thwarte

REI now lists the 62s (and Forerunner210) sale as "extended thru Monday, December 2, at least for the 62s, which is out of stock but can be backordered." Updates at Rich Owings' excellent site : gpstracklog.com

This was supposed to end yesterday, but is still available at REI's site. Perhaps extended Dec 2?

Here's a detailed proper review of the 650 by an early adopter, May 1. Reader comments to the review are current to July. No explicit comparison with 62. GPStracklog guest review of Oregon650

Many free Garmin-compatible maps for Calif and parts herein: http://www.gpsfiledepot.com/maps/state/ca -- but features and usability vary greatly, so pre-installing and inspecting are recommended. And of course Garmin sells maps, most reliable. BTW, as large as Calif is, it holds neither of the sites mentioned: Grand Canyon is in Arizona, Bryce Canyon in Utah. And if your travels find you in Ben Lomond, you may be about an hour south of San Francisco...

The current issue of Forbes defends LightSquared and Falcone's position in a detailed article by Daniel Fisher: http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2011/12/21/falcones-lightsquared-faces-enemies-on-all-sides/ The basic pitch seems to be 'lone entrepreneur versus entrenched interests in both government and business' (Deere and Co. is an entrenched interest to Forbes' audience?). The closest I see to possible substance is this claim which seems to set precedence: > for a decade the GPS industry has known its receivers would be overwhelmed by signals from ground-based cellular transmitters, which are literally billions of times as strong. Deere complained about the 2001 merger of two SkyTerra predecessors, but did nothing more. The FCC allowed “ancillary” ground-based transmitters in 2003 to help L-band carriers get better coverage, and in 2004 the GPS industry’s main lobbying group endorsed SkyTerra’s plan to build a combined satellite/terrestrial communications network. But this precedent entirely omits the interference issue arising with the current proposals. The article is informative although entirely from Falcone's perspective. It could be influential.

Tks, that works. Played a bit and it looks promising. Downloaded and had no problems installing. Auto-run works for first-time placement in Apps folder, FWIW - can't see what its virtue is, and there are security risks. Detailed data table view could be useful New graphing is nice - never understood the dual chart layout of previous. Maybe add a 'slope' along with 'speed' and 'altitude' graphs - and some smoothing options? Not sure what 'read all GPX files on a memory card' means yet... hope it's not auto-read/load. In general looks promising from a cursory check ... I flipped around between commercial and open/shareware maps a lot, no issues. That would be the forum attempting to help out and shorten the link. I edited the OP for you.

Um, the URL seems malformed. Doesn't work and I can't guess what it should be...

LightSquared has a full-page all-text ad in today’s San Jose Mercury News ( “The Newspaper of Silicon Valley”; mercurycenter.com). It’s the last page of section one (normally there’s a Fry’s ad there). Titled “LightSquared is Committed to Making Wireless Broadband Accessible and Affordable for California and All Americans”, it notes the GPS interference issue, saying “Despite the fact that the interference is caused by others’ inappropriate use of LightSquared’s licensed spectrum, we have been proactive...” (this blame claim is repeated). The main claim is the imperative need for more wireless broadband. They urge writing to the FCC, and note “In a letter sent this week to key members on Congress, half a dozen farming organizations - including the American Farm Bureau - urged lawmakers to communicate the benefits of both technologies to the FCC. “ I wrote to my CongressCritters some while back; public input does seem sought. Wonder if Garmin is including GLONASS reception in its new Etrex 10/20/30 line in anticipation of a US screwup here?

Thanks for this reassuring and interesting detail (perhaps share with the prune authors?) My understanding is the 'different problems' complement each other with synergism: the GPS altitude is mostly accurate when averaged over medium time, so corrects the very slow secular drift. And the slow-changing barometric altimeter corrects the fast GPS jitter. So a GPSr with both is more accurate than either alone.

That's good to know about Prune. But a simple test suggests Prune's calculation is unpruned, er, unsmoothed. We recently hiked to Mt. Tamalpais (just north of SF). Feeding that .gpx into Prune gives 4,600' climb (well actually 1400m), whereas Ascent and wikiloc.com and Garmin's BaseCamp all give 3,650' cumulative gain, from shore to Summit. Sure does, you need to select a range from the loaded track (even if it's all of it), then it'll show up on the right-hand side (climb and descent).

Does Prune give cumulative elevations? I don't see that feature. Luv its 3-d plots and photo geotags though. BTW, here's a more user-oriented link for Prune. GPS altitudes are best recorded with a unit which smooths short-term fluctuations by using a barometric altimeter, as noted earlier. I wonder: does software such as fizzymagic's which does post-capture mathematical smoothing have to use different parameter settings for such pre-smoothed tracks?

For a Mac program, I've been happy with Ascent for some years: montebellosoftware.com, trial version available. It does cumulative elevation and lots of other stats. Also does track plots on USGS topos and various aerial views, with the track color-coded to show speed, slope, or whatever.

There's a very good overview of the technical and regulatory issues here: freegeographytools.com/2011/how-the-fcc-plans-to-destroy-gps-a-simple-explanation with ongoing comments and a link listing the congresscritters to whom comments should be sent. (This site is great for its main topic also - and 'free geography tools' should interest some here, though it presumes some GIS and GPS background.)

Hi Jem, Serial i/o is indeed input/output. Mostly one has the GPS12 output its data to the computer, but it can also accept input from the computer such as waypoints (caches), much preferable to typing. Such data are transferred using ‘loadmytracks’ or a comparable program; a serial data cable connected to the GPS12; and your serial to usb adapter to connect the cable to your Mac. I used a Keyspan USA-19HS (since no such old serial communication is as fast as modern USB, I no longer use it with gpsmap 76csx). Here’s a vendor I used for cables less expensive than Garmin’s: http://www.gilsson.com/gps_cables.htm Track log: doesn’t directly relate to geocaching. When you’re out wandering, the GPS can record your track, creating a list of up to hundreds of waypoints, in effect ‘breadcrumbs’ to trace your route and guide you back if needed. Once at your computer, this track log can be copied to your computer and displayed on any appropriate map. Some surprisingly useful traits of the GPS12 which I’d require of any modern unit (they don’t all have them): * ability to average readings for accuracy - when defining a new waypoint in the field, tell the unit to listen for multiple readings over time (minutes to hours) at the same position in order to average them all together. This was essential prior to Spring 2000 when “selective availiblity” deliberately fuzzed up satellite signal accuracy; it’s still useful with even a minute or two of averaging to reduce noise. * ability to compute acreage within a closed track - useful for casual surveying work. Reviews and notes on the gps12 are in archive at this comprehensive (sprawling) site on all things GPS: http://gpsinformation.net/main/reviewarchive.htm -Ron

Jem, The GPS12 isn’t obsolete in any fundamental sense. It’s among the very first of the modern 12-channel multiplexed receivers which were affordable - earlier consumer units had to listen to first one frequency for satellites then switch to another. The multiplexing allows up to 12 satellite signals to be simultaneously processed. The GPS12 does lack any support for extra maps - and memory expansion - but mine does support an external antenna even though it’s not a 12XL model (and yes it helps but it’s not necessary). If you get the cable which combines serial data transfer with an auto battery power connector, using it with your USB/serial connector should allow the GPS12 to talk to your Mac, AND that cable will power modern units such as the GPSMAP 76csx for auto navigation - so I’ve used the same cable for ten years now. For Mac software able to do serial i/o with a gps, cluetrust.com’s loadmytracks is current, and chimoosoft.com’s older gpsconnect is a candidate. And here’s a little-known workhorse: http://homepage.mac.com/etmr/GPS/gpse.html Don’t be daunted by the Japanese script - the links to the OSX and OS9 versions are obvious, and the program menus are all in English. I’ve used versions through 9.5 happily for its ability to plot the track log from the GPS12, but I see now its current version is 9.9 and this downloads as a Unix executable rather than a Mac program. Hmph. I don’t use my GPS12 much since getting the 76csx a few years ago (color displays and topo maps are addictive), but I do keep it in the car as a backup, and Garmin did provide s/w updates for the GPS12 to version 4.6 as of August ‘03. -Ron