a PQ that would do benchmarks. Also is there a way to throttle the program so it doesn't saturate Geocaching servers causing unwanted side-effects (and unwanted attention.)