NightPilot

De Lorme Street Atlas and/or Topo will run on a Palm, albeit slowly. The maps are very nice, but the tracking software is poor. You can load the cache locations on the PC, and transfer the maps to your Palm, and connect to a bluetooth GPS to give mapping information.

Bluetooth GPS receivers are pretty much a commodity. I would buy on price.

The past 5 or so generations have used USB. The M105 is very, very old. Any current model certainly is USB, plus bluetooth and maybe wifi.

NiMH batteries don't come charged out of the package, you have to charge them first. Hybrid batteries are usually charged, but standard NiMH batteries aren't. Charge them up for 8 hours or so, and they should power up your Palm. For things like this, hybrid batteries are almost essential, because regular NiMH batteries self-discharge over time. They're designed for high-power demand applications, not long-term low power applications. You'll be happier with alkaline or hybrid batteries, I think.

Just for info, the MS S&T advice won't work. It's a Windows app, and won't run on a Palm. Making a .jpg is the only way I know of to do it on a Z31, and you probably won't be that happy with it when you get it, because of the Z31's lo-res screen. It might work for you, though.

I've lost one, caused by a piano. Moving it, and the other guy pushed hard at the wrong time, and it came down on my big toe. I've never come close to toenail damage from hiking or climbing, and my rich uncle, named Sam, sent me on many, many all-expense-paid hikes over the years. If you're damaging your toes, you need better-fitting shoes. Bigger is better, and wearing tight-fitting shoes will cause problems.

In short words... yes.

Should work fine, but you'll need to change the interface to NMEA, instead of Garmin.

Hybrid AAAs should work with no problem, and will be much cheaper in the long run. I used rechargeable alkaline when I had a Palm with replaceable batteries, years ago before NiMH were introduced. Worked fine, and I still use the batteries.

The newer hybrids are at least as good as the Eneloop and Sanyo.

You don't have to pay $60 for an adapter. They're available for much less than that. You don't need a Garmin brand device to do it. I also don't bother to hotsync. I have GSAK put the Cachemate file directly onto my SD card, which I then put into my Palm, and Cachemate detects and loads it when it runs. The only reason I hotsync is to keep another backup. I use the SD card for installing everything, because it's much, much quicker and easier.

With a TX you don't have to convert. You can store anything on the SD card or on the NVFS volume.

The TX has a browser, so you can save the web pages directly. You can also save the pocket queries with your email, and open them with any of several .zip file utilities, and should be able to read the .gpx files in the browser. It won't look very good, and won't really be useful, but you can do it. The .gpx files aren't meant to be used directly, so you'll still need some other programs to make them really useful.

Then get the unit up high, and away from your body. Wet tree canopy will always degrade the signal, no matter what antenna you use or where it is, but you just have to do the best you can. Your body will certainly block the signals, whether there is tree cover or not, because it's mostly water. Getting it on top of your head helps, and even higher is better, if possible. I don't know about the exact unit you listed, but most bluetooth receivers use an active antenna, which is at least as good as any external antenna, without the wires. It just has to be in the best possible position to receive the signals. In your pocket isn't a good position.

FWIW, datum and coordinate system are not the same thing. The GPS should be set to WGS84 - that's the datum. The coordinate system should be degrees and decimal minutes, or dd mm.mmm. If it's set to degrees, minutes, and seconds, or decimal degrees, you will enter the wrong numbers.

Yep, I went to a vest long ago. Works for me.

I started using a PDA for caching before it was cool. I started with Plucker, because that was what I knew, and I knew it would work, because it's designed to put web pages on Palms. I had a Palm for other stuff, and it was natural to use it for this too, because it's actually just a general-purpose computer, and can do anything a computer can do. My T3 actually has a faster processor and more memory than my previous PC. An older Palm can be bought for almost nothing, and while it's old, slow, no color, and low resolution, it works, and for the price you can't beat it. The downside is that you do need a certain level of technical competence, and most people that are unhappy with their Palms simply don't have the technical competence required. They also can't do much with their PCs, in most cases, and also have trouble with their GPS units. If you're going to get into a high-tech hobby, you need to be comfortable with high-tech gadgets. If you aren't, you really need to look at other hobbies, because you won't be happy with this one. The only alternatives I know of are kludges like iPods, cell phones, etc, which can do some of what PDAs do, and do it well enough for some people. There are lots of ways to get things done, and not everyone has to do it the same way. But for me, a Palm is the way I like to do it, and I would be lost without mine, because I use it for everything. It has all my passwords, personal information, contacts, etc, most encrypted to DES standards; it talks to my GPS to give me driving directions to anywhere I want; it does flight planning; it keeps track of my expenses, vehicle maintenance, mileage, etc; it keeps my pilot logbook; keeps shopping lists so I don't have to call my wife or go home for a tongue lashing; serves as an mp3 player, so I don't have to carry another device; carries dozens of books at a time for reading in odd moments when I have time to kill; has the past 3 years of Scientific American Magazine for the same purpose; a few games, mostly solitaire card games, also for killing time; calculators of various sorts, and more stuff than I can even think of. I could live without it, but I wouldn't want to. Worth a lot more than I paid for it. But of course, all this isn't for everyone, so it's hard to give you any definite advice, but it's what works for me.

The handheld app is close to worthless, however. I have SA 2007, received as a gift, and I dumped it. DeLorme has great maps, but their software is as bad as anything I've ever seen. It's simply not worth the effort, even if it's free.

Where was the receiver? External antennas are just antennas, and the ones in the bluetooth receivers are as good as the externals, if not better. However, I'm sensing that you really want an external antenna, so go ahead and buy one. It can't hurt your reception much.

Not as far as I know. The Blackberry isn't a PDA, it's a phone with push email. A Palm is a general-purpose computer, as is a PPC.

If you have your heart set on an external antenna, go ahead. The only reason to use one is to get the antenna elevated, and you can do that easier with a bluetooth model, but whatever floats your boat.

Get the 2581. You don't need an external antenna, because you can put the receiver wherever you would put the external antenna, but no wires. The extra channels mean you can monitor more satellites, and use the ones which provide the best geometry. These can usually get a good signal anywhere inside a car or house, and should do fine under tree cover.

Free geocoding service for 24 countries.

The SpecTec SDIO GPS, with built-in microSD slot, looks like a nice unit, and I looked at it for my Palm, but they don't make Palm drivers for it. Having the microSD slot, you can put a couple of gigabytes of maps in there, and I recently bought a 1GB card with SD adapter for $9.95. One thing to remember is that SDIO means the GPS is drawing power from the handheld, so it will eat the battery power very quickly. You'll need external power for the iPaq very soon, I would predict within less than an hour, perhaps much less. It should be nice for driving, perhaps not so nice for caching, unless you're doing mostly urban micros.

I assume you're using the serial cables for the eTrex and the GPS III, and connecting these to the adapter. That points to a bad adapter. It may be new off ebay, but it could still be defective. It's easy to get a bad connection with an eTrex, and I've had to reinstall the cable on mine many times to get a good one, so I would try that before anything else, but assuming that connection is good, my next guess would be the adapter. There must a a hundred threads on this forum on this subject, so you might be able to learn more by reading some of them.