gitarmac

tag for later veiwing! I have been suffering with duplicate tracks for my "maps". my attempts to have nice clean tracks by either turning the tracklog off or the gpsr off only results in messier tracks. I am going to look into some of these suggestions.

gps depot has free maps. I have the se us. I tried to post a link but the site seems to be down. They tell how to do it even if you don't have mapsource.

Hi greysquirrel!! I live in Sav GA but have a friend that lives in hendersonville, so we usually try and find some caches when we visit. There are a lot there, from easy parking lot grabs, to ones at parks that take a longer hike to find! I love it there and envy you for living there! We will be visiting hot springs in a few weeks. I have a travel bug I need to drop off so I'm going to do that. Just sayin' hi!

I almost purchased some maps but was shown the free map solution at gpsdepot.com. I have three loaded, the SE one, the GA one and the NC one! The se one seems to be the best for now, it has legiable street names and stuff. I think the others will be good when I go to the mountains. It's pretty neat that I can just choose between them on whim!

awesome links! Thanks for posting!

I like to use gpsvisualizer.com to overlay my tracks and stuff. here is the link. You can make a file with all your caches then upload it on that site, it will make a "map" for you. You can choose between several types of maps.

I have a factory refurbished vistahcx that I really love. Also have the venture which is less expensive and very useable. YOu can't put large maps on it, mine has no maps at all. I just put the free gpsdepot maps on my vista and love it! Be aware that trip meters, all of them, are prone to inaccuracies. I read where people get really discouraged with a particular model, yet don't understand how to be aware of and get around those shortcomings. Whatever model you decide - you can save money if you find a factory refurbished model. They come just like new - you couldn't tell the differance if you didn't know.

I have read threads from folks that have both succeded and failed. Maybe they can chime in here. I just went with the 2 gig for mine. I put the gpsdept southeastern united states on it and still have plenty of room.

I also have done this and wondered how to fix it!

That's how I've been doing it too. I have a "master file" of all waypoints. Plus other more specialized ones, geocaches, hunting, parks, ect.

I set out on a hike with both my gps's and experiemented with differant settings. To my surprize my venture, which has always given consistant milage for this hike, experianced a blip or something and added a half a mile or so, and said max speed was 80! Right before that the units were about identical. On most tests the vista gave longer odometer readings. I'm not going to let this bother me though, it seems to be one of those things ya just gotta know about. That's why I am constantly trying out my units. In spite of the innaccurate odometer readings, my gps's have never failed to get me back. Or away. Now I have the free topo map on the vista so that's pretty cool. I can't wait till we go to the mountains, COUNTOUR LINES! OH YEAH!

I just put free maps on my vistahcx and they work great!

I found a whole southeast one at gpsdepot.com!! It took over an hour to make the file and put it on my gps but it works great!

I got a free one from gpsdepot.com!!!! It's pretty awesome! It's the whole southeast.

Thanks for the info! I made maqsource update cause it said I should, then went in and figured out the map tool thing. Oddly, I could go into unlock maps, it said I didnt' need to. I better save that file, it took awhile for all this to happen. I havn't found the SC map yet but apparently the part of SC I go to is overlapped by the GA map.

Here is a screenshot from mapsource. Am I missing a part of the program? It won't run unlock wizard, it says I need to "reinstall the software". I already have reinstalled it a million times trying to add various gps's, and the maps aren't locked so I must be missing something.

Where do you find these "tiles"? I cannot select maps to download, I can go to the upper left and see the maps, and open them, and send them to device. Is there another way to do it? BTW, I have read this thread and decided to put the GA and NC maps on my vista. I would like SC maps to. First I would like to get these to work though.

Perhaps because Southeast is 24k data while Topo USA is 100k data...high resolution data equals higher price. It's the southeast one that's more expensive! But free sounds good, I'll try that first!

Wow cool! There are a lot of programs out there but using them all together to perform a certain task isn't as easy as you would think.

mapsource topo US, or just the southeast region. The "smaller" one is more expensive, why is that? I'm looking at what is offered at amazon, if that matters.

I just checked and the record method on both of them was "auto". The venture has always given pretty much the same distance around my block, or to my stands, and so does the vista, but the vista gives longer distances. I think it has to do with the unit thinking you are moving when standing still, the vista is kind of bad about that. When I first got it it wandered A LOT!! I did the software updates (which you think would have been checked, since it was "factory refurbished" ) and a hard reset and it went back to reasonable levels. I will experiment with those differant settings, maybe change them to "distance" and see what happens. I still like them both though. I don't have any maps yet, I will probably really appreciate the differance then. I'm on the flat coast though, I wonder if the topo map will be useful at a flat swampy hunt club. The printed ones are all but useless. I make "maps" from satilite images. We go to the mountains sometimes though, I'll bet it would be fun there.

I have both of the track settings set to "fewer". I am not sure about these other settings, what I have compared are the same. I'll check when I get home and report back!

I have both a venture and vista. The venture worked great for me but I wanted more tracks, that's why I considered the vista. I like the compass mostly for the fact that I can stop and show people the map page and there doesn't seem to be as much jumping around. It's easy enough to pin a compass on the gps lanyard though, I hang one around my neck much of the time. I do it so in case my gps fails, I can go in one direction till I hit a known road or trail. You might want to consider a factory refurbished model of whatever you decide on. They are a lot cheaper, come in a shiny new box with a shiny new warrenty. I would not have known my vista was "used" except for they told me. It's not like new ones have that great of a success rate to be honest. At least customer service is good, so you may as well go cheap.

My vista give longer distances than my venture, both are hc. The vista will say I am moving when I am really still for longer than the venture. I made sure my settings were the same tonight and walked around my block with my doggies. The block is about .90 miles long according to my car. I get about that when my venture is on my bicycle. I noticed at the hunt club the distance to my stand was longer with the vista but I can't say for sure how much. So tonight around my block I got 1.02 miles for the vista, and 0.96 from the venture. The doggies like to sniff and stuff so I know that's going to throw it off, and even more for the vista. But what I was not expecting was the track to be longer as well. I have the trackpoints set the same and would not think time would be a factor in that. There was a .05 mile differance. Has anyone else ever compared differant units? How much variance would you consider acceptable, I guess any varience means one is more "accurate" than the other if the differance is always on the same side. I'm going to try it in a car, when I'm moving at a better pace. At the hunt club I am not stopping when I track these distances, which seems to imply one of them is more "off". Just wonderin'.

I never play the games but I have noticed some flickering. There was a thread explaining that this was some kind of normal artifact from adjusting brightness but I don't know. Hasn't gotten any worse though. My venture has a bug in that I can turn it on, tell it gps off (when I am in my room and don't need it on), but cannot turn it back on from the menu - or it will lock up and I will have to resort to taking the batteries out. I will try and reproduce the problem the next time I turn my vista on. I feel sorry for people that do not utilize the interweb for information, I wonder how many people are trying and failing, to use buggy and malfunctioning units. Seems like it's impossible to get a good one the first try out.