Karma Hunter

We have a 1998 Honda CRV and love it. All wheel drive. Handles like a car. Better visibility than Subarus, and better quality in my opinion. My last Honda went over 210,000 miles, and this one is at 112,00 with no repairs at all, which is better than the many friends we have with Outbacks who've started having problems at a little over 100k. The CRV gets 25mpg on the highway. A friend has a Jetta TDI (diesel). He gets over 50mpg (!) and it's also pretty zippy. He's had to do some maintenance. VW quality seems a little below Subaru, but Jettas are definitely sexier. Take your GPS with you when you test drive. Most cars have no reception trouble, but I rode in a Saturn Vue that got no reception at all.

That was our solution too. It worked. Easy to forget though.

We live in a humid location, but are vacationing in the Nevada desert. Our Meridian Platinum has developed a problem since we got here. When the unit is passed from one person to another, it often shuts off spontaneously. As best we can tell the dry environment pretty much guarantees a static shock when two people touch each other. When the GPSR is in between it gets the shock. I vaguely remember reading something about Meridians and static electricitiy a while ago, but can't find it now. Anyone else have the spontaneous shut down problem, or know of a solution?

My parents live in the Nevada desert. They like our Sportrak Map and Meridian Platinum, but are interested in a color screen. The problem is that they'll be in very bright direct sunlight pretty much all the time. Does any one have experience with a GPSr with color screen and mapping capability that works well in bright sun? Info on which models to avoid would be helpful too. Thanks!

You may have just opened a can of worms. There is a thread here that discusses the Magellan lag problem (which some call the slingshot effect), and some ways of coping with it. Consensus seems to be that it is a problem with Magellan's internal algorithms. Garmins do not suffer from it. The trade off, some would argue, is that the Magellans get better reception, and hold lock better, especially under trees and in vehicles. We chose the Magellans for the improved reception (especially for the price) in our heavily wooded area, and we work around the slingshot effect. The lag is annoying on occassion, but not as annoying as not being able to get a signal at all. I'm sure other folks have made the decision differently.

I read that the ST Map isn't supposed to have sufficient memory to run DirectRoute, but that it may be possible with a very small map area. Are you indicating that you've gotten it to work?

I'm closing this topic because this one is doing a better job on the same subject. Thanks.

I agree with what everyone here has said, in particular those Cheeseheads. It seems that there is a spectrum of possibilities in logging that ranges from "truth" (factual report of the outcome, regardless of intentions or circumstances) to "false" (the biggest example would be logging false finds without ever leaving your house). I guess it's up to eveyone to decide where on the spectrum they want to be. A topic for a whole separate thread might be why they choose it. And as for that micro stuck in ice, it seems that by seeing and touching it you did "find" it, even though you didn't sign the logbook. Though I'm sure someone will argue otherwise and post a link to a cache that's easy to see and touch, but intentionally tricky to open. To me that seems different, although I know it's a slippery slope. In a similar situation, we found a cache, took pictures, and looked all around inside it but couldn't find the log book so we didn't sign. A few days later someone else found it, and explained that the log was there but on the back of an instruction sheet inside the cache, and thus not very noticeable. We chose to call it a find, as we had clearly "found" the cache, despite missing the log inside. Probably sounds fine to most folks until I mention that it was also a FTF. Not that other cachers hadn't had their chance. The cache had been placed several weeks before (not many cachers out in the boonies), and we weren't looking for an FTF, just somewhere to go. The FTF was unintentional, but because of it the person who logged after us probably wondered whether ours should really be considered a find.

Very cool idea! Just be sure to mention how easy it is to get lost, so that folks are sure to turn on the tracks on their GPSr so they can backtrack if necessary. Have fun!

My wife was excited about geocaching, but I thought it sounded silly and didn't go with her for several months. If we hadn't found any caches the first three times I went with her there would not have been a fourth. If you really want her to enjoy it, the suggestions above are good. For me the important ones were: 1. Let the new person drive the GPSr. Few things are less fun than watching someone else walk in circles while they don't interact with you. We got a second GPS to solve this problem. 2. Make sure you find something. Even if it means finding one by yourself without telling her and then taking her to it and letting her find it. Don't just stand there watching her though, that would be annoying. Pretend to help. 3. Ideally, find a cache with a travel bug so she can learn it's history, send it along, and generally bond with something. The next step is to get her her own TB. 4. Have a heart to heart. You said: If you do some non-caching walks or something else together, maybe she'll be more receptive to caching which she perceives as less of a bonding experience.

This is a summary of the Sportrak poll to date: Total with cracks: 59 (79%) Total without cracks: 16 (21%) Reported date codes range from 1502 to 4403. Reported date codes without cracks are: 1602, 2202, 2302, 3102, 3302, 4102, 4702, 5102, 0203, 0403, 2503, 3903. And the usual disclaimer: 10 of 75 were reported without date codes, but I've chosen to include them in the totals anyway. Also, anyone who reported bulging, discoloration, etc at the bolts without actual cracks (only a couple), got counted as having cracks because I didn't want to make a new category, and the issue at hand is structural integrity, and I would say their problem counts. Sportrak Color models are not included because they have a different type of case. It's never too late to add more posts. I'll do another summary in a few days. Thanks!

You mean the French who's President requested that the UN wait to invade Iraq until there was better evidence that they had weapons of mass destruction? What the heck was he thinking...

Geocachers should be annoyed when dead horse topics are brought up in the forums. But then they should respond to them at length anyway.

Good info. I like pictures, so here is related info in the form of a pretty chart. I'd have to say I was wrong about most of it coming from the Middle East. A lot of it does, but there is more production spread around in other places than I expected. And on a totally separate note, one person said this: and this: We used to have a Ford Taurus. By the time we got rid of it we had spent thousands more in repairs than it was worth to sell. Many thousands. And it only had 105,000 miles. Our Honda dealer is over an hour away. But it doesn't matter because in 112,000 miles we've never had to go. There have been no warranty issues and it hasn't needed to be repaired. Ever. If I sound bitter it's because I'm still missing those thousands of dollars...

Since you brought it up, here is something related to this subject that I posted in an old thread.

We don't decode hints until we're at the cache site and have pretty much given up on ever finding the cache unassisted. Even then we may make more than one visit before decoding. I just posted this in another thread, but it seems to fit here as well.

Here is a link to a thread about writing good hints from a few weeks ago. My favorite hints are the ones that have a variety of levels of assistance to choose from BEFORE decoding like this one from this cache. For what it's worth, I DNF this cache twice, but chose not to use any of the hints because I like puzzles and it's close to home. However, I LOVE the hint format. If I'd been travelling or if the cache took a really long time to get to I would definitely have used the hint, and I would have been happy that it didn't give away the exact location too quickly.

Yup. We've gone through several in the last few years. The current one is a 96 Maxima. It's great for pavement, but at least where we live the CRV is a better choice for most leisure activities. Plus, they get the same gas mileage. I agree that HUGE SUV's seem wasteful (and unnecessary), but the smaller ones handle like cars while having much more room inside and better overall versatility. I will also add that here in the mountains our 98 5-speed CRV does fine, but the automatics seem a little underpowered. Actually that's true for most 4-cylinder vehicles, but I was surprised how noticeable the difference was in the Hondas. Subarus seem a little less suceptible to this.

I rode to a cache in a new Saturn Vue and could get ZERO reception inside the vehicle on my Sportrak Map. The ST normally gets great reception in cars, but something about the Vue was different. You should take your GPSr when you test drive. We have a Honda CRV and LOVE it. Big inside, small outside, handles like a car, decent 4WD, 25mpg on the highway, tiny turning radius, good ground clearance. And best of all, it hasn't needed any repairs at all in 112,000 miles.

Another case question. Do cases like the Sportrak case have any effect on reception? With part of the case going up over the antenna, I wondered if it reduces sensitivity at all. As far as perfectly clear protectors, my PDA ones are not. They definitely reduce clarity some. One thing I've noticed though is that the display on my ST Map is clearer (though smaller) than the one on my wife's Meriplat. Hers looks OK by itself, but when you put the two side by side hers is noticeably "darker." Darker is in quotes because I can't think of a better way to explain it. Brightness and contrast settings can't make it equal to the ST for clarity. The ST with a PDA screen protector offers the same clarity as the Meriplat without one.

How about a way to toggle the unit to a very basic "palm pilot" mode where you could have all your cache pages stored so you don't have to carry paper OR an actual palm pilot when you're caching. Put that USB connection to good use.

This is something I posted in an old thread that may be useful. I use the non-textured ones on my Sportrak Map, and am quite happy with them. I could stand to be to be careful though. I dropped my ST face-down in a gravel parking lot last week. Some gravel poked through the protector and left a small mark on the screen. I was lucky it didn't crack. I'm considering a case with a window to give better protection of the unit overall. Does anyone know if Magellan's Sportrak case (or any other case) provides much in the way of screen impact protection?

Not necessarily...

Excellent! How does a person aquire such an item?

I've done some tests with our Sportrak and Meriplat. Using benchmarks, I've found that the ACTUAL accuracy of both units is usually around 9-12 feet. However, the EPE often reads 30-35 feet under those circumstances. Which means the unit is consistently a good bit more accurate than it thinks it is. I haven't experimented with different versions of the firmware, but it seems you could get variations in both ACTUAL accuracy and EPE accuracy. In other words, just because your EPE improves, your actual accuracy may not. The unit may get better (or worse) at knowing how accurate it is, without getting you any closer to the cache than it does now. If that makes sense.