trimguy

I also use the PowerEX MH-C9000 charger. Just received it so have only been "refreshing" my existing Duracell 2300mah, Fujifilm 1700mah and GP 2600mah. None of them were exhausted yet but the new charger certainly put some more life back into them. Also bought 8 of the Powerex 2700mah AA's. They've received great reviews. Haven't tried them yet so can't comment. I certainly recommend the PowerEX MH-C9000 charger though.

My first and only GPS is the Garmin 60Csx. If I had to do it all over again I'd likely get the same one. Great for caching and I have used it a little for road navigation. For caching pay for the Geocaching.com Premium Memebership and also download GSAK (from a different vendor) which is a waypoint management program that accepts the Geocaching Pocket Queries. GSAK also has "Marcro's" to export the GSAK database to your GPS'r. Poof! - a few thousand caches loaded to your Garmin just like that! I bought my 60Csx (new) through Ebay from the USA including some acc's and shipping for $300 and change. Most units only come with a Basemap which is useless (a major hwy here, lake there but nothing inbetween). Bought Garmins Topo Canada which was a vast improvement and then heard about Ibycus topo maps (free at the time but now I think it is $25 for the DVD). Ibycus maps have a little more road detail which I like for driving in the wilderness. I have both map sets loaded and switch between them to see better detail for the area I am in at the time. Good luck.

For those of you in or near Vernon, BC, Herby's Surplus has 30 cal ammo cans in good/great shape for under $9.00. I think their 50 cal cans were about $12. Not sure if these are good prices but good enough for me to buy my first ammo (cache) can.

Caching in Kelowna, BC. Started about a year ago. Coming up on 100 finds (a low count compared to allot of you). Most frustrating hunt was the result of one of those fake rock caches!! Most satisfying hunt was finding a small "bolt" cache. "It's all about the hunt".

Thanks Ken. I did find the Paulsfinest site but he seemed quite proud of the Powerex stuff when looking at the prices. Maybe these chargers/batteries are just flat out more $$ or I am just used to the lower quality stuff at CDN Tire, etc.

Do you know of any Powerex retailers in Canada? Thanks

RAS - A GSAK macro called GarminCsvPoiExport-v2 creates POI files (CSV files) and displays seperate icons for each cache type on the GPSr (ie. traditional, multi, earth, etc, even parking and reference symbols). It uses Garmins POI Loader to transfer the data. Very very cool stuff. Go here to read up on it and download the macro (bottom of page). http://gsak.net/board/index.php?showtopic=...amp;#entry84484 Good luck.

This may be a long shot. The icons that turn black, is it one particular icon or do several different types of icons turn black? If it's one particular icon then try assigning a different one as a test. If it's several different types turning black, can you temporarily change them one by one and reload the file inbetween each change? I am suggesting this because I had a werid thing happen and the culprit turned out to be one particular bad icon - something that I thought was totally unrelated at the time.

DeadHead described it perfectly. All the text you see on the cache web page goes to the Notes section on your Ipod. I find the text size on the Ipod (Nano 3rd Gen) is to small for my eyes so I've kind of given up on using the Ipod. You also have to be careful as to the order of the caches in GSAK before sending them to the Ipod. I reorder them by cache name (alphabetically) before running the Ipod macro. Good luck.

Many thanks to all of you for the responses. Wow - the Solara Field Tracker model(s) is just the ticket - well, except for the price. I may rethink the SPOT device (or buy a flare gun-ha). What is the device that back country skiers and snowmobile riders are encouraged to have if they get caught up in an avalanche? (other than life insurance!!). Is this the SPOT transmitter?

My outdoor adventures often include areas where there is no cell phone signal. What kinds of devices/software are on the market these days that would transmit my location (Lat/Lon) or could send a short text message viewable by a certain someone with a PC and internet connection? I always take my Garmin 60Csx with me but as we all know it's just a receiver. I've read a little about the SPOT transmitter but some reviews were a little iffy. If I had a laptop with me and my GPS was connected to it, is there a transmiter of sorts that could be included to transmit location data and/or a text message? Portability would be great (backpacking) but if power requirements is an issue, I could transmit upon returning to my vehicle. Any input is greatly appreciated. Thanks

I haved owned only one GPSr and it's the 60Csx. I would get the same unit if I had to do it all over again. At first I used it's geocaching features (very limited) but have since switched to GSAK and a GSAK macro that displays on the GPSr the status of caches (available, disabled, found, hints, owned, reference, stages, type, size, terrain, difficulty & the status of the last four logs). What it displays can be customized in GSAK. I also use another GSAK macro that displays the entire GC.com cache pages on my Ipod (notes section). With the exception of the Ipod text being a little small for my eyes, this systems works for me.

Setting up an alarm range in Mapsource should work. Whether or not you get an alarm will depend on the alarm distance you set in Mapsource and how close your travel takes you to that alarm range. I recently loaded school zones as a POI file but initially set the range to large. My alarm was going off 2 blocks away! On the Geocache website I think there is a way to download only those caches along an intended route. I haven't tried it but that method may be better suited for you.

2008 - present: Garmin 60Csx and loving it.

Thanks TimPat. I tried something similar. Took a screen shot of the symbols on the GPS. Opened that file in Paint.NET. Then copied just the school bus icon and pasted it into a new 16x16 canvas in Paint.NET and applied the background color. On the GPS screen the created icon is a twin to Garmins school bus icon. The free program Paint.NET is a far cry better than the standard Microsoft Paint and great for doing custom icons. Rick

I am creating a POI file of all the school zones in my city which I will assign a speed and range to each. I want to use the School Bus icon, like the one under "Civil" on the 60csx, but can not find a .bmp of this on the web (preferably 16 x 16). 1) Any sources on the web? 2) Alternately, is there a way to capture the standard symbols from the 60csx in which case I could make a copy of the School Bus and make it a Custom symbol? Thanks, Rick

I emailed the author (Dale) about downloading certain areas with setup files etc and he replied with this: "At the moment, no. Its not. (you can download individual IMGs, but that will be very tedious, and probably not what you want) I would suggest however that if its telling you an 11 hour download that you try the BitTorrent download. First download a torrent client (http://www.utorrent.com) , then google “ibycus topo torrent” to get the torrent file. This should be more reliable, and more fault tolerant." Currently running the utorrent download and it's still 9+ hours (I am off to Tim Hortons!!) Second question - How much is an appropriate donation?

I started to download the file and then realized it was over 3GB (taking forever). I assume it covers all of Canada. Is there a way to download just certain areas and still get the setup file and any other documentation the full download comes with? Secondly, does it produce regions like Topo Canada does and then the user highlights the regions he wants (in Map Source) and send them to the Garmin? Thanks.

I assume you are considering a handheld unit as opposed to a larger vehicle navigation one. I've used a Garmin 60csx for 6 months now and love it. You have to make sure maps are available for your intended travel area. Street or Topo?? As far as I know a GPS receives signals all over the world (those darn satelites keep circling our planet).

That is really not a silly question. If your memory will serve you years later when you want to hike, walk, bike, etc the trail again, then there is no need to save the track for future reference. But if you are in a situation where your hike requires numerous (important) turns at trail junctions to arrive at a specific destination, well-my brain won't retain that data a few years later. And like the other poster wrote, you could email a track to a friend as a suggested hike. I am new to GPS navigation and decided that I will log all my hikes in a Mapsource file (maybe with photos) which could be kind of cool to look at years later.

Just came back from a walk in the park (with GPS in hand) and solved my track problem (pilot error). When saving a track I am asked if I want to save the 'entire track' (yes or no). In the past I was selecting 'yes' which caused the current track to join to a previously saved track. Selecting 'no' instead then prompts the user to select the beginning and end points of the track to be saved. This saves the chosen track with no 'link' to any other saved tracks and it appears in the saved tracks list.

This has happened twice now so it's time to ask the pros (yes that's you). Yesterday I saved a track. Today I saved another track so now I have two saved tracks. When I bring up the second track on the map page, its start point is joined to the end point of the first track with a straight line track. It's like the second track is a continuation of the first one, albeit, joined by a straight track. The first time it happened, the two tracks were saved months apart. What's going on? Thanks.

I think someone else posted the same question and if I am not mistaken, they checked theirs against a new one in the store and both were the same. In my experience, my finger has to be dead-on the switch for it to engage. I often have to use the tip of my finger instead of the flat part. A successful press means I also feel the "click" under my finger tip just before the audible beep. I am actually glad the switch works this way to prevent an accidental on/off.

Just tried your tilting the screen exercise and I get the same results. Isn't it a bit ironic that we now have devices that can pinpoint our location to within a few feet (with respect to the entire world!), yet we are not quite satisfied. We want the screen to be a different color (speaking only about myself of course).

Shortly after I posted, I downloaded xImage and took a screen shot. Sure enough, it was bright yellow which made me conclude that the GPS was not capable of displaying the bright yellow. Your responses confirmed this - Thanks.