gitarmac

I've just ordered that unit myself! If you mean turn by turn when driving I don't think it does that. Navigational units and handheld gps's have differant purposes. Maybe some of the better ones (handhelds) do but I don't see how they would be any better than the nuvi's, even the lower end ones. Maybe someone else can chime in.

ultralight backpacking is a good websight as well. There is a forum there for making your own gear. The king of lightweight backpacking is ray jardine, who might be a little eccentric, but he still has some darn good ideas. I've had to lighten my pack because of my knees so I got new "big 3's". New light pack (my shasta weighted more than my big 3 does now!), new light tents, and a new light down bag. Now you can get tents and tarps made out of spinnaker and cuban fiber. I just got my oware tarp today, I got mine in silnylon but they are also made of spinnaker and cuban fiber. I try not to take things when I have something else that can perform the same task. no chair, no dish or mug, wear all clothes so I can use a lighter sleeping bag. Of course if you are going where the weather and such is extreme you might have other priorities, like staying alive. Where I go I don't have to plan for that. My knees still are not better so I havn't been able to try out my new lightweight stuff. I am still holding out hope though.

I would have no use at all for all the mapping of the pricier units. I went with the venture cause it seemed to fit my needs (other than an external antenna which I think they should all have). I am hoping that the new technology will solve my problem of holding it, with that high sensitive reciever and all. I am going to try clipping it to my shoulder strap when wearing a pack, or my waistband when not wearing one.

I have quite a collection of headlamps. My first, a petzl duo has been relagated to the utility room as it doesn't have the bells and whistles of the newer ones. Then I got an aurora, and a petzel tikka. I got the tikka first but the button malfunctioned quickly so I got the aurora. Then I moved up to the larger ones. For a long time my favorite was the princton tec corona. It has 8 leds and many differant levels of brightness. I really liked being able to choose between strapping the sun to my forehead or reading in bed. Then I got a PT apex. You can't dim it enough to read in bed but other than that it's the macdaddy of headlamps!! I think the spotlight is 80 lumens!!! The aurora glares when reading in bed and I gave the petzls another chance. I got a zipka plus and liked it so much I got the tikka plus as well. Haven't had any problems with the switches. I like the features of the PT's , like being regulated and waterproof but the smaller petzl has better ergonomics. THere is a little lip, plus it is tiltable and isn't as flat against your head. If you wear glasses this is great because of the greatly reduced glare. I also have a PT quad I got on sale. This is a very nice light and you can use lithiums in it as well. (petzl warns against that) A word about glare: I don't know why manufacturors insist on making the cases of headlamps out of transparent material. The glare these things make is just silly! I got some flat black acrylic paint for models and carefully painted all around the edges of the housing whereever there was glare, practically the whole thing. THis made a world of differance. I have also used electrical tape but the paint is so much more durable and easy. I have at least one headlamp with me at all times, I use them constantly around the house, in additon to outdoor sports. I find that differeant ones fill differeant niches and use them all more or less equally. I just orded a Petzl Tactikka Plus so I could have the option of red when I don't want to blind others. I didn't appreciate this until I got an energizer one from walmart. That one is kind of a cheap piece of crap but I found the red very useful. So there you have it. I need to join a 12 step program for headlamps.

Yeah, I looked for the "contact us" link, but didn't see it. Thanks.

Cards are one of my favorite things to get! I mean the geocaching cards. My avatar is mine, you can't really see the detail. I like the personal ones like you make on the coumputer. I put mine in a small plastc bag and/or laminate them using clear duct tape or lamintion film. I also leave something else. I make macrame jewlrey (they call it hemp jewelry now) and leave that.

. . . but it expired in 2004. When I try to renew my membership I enter my subscription number but is says my membership does not exist. I don't want to re-register if I don't have to. What to do! What to do!

I didn't read the whole thread so I don't know if someone had mentioned muslin bags. I got some cloth bags for making tea at some websight. I hadn't done it yet but I was going to put coffe grounds in the bag for steeping coffee. The bags are made for steeping food so no worries there. The folger singles have instant coffee in them and I can tell. There are some other coffee bags made for one cup coffee makers that taste a lot better.

A subject I know about also! I have had to lighten my pack due to my knees and age and recently purchased two very nice and light 2 person tents. I have the Big Agnes seed house 2, the UL one, a little over 3 pounds. Very very dry and airy. Here is a pic: Another brand you may want to consider are the tarp tents by henry spires. He makes several differant designs, I chose the double rainbow for my needs. I has one pole, and you can use your hiking poles to make "porches" which can still remain open during a light rain. You can also use them to make the tent freestanding. Here is a pic of mine in the yard: Here it is snugged down for bad weather Here is a link for a review of the tarptentdouble rainbow If you go to the homepage of backpackgeartest.org you can look up reviews on all kinds of stuff. The reviews are very extensive and include pics and stuff. There are a lot of light tents to chose from, It's easy to find sub 3 pound ones. I would definatly stay under 4 pounds.

No. He likes it when I come with him instead of just sitting in the car. I guess my problem is I like to go after the easy caches instead of having to fight bugs, vines, and other dirty things. I know all that stuff is geocaching, the fighting of brambles to search forever for a cache, but I like the simpler ones. But maybe I'm just a wussy girl. You must live in my neck of the woods, Savannah GA. I can vouch for the bugs and mud and stuff. The bugs can be especially bad. When the weahter is the nicest the bugs are the worse. Later on when it's hot the bugs won't matter, it will be to miserable even for them. I hike and backpack and preparing for the conditions makes it a lot more enjoyable. I have lightwt outdoor gear that makes rain pretty much a non-issue. I don't like bugs and sun so I always wear a wide brim hat and light long sleeved clothing sometimes. I would rather be somewhere else but since I live here I try to make the best of it.

When I used to use my older garmin legend I held it in my had so it the most exposure to the sky. It seemed to be the only way to get it to work. Now that I am getting a venture with the high sensitivy reciever I don't think I will have these problems. Can I use the garmin cover, the one that has the see through panel, like a phone case? I want to be able to clip it to my belt or shoulder strap and it still get reception. I have a hard case when I need sturdier protection but I see niteyez has a "backbone" style one that looks like it would be smaller and more convienient that the one I have. I plan on using it on dayhikes as well and am thinking of different ways to carry it. I don't see why they all can't have accessory external antennas, like a headphone plug. That would be neat, I could put in on my hat and my unit in my pocket.

Actually I meant to say venture in the above post. I have an older legend, hopefully this one will work better. The venture looks like it's just a little more but has more useful bells and whistles. Looks a lot like the old legend that I have sitting useless in a drawer.

Welp, answered my own question. For a little more I got a legend ,which came with the cord. Yayyy!

. . for 80 bucks at bass pro and I am thinking of getting it. My etrex legend was a big dissapointment, it started turning off inadvertantly, no matter if it were touched or not, and I had some other problems. Actually it was a second unit, I had to send the first one back for some reason and got the legend back. But I liked using it for geocashing hiking (when it would pick up a signal in the trees) hunting and fun. I really loved the user friendly software. Now I have a garmen nuvi for the car that's great. I saw the add for the etrex and figure it's a good time to get one again, with the high sens thing and all. I wouldn't care about the maps as it would be for tracking and marking my own stuff. I do care about being able to hook it up to a computer but the one I use (computer) doesn't have the 9 hole port, but it does have a USB port. Can I use the cable from my old legend? Which cable can I get to hook mine up the the laptop? I see a USB to RS232 cable for over 50 bucks that I can use with the PC interface cable for the 9 pin port for 40 bucks. So that's almost 100 bucks worth of cables bringing my cost to almost 200 bucks, and that's on sale. Is there another model I might should consider that comes with a USB cable? I want to be able to hook it up to the computer because I might want to store waypoints and routes and sometimes I had to go to the garmin site for troubleshooting and software upgrades. One time my legend would not find satalights so I updated it at the website and it worked fine after that, well until it shut itself off for no reason. I don't want to spend a lot of money for features I will not need, I can look at the nuvi if I want a map. I also don't want to spend a lot of money on what so far has been disapointing technology. But If I can get a different model for the price of the entry level one with cords that might be better. Of course the other option is doing without computer access. For 79.95 that might be the best option of all.

I have a nite eyes generic one that works great. I cut off the flap so the top of the gps is exposed. There are 2 thin elastic loops and it fits snug. I put in on my shoulder strap, the loop on the case unbuckles and is firm so it is easy to put on and stays stable. It seems to keep the statelite very well.

I have the petzel led duo and it seems to work very well although I don't really use it much as it's rather large and most of the time I like my smaller ones. The duo seems to be much like the myo, I think the myo may be a little better designed and a little cheaper than the one I have.

Thanks!

I wonder if it is related to my recent sending in of my rino 110? I went to the link out of curiosity to see what it fixed.

When I am naming my waypoints I would like to use the "&" symbol but it is grayed out, as is the shift key which I suspect I need to select. What's up with this? It would seem like I could select shift, then select the grayed out symbols. There aren't many of them, just that & and some punctuation.

I had a bad case of chiggers and seed ticks last week, I had only limited success with my own advice (lanacain sunburn gel)!! It helped somewhat, especially at night when I was trying to sleep. I'm going to try that lice shampoo next! I shower vigourously after a trip to the woods and in spite of that I still found live seed ticks on me after two days!!! They are very small and look like a tiny freckle or something. It really grossed me out. I'm going to get that shampoo and bathe with it after an outing. A friend of mine frequently goes with me caching but always waits from a safe distance.

Oh I forgot, it gets even better - I have the video, it was very helpful.

Yours was cheaper than mine, I have a spare beltclip, instruction manual and pc cable if you want it. I had a few issues with the radio on some channels and shipped it back to garmin with the suggestion that I would like a non-radio venture if they didn't feel like fixing it. Well they sent me the venture and I love it but the rinos have a few cool features that the dedicated gps's don't have so now I wished I kept my mouth shut. It's a great unit, you will want to do the software update and it's easy to loose that screw that keeps the beltclip on, but like I said, I have spares so e-mail me when you get your unit if you are interested, I have no use for them now. mcostan@comcast.net

I was wondering about ammo box alternatives after reading about false bomb scares and someone suggested waterproof containers for diving. I hadn't looked at them yet but I'll bet they would work good.

I know it's always "finding satellites" but Sometimes it takes a long time to give me the "ready to navigate" message, even though it looks like it's found plenty of satellites. It seems to happen more if I've used it a few times with gps off, like when I'm indoors putting in waypoints or fiddling with my options. Yesterday it took at least 3 or 4 minutes before it said ready to navigate, but then later that night it only took a few seconds. The think that puzzels me is I can see lots of satelittes on the screen but until it says ready to navigate I have to stand there and wait.

Whenever I turn on my garmin venture it always takes quite awhile to stop searching for satellites and start navigating. when I watch the page it will have found 4 or more satellites with nice big bars but it still keeps searching. Once it has found the satellites it seems to keep them pretty good. I'm wondering why it takes so long. Is there a default time limit it searches for? Also if I have turned it on but am using it with gps off then turn gps on it will immediatly give me a "weak satlillite" message but when I tell it to continue search or restart it readilly aquires them.