oldskoolboarder

Yeah, I know, Garmin's documentation is pretty sad. I've used Roadtrip before and with summer coming, I'm taking the cobwebs off the Legend Hcx. I noticed that there's a newer program BaseCamp. Assuming I don't use my Legend for street nav, is it better to use Basecamp?

Saw this also. Please report on the paperless aspect. I'll use my Garmin but would like the iPhone to carry the details. I've used Cacheberry and like it, hoping iGeocacher is worth paying $15.

I wanted a relatively small unit and didn't care about the compass. Because this is just for caching, I didn't care about car nav. I use my Blackberry or iPhone 3G for that. I also played w/ the HCx and 60CX and preferred the ergonomics of the Legend. YMMV. It also helped that Amazon had it on sale.

Thanks! I didn't even know you could do that.

I'm driving from the San Francisco area to Santa Barbara on Highway 101. I'd like to make a list of caches to break up the trip w/ the kids. Any suggestions on how to do this? I was doing the brute force method and handpicking caches but there's a 500 limit on screen when scrolling through google maps.

I have an HCX and use it w/ my Macbook. Yes, it's compatible but you'll have to deal w/ some "tricks" to get the maps over. The Garmin maps are still formatted for PCs. Garmin posts tutorials on how to convert these to Mac format. I use Windows XP with Parallels so I used Windows to convert the maps and then brought them into Map Manager on the Mac. You can also use Bobcat which is good enough but not fully featured. But it does work on a Mac and is sufficient to track caches. http://www8.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=3885 You can also MacCaching to transfer caches but IMHO Bobcat is your best option. Then you can at least use the Garmin maps with it. Good luck.

Anyone here try iGeocacher? Seems you have to buy it in order to use it. I was using a Blackberry Curve for a bit and ended up buying Cacheberry. GREAT GREAT paperless caching app, IMHO. Loved how I could sort by those caches that were near me, since the Curve has it's own GPS chipset. I had a 1st gen iPhone and used PQView which is OK. The problem lies when you are deep in the mountains and there's no signal. No signal, no queries, hence my hesitation on iGeocacher. This is why I liked Cacheberry, I could load the GPX files into my memory card very easily. I'm waiting for a similar app on the iPhone 2.0 firmware.

I was a little overzealous with my pocket queries... Loaded a bit too many caches, now I want to remove some. What's the best way to do that?

Great, thanks! That seems to work. Just need to figure the best zoom level for me.

I did a PQ and have a lot of caches stored in my Legend. When I use my Legend just as a street nav, I don't want to see the geocache treasure chests because the screen is littered w/ them. I want to know if there's a way to just disable those icons with out removing the cache coordinates from my GPS.

I found another 4 yesterday. I started doing PQ's for caches w/ difficulty/terrain less than or equal to 2. Also good to start w/ small/large containers vs micro and virtual caches.

Good to know. Won't work for me on 2 counts though. iPhone doesn't sync to notes, yet... And I'm on a Mac so there's no way to take that GSAK note directly into iTunes Mac. I assume I could use that text file and open it in OSX to move it. I do use parallels for map installations but trying to see how much i can live with on a Mac. Trying Bobcat now.

yes, i did a full iphone search and all I found was a post on screen protectors.

Newbie... First time we went out, I manually chose easy caches and copy/pasted the details/hints in an email and sent it to my Yahoo account. Then made sure my iPhone had those emails to have the data in hand. Nice but a bit of work to get it going. Now, I've paid for Premium membership. I'm going to create a PQ of local, easy caches and get those into Bobcat (or at least try). I saw a program PQView so I can also view that PQ on my iPhone. However, it's browser based so it needs a connection to run Safari. Sometimes doesn't work out if I'm out in the mountains. I've seen people use their iPod address books, etc. Anyone have an easier suggestion?

Ah, so if I'm looking for easy caches near my house and I determine the easy terrain/difficulty, cache size, and location radius. Then rather than hand picking each one (which I do now), I can batch them. Right?

Link doesn't work.

I looked on geocaching.com and searched here. I've got the premium membership for the .GPX files. I notice mentions of Pocket Queries and tried to understand what is said on the site. But it's not getting into my thick skull... Is there a better description someone can point me to? Thanks.

I had some custom maps I was using on a PC that were downloaded already to my Legend HCX. I used MapConverter to convert some maps. It created a .TGZ file. In OSX, I uncompressed it to a .gmapi file. How do I get those maps into Bobcat? I tried Import but it doesn't highlight .IMG (not surprising), .TGZ or .GMAPI. It only wants .GPX or .GDB. I even tried to drag the maps but no go. UPDATE: NEVERMIND. I ran MapManager. All maps are in Bobcat.

I was hoping Bobcat would read the maps from the Legend. That way I would download maps on a PC and upload on a Mac, thereby eliminating the need for map conversion. Oh well, Bobcat doesn't do that...

I was hoping Bobcat would read the maps from the Legend. That way I would download maps on a PC and upload on a Mac, thereby eliminating the need for map conversion. Oh well, Bobcat doesn't do that...

Ugh. I didn't realize that I still had to convert PC maps to OSX.

Has anyone seen a download link? I didn't even know about Bobcat until I saw it at MacWorld today. The demo person said it was on Garmin's site today.

Much better today. We chose the "easy" ones near our house, more urban. Our 5 yr old found the first one and she was psyched. Both the wife and I said, this is what it should feel like to do this. Went to the 2nd one and found it. But then we went 0 for 2 on the next 2. Oh well, we'll go back and try those again when the leaves clear up.

Yeah, we may try tomorrow with more "urban" caches. Sad thing was that most of these weren't micro caches. Most of were medium/small tupperware containers which I was shocked we couldn't find. We did do a bigger area search as I know GPS coordinates aren't accurate. I do understand that the originator may have also had an inaccurate GPS. Bummer but we won't give up. It was still kinda fun "thinking" we could find it...

My wife and I went out to one of the local trails with a bunch of cache locations in hand. We went 0 for 5. Not sure if it's the rain that made them difficult or the fact that we were spooked by all the poison oak. Oh well, we'll try again.