BikeBill

Yogazoo, I love your new concept GPSr. Add stability to the 64's attributes of reception and accuracy. The 600 has too many freeze-up issues (which I keep hoping will be resolved by a firmware upgrade). Lets see, is the new one a GPSMap 600? An Oregon 664?

Ha! I thought, "That looks like Kramer!". Then I looked up H. E. Pennypacker.

I found three on Sunday. At the first I wandered around a bit (trees) but then the 64s found it within 5 feet (that particular CO generally has good coords). The next one was a LPC and the 64s took me right to it while still in the car. The last one had the hide off by about a 15 feet, but who knows whether that was me or the hider. Unlike my 600, no freeze-ups!

Red90 is correct. When Grayhawk asked about 'attributes' I was just thinking of cache details. If you mean attributes like poison plants, night caching allowed, etc., then the answer is no.

Interesting history! I'd never heard of these. It looks like Interstate 80 roughly follows the route. I wonder if there's a list of the individual arrow locations somewhere. Most of the shacks and towers are probably long gone but there's a good chance that a lot of the concrete arrows remain. They'd be hard to remove. Edit: I found a more comprehensive link: http://sometimes-interesting.com/2013/12/04/concrete-arrows-and-the-u-s-airmail-beacon-system/ Apparently, many of the arrows were destroyed during WWII as the government was concerned that they could be used as a navigation aide by enemy aircraft. Also, the East/West transcontinental route was not the only airmail route that used the arrows.

Ye, it's a paperless caching unit. It gives the recent logs, description, hint, etc. I think it gives all the same information that the 600 does.

I don't use it for driving and probably never will, but I think it's a beeper.

More than you ever want to know about the SEPTA R8 Newtown/Fox Chase rail line: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Chase_Line FWIW, SEPTA is a government agency, not private. In the part of the Fox Chase railway that's been converted to trails, SEPTA considers this to be 'Rail banking' which keeps the ROW active in case SEPTA would want to lay track sometime in the future. Zones 4 and 5 are the sections of dormant track where I mentioned that 16 caches reside. There are more caches in other zones.

Yes, you can use the 64s one-handed and the button pushes are easy and responsive. I got one of these cases (mostly for protection when the unit's banging around in the car) and the buttons even work well through the plastic cover. http://www.amazon.com/Garmin-010-11526-00-Slip-Case-GPSMAP/dp/B003TZBE94/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1419181371&sr=8-1&keywords=garmin+62+case The case description says it's for the 62 series but the exterior of the 64x seems to be identical and it works fine. The only problem I had with the buttons on my similar 60CSx is that the letters/numbers wear off of them over time.

I was at a Harbor Freight the other day and they had a big pile of their plastic ammo boxes for about $5. http://www.harborfreight.com/ammo-box-61451.html I looked at them closely, and though they had a seal in the lid, it looked like it didn't compress well on the hinge end. So I pulled a piece of paper out of my pocket, closed the lid on it toward the hinge and pulled. It pulled out with no resistance, telling me the lid seal wasn't contacting the box. Unless you would be placing one of these in a protected environment, I wouldn't use them. On the other hand, I have a 50 cal metal ammo can next to a stream that floods with some regularity. I secured it to a tree with a sturdy rope. It had survived several serious floods without even a drop of water getting in.

<<I wonder why Garmin would put orange on the 64s but just put gray on the 64st?>> Just a styling thing, I guess. The 62s sports the same (or similar) color.

<<So it's harder to lock the SD card holder when you had WAAS enabled?>> No, it locks just fine, but the added circuitry pressure from WAAS blows the lock open. I thought everyone knew that. You need circuitry pressure-proof blue tape to hold the lock in place.

Its really somewhat close as far as brightness outside. Below are two pictures of both GPSr's. It's a cloudy day but I had to get under the shade of the porch to cut down on glare. The light is coming from the left. The first picture is with the backlights off, the second with the backlights all the way up. The difference is even less when looking at the units in person as I couldn't get optimum viewing angle of both units at one time with the camera. But inside in low light, the 600 is definitely a bit brighter display with the backlight cranked up. Another difference is in the superior color of the Oregon 600. If you can zoom in, you may be able to see jaggies on the map lines of the 64s BUT it turns out I had different maps in the two units. I put the Garmin 24K Topo map in the 64s and the jaggies went away. On the other hand, the 64s pans and zooms faster than the 600. It also and seem to be more accurate and picks up more satellites (and hasn't crashed yet - but I haven't used it much).

<<I'm 6'3", albino looking with a bright orange receding hairline and a huge belly. Ruggedly handsome. >> If I see you dancing around like that in front of my house, I'm calling the police, too!! I checked with a friend who does more caching than I do, and he concurs, that there are no posted signs on the dormant RR. On top of that, a portion of the R8 has been turned into a section of the Pennypack Trail, with the tracks removed. Montgomery County leased the section from SEPTA for $1 in 2008. So I'm not advocating trespassing, but it seems SEPTA doesn't much care and this might be more a case of cranky/paranoid/overly concerned homeowners. We Geocache all the time in parking lots which are technically private property, too, but if not posted are considered acceptable. wmpastor said: <<So we're concluding that since there is not and cannot be any train traffic there now, the "Frisbee rule" applies, correct? >> I gotta ask - what's the "Frisbee Rule"?

<<There is no signage indicating that you cannot walk there, only signage warning against dumping. >> A good point. I've found most of the caches along this section of RR line, and have never seen any signage indicating private property or no trespassing. If SEPTA considers the ROW to be private property, they are doing little or nothing to communicate that to the public.

<<...the odometer still racks up quite a bit of distance when stationary.>> For the record, that's also a major complaint about the Oregon 6xx. I took the new 64s out today to locate and repair a couple of my own caches. Both were back in the woods and the 64s took me right to them. The Oregon tends to make me walk past the cache and then narrow things down and have make me walk back.

I'm familiar with the cache the CO is referring to, as I've found it. Actually, there is not really a cache there, but a clue to another stage. It's about 100 feet back from the street and 4WF is correct in that you have to walk over yard waste that the neighbors have dumped on the tracks. I didn't have any trouble when I was there. This SEPTA RR (R8, Newtown-Fox Chase line in the Philly suburbs) hasn't been active since the '80's and there has been talk of turning it to a Rails to Trails, but mostly it's just overgrown and the tracks are paved over where they intersect roads. I think that this was a case of over-concerned neighbors but I also agree that using the RR right-of-way for caches is a gray area. That being said, I can see nothing wrong with using the RR for caches. I did a quick count and found at least 16 caches on this RR line. I also talked to the reviewer and he isn't aware of any policy and allows caches on abandoned lines. But I agree with 4WF that getting accosted by the local police is an uncomfortable experience. 4WF: Did the LEO's know what Geocaching is? Did the neighbors seem to think the RR was their property?

Pacific NW: Have you had any trouble with the compass on the 64s going out of calibration? I've heard this can be a problem but the 600 does that too, but only occasionally.

After fiddling with the 64s some more, I'm finding it's programing (menus and all) are very similar to the Oregon 600, so it's easier for me to figure out than if I'd just moved up from the 60CSx. Though the 64s looks similar to my older 60CSx, and they both have the same mediocre display, the two units don't work at all the same. I was disappointed with the 64s's 'jaggies' on map lines at first. But then I replaced the Garmin Basemap with some free Topo maps (on an SD card) and now it's fine, so the Basemap must be pretty low resolution. The 64s is rocket ship fast on panning and zooming the map compared to the 60CSx. I haven't compared it side by side to the 600, but I know the 600 is also much faster than the 60CSx that I bought in '08. The 64s is getting me 15' accuracy in the ground floor of my two story house and is picking up over a dozen satellites. The 600 has trouble getting much satellite reception at all in the same spot. I'll try to keep you guys updated as to my experience with the 64s as I know at least GrayHawk is interested.

I was reading through these posts and was going to advise what Alligatornz did - use GSAK. I got a new 64s just yesterday and once I updated my GSAK to the latest version had no problems with loading caches. I dumped 1000 on it to start with. Alligatornz: With your cache view problem, go to 'Main Menu' then 'Setup' then 'Map'. Under 'Map' is 'Advanced Map Setup' that includes 'Zoom Levels'. Select 'Geocaches' and set the zoom level to whatever you want. I set mine to 5 miles.

EDIT: I solved the problem of GSAK not listing the 64s. It turns out I had a version of GSAK with a bug that prevented it from upgrading itself to a newer version. I manually downloaded a new version, updated it and now it lets me select the 64s.

Well, so far I can tell you it works. It takes some set-up for caching. It has much more in common with the Oregon 600 than my look-a-like 60CSx as far as it's functions are concerned. For example, it wouldn't show any geocaches unless I would zoom way in. I had to set the zoom levels out to 5 miles to get a healthy number of caches to show up, just like the 600. The 600 has a nicer screen, of course, but the 64s's is plenty bright. I dumped all the preloaded ggz files and loaded my own local caches. I had to tell GSAK that it's an Oregon 600 as the 64s wasn't listed as an option. That worked, though. When I load an individual cache via a Geocaching cache page, it recognizes that it's a 64s just fine. It seems to boot fast. Similar to the 600, you tap the power button to get the screen that shows battery level, backlight brightness, etc. I haven't done ay caching with it yet.

So, I contacted GPS City and they agreed I had cancelled the order (I spoke to a guy named Willy, who said he had been the one I had called before regarding the cancellation). So he said that when the order is delivered to me, to mark it refused and 'return to sender'. Then my credit card will be refunded the $300 when they get the GPS back. I'm glad they acknowledged their error (again - the first error was saying that the 64s was in stock when it wasn't) but it might be a while until I get my $300 back. In the meantime, USPS texted me that the 64s I ordered from Garmin is to be delivered today. AND the mail-maiden came as I was writing this and the 64s is in hand!! Now I have to figure out how this thing works!

This just keeps getting better. Though I called and cancelled my order with GPS City on the 10th and got an email verifying the cancellation the same day, I got another email today saying that my 64s had shipped. I checked my credit card and, of course, they never credited my account for the $299.99 (which they charged at the time I ordered, not when they shipped the unit). I'm glad I used a credit card instead of a debit card as that gives me some more protection. In the meantime, the 64s I ordered from Garmin should come tomorrow, though I can't track it as when DHL handed it off to USPS, the USPS tracking number doesn't work. This is screwed up!

<<Maybe you can tell us (where it ships from) once you have a tracking number. >> And I can! It shipped from Olathe, Kansas (a suburb of Kansas City) at 10:54 PM yesterday. Today it got to the DHL facility in St. Louis, MO., where I suppose it's waiting for a plane ride.