maurycy

Well, the basemap loaded in Triton is useless. You might want to go to tritonforum.com and search the posts. There is link to more detailed basemap. It will give you more roads and POIs. It is also free. Now, with the waypoint I know that it might sound silly, but make sure you entered the coordinates correctly. I would also recommend to load the GPX file from VantagePoint instead of inputing it directly.

Well, I found only 5 because a lot of them were in the woods where you would have to hike. Also I have brought binoculars instead of the camera but it was well worth it. View of the Hudson River is great. I think my helmet is ok. I just had to adjust it in the back (which I did not know is adjustable). It fits better now. It is also Giro (but I do not know the model).

Just came back. It was a nice trip. I have actually started a little north than planned (Piermont not Tallman Park) and went a little further. Total 26 miles, 7.5 hours of biking/geocaching/sightseeing. The trail by the river is a great scenic road. I just do not like riding wearing helmet. It gives me headache :-)

Biking and geocaching is fun. You can't get to all caches on a bike but there are a lot of easier ones in public parks. Bike is also a good excuse if you need to look for the cache. I am just pretending that there is something wrong with my bike chain. It worked well last time where I was looking for a cache almost in the middle of an intersection with cars stopped at the red light just few feet from the spot.

You can get basic refurbished TomTom One or Garmin (forgot the model) from Buy.com for $100. There are sometimes deals for noname brands for $80 or so, but I would go for the major players.

I have CacheMate loaded onto my Palm TX with about 2700 caches. It takes about 30-45 seconds to search/sort thru the results if I select "Find nearby" caches based on GPS coordinates. Other than that, it is fast. So I guess the PDA processor plays big role here.

You can get basic TomTom One (refurbished) from Buy.com for $100 and used eTrex (yellow) for $50 here in the garage sale section. You can even get old GPSr from Craigslist for $25. I think getting two receivers is better because it will not compromise geocaching or driving navigation. Navigation unit will have streets loaded in and for geocaching you do not really need anything else than arrow pointing you in the right direction.

Pocket Query is a feature for premium members that allows you to pull multiple geocaches from the site based on certain criteria. LOC file is simple file with coordinates only (I think). GPX file (also premium members only feature) has all the cache information in it (description, hints, logs, etc). Depending if you are premium user or not, you would either load LOC or GPX file into your GPSr and when you are out in the field, you select this cache and tell your GPSr to lead you to it.

Tomorrow, I am going for another bike trip. This one starts in Tallman Mountain Park in upstate NY and goes thru Piermont, Nyack to Rockland Lake (and back). Most of the trip is by the Hudson River but there are going to be two or three steep hills. Plenty of caches along the route. Here is link to the GPX file with route. Inviting anybody who would like to join me. I know it is a short notice, but I wasn't sure what the weather is going to be like. I am going to be on my mountain bike and it is going to be recreational trip not a race. One thing to remember is that you need helmet in NY state if you are riding bike.

Posted twice.

I will reply here so others can benefit. If you have Palm, then you need two pieces of software: CMConverter (free) that will take GPX files and convert them to PDB file. CacheMate to read the PDB file and store it in its own database. The process is fairly simple. Download GPX from geocaching.com site (either individual file or thru PQ). Open CMConverter and drag GPX file into the window. Highlight the file and click Save icon. Click OK couple of times and then synchronize your Palm. Once synchronization is done, open CacheMate and it will automatically ask you in which database you want to store your new data. That's all. It is not as complicated as it sounds.

Check your local Craigslist. You can get older receivers for $25. The sensitivity and startup times are not going to be great, but they will get to near the cache.

Start with caches with 1/1 (difficulty/terrain). Once you get the idea on how they are hidden, what to look for, move to next difficulty level. That's what I did and so far I am not giving up even I had 4 DNFs out of 30 caches.

When you select Menu/GoTo and choose Geocache from the menu, you will get list of all nearby geocaches. Pick the one you found and highlight the icon to the left of the cache name. Click select and on the next screen bo down once and once to the left to highlight the icon (box). When it is highlighted, click select and pick a new icon.

There is no way to mark cache as found (yet). What I do (and most of Triton users) is, I change the cache's icon to the frog picture. This way I have boxes for new caches and frogs for found ones.

Did you try to just format it on the PC thru card reader (if you have one)?

Well, my T200 does not have SD card slot so I can't really help you there. One thing you could do is to make sure you have latest firmware. You can update Triton thru VantagePoint software. I think card should be formatted with FAT32 file system.

You can check www.tritonforum.com for help. There are a lot of helpful users there who might have answers to some of your questions. I also have T200 but I live in US.

I have Triton 200. It is very nice unit and I like it a lot. You do need to go thru some hassles to get it setup properly but so far it has been working great. You will find a lot of people complaining about Triton series but from my experience if you have the latest firmware and learn how to use the menu, the GPSr will work great. There are some features that are still disabled and will appear in the next firmware update(s). Sensitivity is great. The only time GPSr lost the signal it was under highway overpass. Trees are no match for it. Menu is fairly easy to understand. Buttons are one of the things I complain about. It hurts fingers to press them but I guess that's what you pay if you want the receiver to be waterproof. I have invested also in bicycle mount so I use the Triton for geocaching and biking. There is no easy way to switch from route to geocache and back though. I have Mapsend Topo USA version 4.2 that I use to load detail maps onto the GPSr. It is not a 1-2-3 process but once you get a hold of all the conversion software needed, it takes about 5-10 minutes to create detailed map. Good luck with geocaching.

I agree with your view on on-line logs. There is no excuse to write just TFTH. We spend more time uploading GPX files, making maps, etc. Extra 5 minutes in the front of computer will not harm anyone. I think though that majority of this discussion is about cache logs (paper). I have not placed a cache yet (thinking of doing so in a nearby park) but I wouldn't be offended if I did so and all I got was a date, name and smiley. At least I know that people are spending time outdoors looking for my cache instead of shopping at the mall

One thing to keep in mind that worldwide base map will not be very detailed. You still will have to load detailed maps. I have Magellan Triton 200 which has worldwide base map. It includes major roads (interstate highways, etc) and it is pretty much useless (the base map, not the GPSr).

Maybe I started geocaching late but I haven't seen any fancy log entries. Maybe it is due to the fact that most of the caches I attempted are in public parks here in NJ where there are a lot of muggles. If I were out in the wilderness, I probably would sit down, go thru the contents, write nice log, enjoy view, etc. But in reality, I have to either pretend I am fixing my bike, taking leak or skipping the cache until the area clears a bit. I guess for me making sure I am not seen and that the cache stays undiscovered by muggles for other to enjoy is more valuable than fancy log entry. On the other hand, why did we come up with all the abbreviations if so much people are complaining about them? I am writing this post and on the left side there are three rows of smilies. Should I use them or not because I might offend somebody that is expecting "very funny post" instead of :-)

I think you posted in the wrong forum. Anyway, do you need the Palm to work as GPS too? I have Palm TX that together with bluetooth GPS I use for geocaching. If you do not need GPS, then any Palm will be good to go paperless. You can get older 505/515 models on Ebay or any newer Palms.

To whoever is not satisfied with short logs or abbreviations: Just post in the cache description that cache cannot be claimed with boring or two letter log. Isn't that simple? There are caches where you have to send owner a picture or solve a riddle to claim the cache. So if you think that your log should have at least 5 lines of text, make it a requirement. What's the big deal?

Wow, this sounds like fun. Unfortunately, it is on the other side of PA for me :-( I am doing another bike/geocaching tour this Saturday. This time it is going to be along Delaware-Raritan Canal in NJ. Approx 34 miles of flat terrain. Only about 5 caches that I try to find but the scenery is nice. Next week if the weather is nice, I am going to Cape Cod (strictly biking and maybe a cache here and there) and in two weeks Piermont-Nyack bike/geocaching trip. Anybody interested? :-)