Woodstramp

here in colorado it can be hit or miss w/ the mountains and trying to get a signal but i do get signals in some weird areas and get none in unobstructed areas. That's sounds familiar. The 2000 I sent to Lil Bro in Wyoming does the same thing. He told me that he had to leave it out on the hood of his car all night to get a sat lock. There are no trees where he lives. I would have thought his area would've been perfect for that old unit.

jmythng, The Magellan 2000 was my intro to GPSing. Bought it for cheap off a guy at work. It was enough to set the GPS hook. I now have a Magellan Explorist 400. I sent the 2000 to my brother in WY to try and get him hooked. That unit is accurate for an old unit(less sats and no WAAS), but it's not very sensitive. If I was going to use it travelling I had to leave it on the dashboard or hang it out the window to get tracking locks. If driving or walking through timber it would not find sats at all. If it was not not intialized before starting the trip it wouldn't lock for several miles. It seems to work much better in travelling in a car than on foot. Here in heavy timbered Alabama I could only get locks in the woods by going to clearcut hills. It would work, just real frustrating compared to the newer unit I have now. I wasn't into caching yet when I had the 2000, but I think you would do much better with one of these newer sensitive units they make now. Any of the lower priced Garmins or Magellans would be a major improvement for caching. I've seen Gamin Gekos NIB for $50 on Ebay. My Explorist was only $80 from Ebay. New in box, shipping included. ( It didn't have WAAS accuracy when new because of that Magellan/WAAS deal, but thanks to the folks here I was able to fix that.) This thing tracks sats in my shirt pocket in heavy timber, is mapping and memory expandable. Your 2000 will find stuff, but it will be real challenging. Good luck.

Well, got a few minutes to go play in the yard. Used the method you posted here. Worked like a charm using the GPS projection function. Thing is it never occured to me that you could use a clear Sliva map compass right on the GPS's screen (like a map. Dummie me. Used the Silva to project bearings too. Just scale projection points and start points so all are visible on the LCD at the same time. Using projection distances of 500' I was able to get within 15 ' of the projected object. Cool. Thanks all.

You made me spit tea on my monitor. The metric system IS more gooder than the old system we use here in the States. The main reason we resist this truly splendid method is because it was invented by the French. (What? You know that's true. Admit it.)

I'll print your post out and give it a try at next opportunity. Wife just got out of hospital... might be a few days. Thanks.

Thanks for the link. If I understand what was going on there at that thread they were using a projection function on the GPS for a distant cache. What I would like to do is simular, but I' assuming they gave projected info for others to follow. What I'd like to is.....well I'll just give a paractical example... I'm out hunting on a ridge. Great view, beatiful day,etc. Drought in the SE these last two years has dried up local horse hay supplies to nothing. We're low at the house. I'm glassing for squirrel when down in valley I spot a very large barn packed with hay.... I'd like to check with that guy later to see if he'd like to sell a few bales. His barn is in a large , flat wooded area. Compass sighting says 46 degrees and what reckons to be a mile or two away. I've got a compass and my (non-Topo'd) GPS is set to read magnetic. I can't really make out roads and such because of the cover. How do I way mark his place as a waypoint so I can drive up later to have a chat?

Thanks for the link. I was thinking that they must've figured how to automatically fix that.

Didn't know exactly where a question like this would fit in the forums, but because you Benchmarker folks seem to be more technically oriented toward standards of benchmarking, surveying,maps and such I decided this would be the one to post it in. Moderators feel free to move it if need be. I remember the basics of triangulation using a compass and map from the scouts a zillian years ago. I've never really needed or used a topo to navigate the places I like to go to. Mainly just a compass....head in and then 180 back. Here in Bama things are not really spacious or remote enough to really need classic orienteering stuff. At least for me. (Now watch me get lost for the first time. ) What I'm trying to figure out is how to waypoint a distant object using a lensatic typw compass and a GPS (minus a Topo program onboard). I tote a compass in the GPS bag just in case. In standard topo/compass orienteering you can triangulate your unknown position with the map/compass or triangulate the position of distant places if your postion is known. The GPS will show you exactly where you are at any time as long as it's working, but I'd like to figure out how to triangulate something in the distance and store the waymark in the GPS. Say I'm hiking and I see something cool in the distance and would like to store that for a later adventure. Magnetic declination around here is not that big of deal. Just a few degrees......that leads to another question.... If you set your GPS from "True North" to "Magnetic" are they internally programmed to compensate for varying degrees of declination? Like here in the this part of Bama declination adjustments are only a few degrees, but another state it would be off several degrees. Do GPS programmers account for this? I would guess so, but not totally sure. Thanks.

Thanks for the info. I'm not a ham operator so I guess I'll not have a need for that mode. I don't know the difference between a serial port and a USB anyhoo....

My Magellan Explorist 400 can and does transfer files to and from the PC. When you select communications mode in the menu it gives the option for "File Transfer", "NMEA File" and "Power Only" when the USB cable is hooked to the PC. This thing transfers files fine in "File Transfer", so what is "NMEA" mode for? I can find nothing about this in my GPS's help topics or in the software that came with the unit. Thanks.

Letmein, that link doesn't work (at least when I click it).

If in doubt as to whether you're in a hunting area or it's a hunting season, just carry a cheap ($3 around here) blaze orange stocking cap in your pack. If you don't like messin' up your hair a blaze vest can also be had for cheap. These just slip on too. DON"T WEAR WHITE!!! That looks too much like a whitetail's flag. White is bad Joo-joo in hunting woods. About two years ago a hiker bumbled up on my brother while he was hunting a mountain ridge in the Talladega National Forest. The guy had on a white stocking cap. My brother saw/heard the hiker way before the hiker knew little bro was around. The hiker spooked a deer on his approach. The guy was lost. Little Bro was wearing blaze ornge, to boot. Guess the hiker didn't see him because he was in semi-panic mode. He actually jumped when Little Bro asked him if he needed help. Little bro got him strainghtened out direction-wise and advised him to dump the hat.

I had the same problem because I had registered my Explorsit 400 as a NA product. They wouldn't let me download the software either. In one of these threads someone said you could re-register your unit (using same serial number as a EU unit. I had to use another email account to accomplish this. It worked though. Note that I did have to use the serial # on the bottom of the box. The one on the unit's "about" screen was short two digits. (first and last missing---???) The internal serial # is what I originally registered my unit as NA. The box serial was allowed and EU upgrade appoved. This got my unit's WAAS sat's again and the extra screens.

Could it have something to do with the magnetic declination of your area and how your GPS is set up? Don't know for sure, just offering a suggestion.

I don't know if our local rescue folks have GPS stuff or not, but one thing I like to do is log remote places I hunt , fish or hike to on Google Earth. These are marked as pinpoints. This is especially for when I'm out in the sticks solo. I'll tell my family the general area I'll be tramping that day so if I get hurt or whatever and don't come home they could Google Earth those pinpoints and relay the coords to emergency rescue. Cell phones don't work in most the areas I go. Using these coords would drastically scale down the manpower, time and expense of rescue efforts. That is as long as you stay on the scheduled flight path.

Thanks for the help. Got the eu sw. How do I find the basemap file to backup? To do this I had to go into the Windows "My Computer" on the Start tab. When I connect my GPS it shows up as "E" drive. You'll see the contents of your GPS in there ( POI files, Geocache files, etc.. ) If you don't see the basemap file (NA one) in your GPS you'll have to set Windows to see hidden files. When you finally can find it just make a copy on your PC. After the new Euro FW is burned into your Magellan and you'll have to find the Euro basemap file in your GPS and delete it. Then drag in your old NA basemap file in it's place in the GPS. Be aware that this doesn't work on all units. Search the site for WAAS/Magellan threads for more details.

This place is the best Magellan support site in the world. Magellan should take note!

You could also copy SD stored files over to Internal Memory. Particularly those cache files that you are currently interested in at the time. Saves a little time. I do that with POI, route and cache files.

I'm fairly new at CGing too. I also have an Explorist 400 and it works just fine for caching. I use EasyGPS to load mine. I'd have to write down the steps to do it because I've not loaded enough to remember, but it does work. If I get time I'll write a procedure and post it. As far as hand entering a coord, all you have to do is go to your map screen, move the cursor to an area with no points or roads and push mark (to make a new POI) then when you go to save it change the name from POI001 to whatever you with to call it and scroll down and change the coords to whatever you want to enter. When that POI is saved it will automatically go to where the new coords you entered are on the map. That's the way I hand enter them. My explorist worked perfectly fine for caching even before I was able to restore the WAAS to it. (that's a whole other ball of wax--Search for WAAS/Explorist threads in archive.)

Is Waycaching.com one of the perks? If it is, can you get the pocket queries there too?

I noticed that a premium membership gets you a lot of extras, but if you are a Premium member is that for Geochaching.com and Waymarking.com or are these separate fees? Thanks.

Thanks for all the information. I'll print this one for reference. The first site I like because someone I've always admired lays there. I'd like to educate those who know nothing of him about his life with a cache. There are also other historical parcels like Confederate markers and and old stones for cachers to check out. This one is not far from an Interstate highway. The other is just vertical field stones in the woods. It'd be nice to show young'ns who've never seen anything like that before. Some mountain folk are buried there. Basic folks with really basic burial arrangements. There are probably hundreds of these type plots in the south and a lot of folks have never seen one.

I'm a newbie who's found a few GC's. I'm attracted to GCing not because I want to find a jillion of these things, but because of the cool, out of the way places it brings you to. You can tell that a lot of folks here really put a lot of thought into their caches and where they're placed. I would like to plant my first two caches and they just happen to be in graveyards. That may sound like a creepy place for a cache, but cemetaries often have a lot of history in them. One that interests me, is a local, cemetary where one of my heroes is buried. It is has graves from pre-Civil War to the present. The other is an old abandoned "po' folks" cemetary on some state owned land. Rocks for head stones poor. The first question is about the first graveyard. Who "owns" cemetaries? I assume families own plots within, but how do you find out who to get permission from? I'm not real crazy about planting a cache directly on a gravesite, even with the family's permission. I'd be afraid of unintentional damage to the site. Slightly off site would be better,but still close. But still in the cemetary boundary. The second is on a state owned Wildlife Management Area (or state owned/leased public hunting area). Access to this place would be off the beaten track. I.m fairly sure I can get permission to plant one here, but I'd like to gather some history on this site first. Wonder where you'd go to find out who's buried in an unmarked, abandoned graveyard? Any pointers would be apreciated. -Woodstramp

Got to admit it, Walt, your posts are what really ate at me......you were the last straw on the camel's back. Thanks to you and all who helped.