woodsters

Dusty, Was not arguing to the fact about peoples inputs. Was debating the fact that people said a cable is a must. Plain and simply, it's not. As far as his tight budget, you are correct. His tight budget may allow $500, mine may allow $5. I was taking from my experience as a father of a young child of what being on a tight budget and allowing funds for recreation purposes, especially those purposes that will mainly suit me, are. Now BrianSnat remarked about the fact that the cable allows you to update the software of the GPS itself. That I will go along with and agree that a unit that accepts a cable is good choice. I disagree about that it's needed for entering waypoints, unless you are a supermegacacher. Everyone likes(for the most part), the GPSr they have and stand behind it. They all recommend it. That's a good thing. But trying to sway the opinion of a person knowing not that much (including me) about which unit to get is ridiculous. The best answer to questions like that are to give the facts of the units themselves, unbiasedly. The decision should be left up to the buyer. I'm not saying your forcing one to purchase something but your influencing them to maybe purcahse something more or less than they need or want, or can even afford. It's like going to a car dealership. The salesperson tells you that you don't want the car you are looking at, you want the more expensive one. They will tell you that you need something, that you may use in the long run and that you may find a comfort. But you might of been just as happy in the long run with the lesser one. I've bought cars like that before. Could I do without powerlocks, powerwindows, and sunroof? Yep (guess my wife couldn't ..hehe). I do without it everyday with my Jeep. Of course I have the ultimate sunroof. Could we do without the 4x4 of the Jeep? When we lived down south, yes. After moving up here this winter and having 10 ft of snow this year and with the hill we live on, it was a necessity. As the car with the powerlocks and windows couldn't go up the hill. Then there's the camper we bought. We bought it on what we needed then. After a while we did decide that maybe we should of opted for a different one with more stuff. But we can still camp in it and it serves it's purpose. Those things were not necessities but more of luxuries. We also bought what we could afford at the time. That is good that easygps allows you to remove the waypoints as well. I understand BrianSnat idea of doing it every thursday for the weekend. Just hope one isn't pulled on Friday...lol just kidding. It was not an arguement but a disgreement. We all disagree. You just did with me! Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

You shouldn't havea problem printing it out. I wouldn't make changes to it though. If you were profiting from it, then you might would have a problem. I assume you did not have to pay to read what the website offered. IF you found it in the newspaper, would you of put a clipping from the paper in it? Probably so. But the paper makes money from copies it sells. Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

That's great Briansnat, but he stated he is on a budget and that he only wanted to use the system for Geocaching. I understand his sentiments exactly with having a new baby and things being tight. The point I was making, was that he doesn't have to connect the computer and he doesn't have to have a more expensive unit. He can do it with a bare bones GPS easily. It's no problem entering the coordinates manually. If you do one a day (7 a week), then you could enter the waypoints easily within 10 minutes or so. One of the things that I see that would be a problem about entering so many waypoints at once, would be teh fact that caches could be removed or inactive. If you have so many downloaded and then you just decide t ogo out and search for one or your out and you see one is close and go looking for it and can't find it and then log on and see it's been removed or is inactive. Then it would be a pain in the butt. I could see the gentleman who did the week long geocaching thing to do that. Because you are talking about a period of a week. But how soon will you get 300 caches done? Does the easygps remove them from the GPs as well or do you have to that manually? Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

Entering the coordinates on the Gecko 201 are rather easy. Matter of fact after you enter one digit, it wil ladvance to the next. You just hit "ok" to make a change to itor the arrow key to move to the next one if it doesn't need to be changed. I disagree about the fact of if you are going to do more than one cache a week. I printed up about 7 or 8 caches last night. After they were printed, I entered all of them manually. Took all of about 10 minutes at the most. Spend almost that much time just doing this email. Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

Just looked at the Legend on Amazon and they have it for $199 plus a $50 mail in rebate. You also have to decide whether or not if you want to wait around for the rebate also. AS someone else stated, a lot of people forget or procrastinate and don't send in the rebate and end up paying the higher price. I've done that before. I've also done rebates before and have to see my money in less than a couple months. You also have to do it by July 6th as well. Or at least purchase by then. The rebate is good on other models like the Summit and Vista as well. On whatever you decide, I'm sure you will enjoy it! Good luck and have fun! Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

Know how things are tight with the new baby around. I would go for the bare bones. Go for a Gecko 101 or just an Etrex. You don't have to have a data cable, you don't have to have maps, you don't have to even have a GPS system as some here don't have. Decide on what you want to spend on one and then go from there. Especially if the functions don't make a difference to you and you will only be using it to geocache. We don't have a cable nor maps. We do have a Gecko 201 that you can hook a cable up to it and then to the computer. It hasa few more things than the 101, but not a whole bunch if you are a going to cache on the weekend or something. If you decide to get more into it, then invest in something more later. A Gecko is about $100 (US) and the Etrex basic not too far from that. I was on a budget too, but wanted extra bit of little capability later if I wnated to do the extra things. But it was not necessary. Spend less on the GPS and more on the things you leave in the cache! Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

thueringen-scout, you may want to include that if they like it that you want them to send you the money for it, so they won't be surprised when they hear from you and that you are requesting the money for it. Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

Does the Benchmark have an identifier on it? Like the towers, is there a marker or sign that tells of the benchmark? If so =, I would say that seeing it/taking a photo of it would qualify as logging a benchmark. Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

Makes one wonder how many people actually log in the log book there as well. You know they accessed the internet to get the location of the cache. It should be common courtesy to make a log online as well. I like reading the logs online, even for ones that I probably will never visit. I typed in the zipcode of where my parents live and I gre up and come to find out, there is a cache within a mile of their house. Read the log and saw someone on there asked about what something was, because they saw some old structure at the entrance of a newer park that the cache was in. It used to be an old NASCAR racetrack(Richard Petty once raced there) and a dragstrip as well. I never saw it active in my lifetime, but know of it and have seen more of it than what the cachers there are seeing today. It's funny that many people that live in that area never even knew that the park was there. I guess it was built probably in the last 5 years. (30815 area code - Hephzibah, Georgia - right outside Augusta) Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

Yeah learned it wasn't exact about 1 hour after buying it. My wife ran into a store and I sat in the parking lot playing with it. With it sitting still the elevation continously changed. It would go up 25-50 fett and then come down and go below that amount. Had to make sure I wasn't riding a roller coaster. And then when searching for our cache yesterday, the trees were not cooperating with our unit. We had to stop, turn it off and get new coordinates several times. Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

No problem mozartman. If you use that little tip I told about putting the codenames on there and you put a whole bunch in your GPSr, then when you are out and about and doing something else, you can turn on the GPSr(if not already on) and see what cache is near you. You may be right off the road from one. I think it helps to put in as many waypoints (marks) of caches you are interested in and print them out too. What we did was fold the papers in half and stick them in our digital camera bag and took it with us. We went to another town for shopping yesterday and on our way home, we found 1 of the 3 caches we had entered in our system. Tonight or tomorrow I will probably enter and print out more. Never know where you gonna end up at. We were less than a mile from a second one yesterday and didn't realize it till today. Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

What about the halfs, like 1.5 and 2.5? What would they be rated as? I would think a 1 would be right off the path by a few feet and easy to find. Not having to bushwack any. At least not over 50 or more feet. Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

Check the Northeast section of the forum, towards the bottom on the list and see if there are any there. You may also want to do a search and see if there is a club or association there in New York. Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

LOL....Think it was answered before up there, but if it's similar to the Gecko 201, you just go to enter a "Mark". When you enter it, you edit it the little icon , the name, the coordinates and etc. Then when done and you clikc the "OK" it sets the mark you just made as a waypoint. Since we don't have a cable. I just find the cache(s) on here that we want to go and find. I print out the thing without the log. Then I take and enter the caches as marks. Several at a time. Then they show up on my GPS map (not a real map, but the map feature it has). You can then see the waypoints.If you are entering several caches into your system at once, then use the following to easily identify them. When entering your marks(waypoints) into your GPSr and are getting ready to set the name, use the 6 digit (aplha-numeric) code that the Geocaching website has for them. I highlight them on the sheets to easily find them. Then when I see a cache on the little map, I can easily tell which one it is by referring to the printout. The printout also has general directions on how to get to where you park. It's easier to put that 6 digit code rahter than just "Cache". Also mine only allows up to 6 letters/numbers for the name anyways. Ok, i need to shut up. I'm beginning to think I'm an expert after one find...lol Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

I would have to agree. I don't think a clue should tell you where to look. That does take the fun out of it. Guess I won't decrypt the clues...heheh Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

We found our first cache yesterday. It was a 1/1 and there was no clue either. While the terrain might of been a 1, I would of given then difficulty a 2. At least a difficulty of finding it. There was very dense tree coverage and once we got within less than a 100 ft of it we had to stop the GPS and restart it realign it with the satellites. We were on top of the cache within 10 feet several times, but didn't see it. My son finally did see it. It was hidden nicely, but not completely covered that you wouldn't see it. If you are really looking for it, you could see part of it with the naked eye. We left it that way too. Our Gecko 201 was telling us we were within 10 ft of it and we were! I was actually kicking around 3 ft from it. Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

We just bought the Gecko 201 the other day and liked it. Garming did their homework on doing hte Gecko. They made one that is better than the basic Etrex and the Gecko 201, but less in cost than the better legends, vistas and etc. They priced it where it's going to snag those like us where cost is important. Yes there are some deals out there with rebates. You have to check on the rebates and see if they are instant or mail in. As someone said they take the chance that people won't mail it in and you pay the full price. I've done that before. And then other times when I hbave done it, it normally take around 2 months, give or take a week or two, to get your money. Depending on weather you want to wait for the money or not I think depends on it all too. The Gecko worked ok for our first find yesterday. we did have trouble with it keeping up with our movement in the dense tree coverage though and had to stop and ralign with the satellites and then goto the cache. But we did it. Actually we were within 10 ft of it several times and we just didn't see it. I will tell you, if you haven't seen it up close, it is small! I have a small Samsung flip cell phone and it's almost the size of the phone when the phone is closed. Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

Ok we bought a Gecko 201 last night, so we now have the GPSr. We have no cable though right now. What tools out there will help us or even make our GPSr more versatile? Such as software or websites or whatever? Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

fcpsp, I noticed that in this past weeks Best Buy sales paper that they had the Sportrak Map for $199 plus a $50 rebate, bringing it down to $149. I know you already ordered yours, but thought I would just let others know if making a decision. We ended up buying a Garmin Gecko 201 last night. Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

I like the idea of the wooden nickels too. Am thinking of getting some made up. Was thinking mainly for my website(perhaps having campgrounds, in my directory, offer a discount to those that bring one to them), but it would be neat to leave them around in caches. I think it would be neat to collect them. This brings me to the thing of the Geocoins. Those are awesome. I wouldn't want to find one and put it in another cache. I would want to keep it and collect them. Does anyone know where you can get your own made? Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

We bought a Gecko 201 last night and it doesn't have the cable, so I was having to enter them manually. Not sure if yours works like mine, but you have to go an enter the waypoint as a "Mark". Then once you set it all up as a mark, it will consider it a waypoint. Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

Ok, here's a question. Why the heck aren't Garmin and Magellan making the connections USB rather than the old serials? Try to go and buy something now for your computer and good luck on finding it by serial port and not USB. You would think they would at least offer a variance. Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

Wel lthe Gecko will do us fine for right now. Like I said, I will give this to my son or my wife can carry it with her if she wants later on when we get a better one down the road. Unfortunately the Gecko 201 didn't come with a cable. Will have to seek one of those out and probably get it online. Garmins website said something like $40 for it and i'm sure I can get it cheaper somewhere else. Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

We just bought a Gecko 201 tonight. It is small. I was surprised whne I saw it upclose. Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

Thanks for all your help. We went with the Gecko 201 and got it this evening. Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com