FulThrotl

well, i'm also a newbie, and had just posted pretty much exactly the same suggestion you made, including providing a web page where you could just pull down the whole state, etc. so, you're not alone in your thinking. however, don't consider that a compliment, as you haven't seen some of the 6 beer hot flashes i've come up with in the past...... the thread i started with my post was closed, and i was directed *here*, for the "redesigning of the wheel" steering committee..... it's not that the current setup doesn't work, it obviously does. i just didn't want to bother with the setting up, and tweeking the PQ's to get the coverage i "needed". "needed", however, doesn't mean i need to approach this "hobby" with the same gritty determination of an amphetamine freak painting his living room with a 1" wide brush at 3 am...... i just didn't want to have to spend 2 hours setting up the PQ's.... i'm lazy. MY GOD, what if i miss a cache? whatever will i DOOOOOOOOO???????? i'll have to drive another 1.13 miles... oh, my..... my life is a black void... time to end it all..... instead of committing suicide, i made up a PQ, set up with what i want to look for, copied it 20 times, and used zip codes for the centers.... not that elegant, and i miss some caches, i am sure, but good enough..... the one for my home, i run once a day, the others, once a week. it works. and i suspect the real reason for GC.com not allowing unlimited downloading of all the areas in the whole world is just the straight economics of bandwidth, not a fear that someone is going to steal "their" data and build a competing service..... they have to pay for the usage by the terabyte, and they don't really need FulThrotl downloading 92 megs 7 times a week to update caches he will never visit in a million years. they aren't selling data here, they are providing community, and charging a reasonable fee for it. GC.com isn't the draw here. YOU ARE. all of you. there are people who've been here 5 or 6 years, with over 10,000 posts. that's something like 40 posts a week..... for 5 years. money can't buy devotion like that. however, money can be made providing a place for it to occur naturally, and GC.com seems to have done a decent job of that. they earn their money. me, i've tweeked my PQ's, and have it down to just ONE PQ, that i can run once a day.... now, if GC.com will just increase the queries results from 500 to 188,306,750 all will work wonderfully..... i can put the whole planet earth in a 3 terabyte email attachment..... that isn't being unreasonable, is it? FulThrotl (it's not just a handle, it's a way of life)

i have a thought on how pocket queries are processed.... there's a good chance it'd save a bunch of machine time, and save users a ton of time with multiple queries to cover a specific geographic area..... right now, i have a number of PQ's set up, to pull down a variety of geographic areas, as my location changes a lot, and i'm never sure where i'm gonna be when i might have spare time for geocaching.... all of those queries could be dispensed with, if i were able to just download an entire state's caches, and drop it into GSAK. then it'd be a simple process to sort, filter, and dump the 2,000 nearest points to my colorado, based on whatever zip code i'm gonna be near that day.... i understand it's a lot of data, and possibly would cause a bunch of bounced emails from large file attachments, so a simpler solution would be if the PQ machine would just run a query at a low demand time, say 1 AM, and dump the updated state lists to a ftp that could be accessed by a web page... the people who would like it that way could go to a link and grab their whole state's data, whenever they wanted, the amount of pocket queries would diminish greatly, and the people who like doing it the way it is being done would be unaffected. what this amounts to is one query per state per day, posted to a web page on geocaching.com, that could be grabbed by any premium member, when they wanted to update their GSAK, or whatever software they are using. then it's a simple matter to filter the data, and sort it based on where you are at in the state, and GSAK will dump the closest 2000 sites to the GPS, and off you go.... peeking under bushes. anyway, that's my nickel's worth of thought..... what do you guys think? FulThrotl

you didn't say if you want portable or in-dash.... the in dash's that i have are all from alpine, and i did that primarily becuase i wanted high end stereo..... my work van uses alpine head end, alpine dvd GPS, 1600 watts for dolby 5.1, dynaudio speakers, a 12" 50 lb alpine sub, XM radio, and traffic feed for the gps. around $7k installed. suggest two oddesy AGM batteries as well. significant improvement in sound, as peak draw on both amps (playing "all right now", by free) pulls about 230 amps, causing bleeding from ears and nose. getting there is all the fun.... :-) FulThrotl

garmin colorado. suggest also using the 2008 citi nav NT mapset. it is available on disk, or directly on chip. if you wait a couple weeks, you can get the 2009 mapset. before loading your money gun, and running off to buy one... look at the numerous postings, pro and con, on this unit.... mine works spiffy, and i like it, but there are a whole passle of people mad enough to stomp bunny rabbits with the one they got... quality control seems spotty.... FulThrotl

Full Throttle, Was there tree cover where you were Geocaching? What does your accuracy (in feet) say on the Satelite page?l To all: Can't we all start logging serial numbers so we can detrmine which are good units ? I really do want one that doesn't "jump around" in readings. in answer to your question..... there was no tree cover whatsoever, the stated accuracy was alternating between 9 and 11 feet. my unit was purchased at: N 33 43.926 W 117 59.646 they have more of them, and maybe it's a good batch... YMMV if your unit's accuracy isn't good enough to find the store here is a clue: REI Huntington Beach, CA Bella Terra Mall 405 Freeway & Beach Blvd. i went playing with mine again today, and discovered something that may shed light on this problem, literally.... if screen brightness is turned way up, current flow is much higher. when that happens, current flow on an alkaline cell becomes less stable, and fluctuations occur.... this triggers the wierd power management screen dimming and warning messages... however, when the screen dimming starts and stops, it abruptly changes the voltage on the batteries, by a small amount, millivolts, and THAT affects location accuracy..... when the screen flickers, the position flickers. it's a voltage drop issue. i'm wondering if changing the type of battery that you tell the unit you are using will modify the power management in such a way that you can trick the screen dimming bs to stop....... i'm guessing here, but if i had to fix it, i'd start looking at fiddling with the firmware, and the battery saving code.... but first, i'd try this.... see how stable it is with a fresh set of batteries, and NO backlight whatsoever, and backlight timer set to 2 minutes, so it won't cycle quite so fast. FulThrotl

Mine is 18Z013768 I'm hoping that someone will pick up on this serial number and start a database. All those out there with 400T that work flawlessly - what are your serial numbers ? - hey seriously !!! 18Z003534 seems to work perfectly..... current location: N 33 43.936 W 118 00.695 now.... here is an idea..... instead of posting cache locations, we could post locations of working colorado's, and then people could look for *those*..... FulThrotl

>Sorry for the multiple posts today, but I would like some feedback before I drive 80 mi roundtrip to REI. >What accuracy should I expect from this unit? >Is anyone keeping track of serial numbers and possible bad units - mine is 18Z013768? >Pls. Help !!! I've owned the following. Is it me or is it the unit. Some are saying they can get to within 1 ft. >of a cache (I'm jealous) ok, i'm new at this, today was the first day out playing with the toy.... i was in san diego killing the day, and found a few caches, and didn't find quite a few.... i bought a 400t, after reading a bucket of feedback here, and figured if i didn't like it, i'd take it back to REI.... i stuck the NT road set on a chip, and put that in as well..... here's my experience, for what it's worth..... battery life: it's a large display, so i decided to see how long it lasts, and locked the backlight on full brightness, permanantly on.. 7 hours before it starts spitting up error messages.... seems good enough... how long will a car battery stay up with the headlights on high, and the stereo left playing? i figure it'll probably go 12 hours with a reasonable time set on the backlight.... system glitches: none whatsoever. accuracy without NT road chip: the topo is fine, the roads suck. 50 to 60 yards off. accuracy with NT road chip: astoundingly accurate. i have 3 other auto gps's in vehicles (all alpine, different configurations) and the accuracy with this is superior to any of them. accuracy to geodetic markers: i checked two, and one was within a foot, and the other one was within 2 feet. so i'm happy..... the first cache i found, was within 6" of where the unit said i was at ground zero... second and third caches were within a couple feet..... here's my thought on it..... if EVERYONE who is unhappy with the quality of their uint returns it for a new one, and keeps doing it until they get one that they are happy with, Garmin will click their QA program up a few notches... having 50,000 of them returned during the months of may and june will provide far more impetus for fixing the problems that sitting on hold for technical assistance with garmin...... the battery life is what it is... but it seems that the quality control is sucky.... FulThrotl