Ken in Regina

The most likely explanation for that is that whoever placed those caches did not have WAAS enabled and when you have WAAS turned off you are seeing approximately the same error as they had. Sometimes you can be too accurate. Perhaps cache owners should be encouraged to note whether the location was recorded with or without WAAS. ...ken...

You can still mark it Found on your GPS if you want to. But now you will also need to mark it Found in CacheMate on your spiffy refurbished colour Palm M515 (yes, refurb is good). You can also add any comments into the cache info in CacheMate, if you like. Then you can upload it from CacheMate back to the PC and thence up to geocaching.com using GSAK without having to do any more manual typing. The point is that you use CacheMate for all the logging stuff. What you do on the GPS becomes simply a matter of convenience for you. Something that has been pretty much unstated in all of this is that if you use the combination of a GPS and a Palm for paperless caching, you now have some duplicated tasks. You still have to get the location information into the GPS. Plus you now need to also get it into your cache program (eg. CacheMate or whatever) on the Palm. That makes it a little more work getting the necessary data into the two devices but it eliminates the paper and, if you are logging on your PC and/or Geocaching.com you can automate most of that effort. Does that make a little more sense? ...ken...

Stick any of those acronyms, or just DOP (Dilution Of Precision), plus the word "wikipedia" in the Google search box and you'll get a good list with Wikipedia at the top of the list of search results. ...ken...

This message was entered a few hours before yours: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=207736 ...ken...

How long did you wait after turning it on before messing with it? When a GPS is new out of the box or after a hard reset or if it was last used a long way from where you are now, the receiver has to do a "cold start". That is, it has to locate the satellites it can best see locally and then try to get a fix on its position. It's largely a trial and error sort of situation and it takes awhile. It takes longer if there aren't a lot of easily seen satellites in your current location. On some receivers, the "New Location" function will allow you to manually tell the GPS receiver its new location. That will make it easier to get a new fix than if it has to keep up the trial and error because knowing the current location, even approximately, will help it use a table to get an idea what satellites it should be able to see. The "New Location" function usually gives you the option to manually input the latitude/longitude if you know it, or to manually pan the map and select your current location on the map if you don't know the latitude and longitude. Doing this will shorten the time it takes for the GPS receiver to do a cold start location fix. Once it has figured out where it is, getting a fix after that will be much quicker. You can also use the "New Location" function (with the GPS receiver turned off) if you want to determine a route between two places. Most navigation devices assume you want to create a route from where you are currently to some other place. They don't make it easy for you to check out a route between two places, neither of which is your current location. So you can use the "New Location" function to make the GPS think you are at the starting point of the route you want to check out. Then you can tell it the new destination and it will calculate a route as if you were actually at that starting point instead of where you actually are. But you have to do this with the GPS receiver turned off (disabled, whatever) or it will immediately start trying to find where you really are instead of believing you are somewhere else. I hope that made sense. ...ken...

Those are excellent points, Dan. As far as updates for nroute, it has all the functionality of any modern nav program, and more features than some (eg. Streets&Trips, Street Atlas). It just isn't as pretty as some have become. Garmin would probably say Mobile PC is the latest "update" for nroute. As for saving in GDB2 format, I quite doing that and just cut/paste from Mapsource to nroute. It's quicker. You just select a tab (say, Waypoints), use Ctrl-A (or Edit > Select All) to select everything in that tab, Ctrl-C (or Edit > Copy) to copy to the clipboard, switch to nroute and paste from the clipboard into the appropriate tab. It's an intelligent cut/paste so it copies everything over, even complex routes and tracks. nroute isn't for everyone and I sure wouldn't discourage someone from buying Mobile PC (it has a really gorgeous display). But for someone who already has Mapsource with some road maps installed and who wants a really cheap way to see how useful their laptop is for navigation, nroute is a great way to try it out. Especially if the person already has a Garmin unit that can also act as a GPS receiver. It just doesn't get any better than Free, for low-risk startup. ...ken...

Mobile PC with 10x would be a much better choice. The GPS10x is an excellent Bluetooth with modern GPS receiver technology. I have one that I use with my laptop (Mobile PC and others) and my Palm TX (Mobile XT). It comes with a belt clip. I was using it on the golf course with Intelligolf on the Palm TX and I was quite surprised at how well it held a good lock and how many satellites it managed to see while hanging on my belt with my body always blocking some portion of the sky. With a laptop, Bluetooth is generally preferable, simply because you don't have to deal with a cable and you can place the receiver in the very best position for GPS reception without any concern for where you want to place the laptop. But you already have most of what you need for an "off the shelf" solution". Your Venture HC will work as an external USB receiver and nroute is a good nav program. nroute will use any maps that you have installed in Mapsource. It does all of the things you would expect from a full-featured nav program, including routing with voice guidance. There are three significant differences between nroute and Mobile PC. Mobile PC has a much prettier map display. Mobile PC has the same visual interface as the Nuvi handhelds and is touchscreen-capable if you have a touchscreen. Mobile PC can pronounce street names when doing voice guidance. But nroute has one big advantage: for you, it's free. You just have to download it and start using it with the Venture and the maps that are already installed in Mapsource (assuming you have road maps with routing data in them). One final thought... If you don't have road maps and have to buy one - like City Navigator North America - then Mobile PC will probably be the better deal. It comes with City Navigator North America NT2009 preinstalled and the whole package, including the GPS10x isn't much more than buying the maps by themselves. If you are interested in loads of discussion about Garmin Mobile PC and a bunch of other laptop navigation programs you should check out the Laptop GPS World forum. There is discussion about the GPS20x with Mobile PC and so far the suggestion is to go with the newly-released bundle with the GPS10x instead, or get the software-only version of Mobile PC and a third-party Bluetooth receiver. ...ken...

Yes, this is also a problem on the eTrex (at least on the H* series). There is a FAQ about it on the Garmin support site. ...ken...

I love my eTrex Legend HCx to pieces but I have to say that any of the HC models cannot do paperless caching. They allow a short name and uselessly small number of characters for the description. They can differentiate between caches and regular waypoints and you can mark caches as found. But to use one of these you really need to get a cheap Palm with something like CacheMate to carry the cache information. ...ken...

No, you can not use nroute without Mapsource. Non, vous ne pouvez pas utiliser nroute sans Mapsource. Yes. You must have Mapsource and a Garmin map installed to allow nroute to work. Oui. Vous devez avoir Mapsource et une carte de Garmin a installé pour permettre à nroute pour travailler. Salut. ...ken...

Just to clarify for those who aren't familiar with the Garmin programs Mag Magician is mumbling about here, only really really ancient versions of Mapsource were able to navigate. Any version released in, say, the last century does not have any navigation ability. nRoute has the same interface as Mapsource and does a lot of the same stuff, and it has all the usual navigation features you would expect from Garmin. If you already have Mapsource and some Garmin maps installed on your laptop you can download nRoute and it will navigate using any maps that are already installed in Mapsource. You need Mapsource and its maps or nRoute does nothing useful for you. And a GPS receiver, of course. So, to add to what Mag Magician said, if you have Mapsource and some Garmin maps installed for downloading to your Venture, all you need to do is go to Garmin's site, use their search feature to find "nroute", download and install it, connect the Venture to your laptop to use as a GPS receiver and you should be in business. (Depending on how the Venture connects to the laptop, eg. USB or serial, it might be just that easy, or it might be a bit more complicated.) ...ken...

The purpose of any SBAS system is to provide data that will allow your GPS to correct the GPS satellite triangulations for things like ionospheric distortion and other factors that will affect its accuracy. In order to do this, your GPS receiver must find a satellite (WAAS or EGNOS) that is broadcasting the necessary correction data. Then it must collect all of the data into an "almanac" (fancy word for a database) before it can use it. There is a lot of data and the transmission speed is quite slow. When you do the reset ("recycling" as you called it), you empty the almanac and so it must be completely collected again the next time the receiver finds a satellite transmitting the data. On Garmin GPS receivers, the signal strength bar on the WAAS/EGNOS satellite will stay outlined rather than solid until the complete almanac has been captured again. As someone else mentioned a few messages back, that takes 12 minutes or more. How long it takes depends upon where in the transmission stream the GPS receiver starts collecting the data and how good the reception is. If the receiver encounters data errors when receiving, it can't simply ask for a retransmission of the errored data. It must wait until the transmission cycles all the way back to that data in the next iteration. In simple terms, even in perfect conditions it will take far more time to capture the correction data from the WAAS/EGNOS transmission than it will to get a lock on the other satellites. It has also been mentioned in here, and in many other discussion threads on the subject, that the value of WAAS/EGNOS corrections in consumer-grade GPS receivers is minimal for most practical uses. I have an eTrex Legend HCx. With a full 3D Differential lock on 10 satellites (all visible satellites locked and corrected) I generally get an accuracy report of 2 metres in the best conditions. With WAAS disable in those same conditions I get an accuracy report of 3 metres. (The accuracy report is another discussion because most people misunderstand what it really means.) It's fun to play with this stuff and see how it works, and it's interesting to learn more about it. But in normal use it provides little practical value for most of us, in my experience. ...ken...

I have an external antenna similar to the Gillson that I use for my Garmin iQue 3600 (integrated PDA/GPS). The way I use it on the dash is with the side from a metal electrical box (you know, the kind you can gang together to get two or three switches mounted side by side). It's galvanized metal and is the perfect size for a ground plane (a little under 4" square). I have it sitting on my dash on a small piece of that non-slip drawer liner that you can buy at Wal-Mart for a buck for a placemat size piece. I keep thinking I should glue the non-slip stuff to the underside of the metal piece but they never move on the dash so it never moves up my priority list. For the metal piece, you can buy covers for junction boxes, or cut a chunk off a joist hangar. The magnetic bottom of the antenna grabs the metal piece securely and any sort of non-slip material will keep them nicely in place wherever you put them on the dash, unless you drive like Danica. ...ken...

Yes you can. You simply buy another unlock code. You can buy as many unlock codes as you want. ...ken...

I have the Legend HCx, which is the same unit without the electronic compass and barometer. You will find that if you add detailed road maps, like City Navigator North America, you have all of the features and functions of the Nuvi, minus the touchscreen and voice guidance. I'm not recommending your eTrex as a total solution for vehicle nav, but you have made a great choice to help you get introduced to it. With a detailed map product installed, you can search for addresses, intersections, cities and points of interest (POIs), as well as waypoints and caches. When you find any of them you can have the eTrex create a route to them. You can choose whether you want it to route you via roads or offroad. Then it will provide guidance through beeps and onscreen directions. If you get a vehicle mount of some sort for it (I would suggest an inexpensive vent mount) you can try it out for vehicle nav and see what things you want when you get around to purchasing one more suitable. A larger display with touchscreen and voice guidance are two obvious gotta-haves. But you may find that using the eTrex will persuade you that a lot of the bells and whistles in the expensive Nuvis aren't necessary (you may still want them anyway ... after all, these are just toys for most of us!). In the mean time you've got one of the better handhelds. If you decide to get serious about caching, be prepared for the idea that you might need to get a Palm PDA for paperless caching because you can only put the name, location and a very short description into your eTrex for caches. ...ken...

There is another current thread talking about a really cheap way to go paperless and have it all. It requires buying a really cheap Palm PDA - there are lots of older models available for really low prices - and adding a program called CacheMate to the Palm. This allows you to load all that stuff into CacheMate on the Palm and manage it the way you want. So you can make comments, change things, accumulate info for solving puzzle caches, mark caches as found, with the date and comments. It means carrying two devices - the GPS and the Palm - but you can lose the paper and have much more flexibility. To see if it's interesting to you, just Google "CacheMate" and check out it's features. For more details on how to do it, check out the current thread in this section about cheap paperless caching. ...ken...

Thanks for the tip. I use mine on my mountain bike with the Garmin bar mount. So far I've been lucky but I think I'll install the lanyard and wrap it around the bar. I've forwarded your note to a friend who just bought an eTrex and is using it on his motorcycle with the Garmin handlebar mount. I'm sure he'll also be glad to read about your experience. ...ken...

Did the problem start around the time you upgraded to 6.14.1? It has other problems. Do you have other things running when the maps are compiling? Older versions of Mapsource were very sensitive to anything else running while it was compiling so I've been in the habit of just going and having a cup of tea, reading a book, or whatever it takes to keep my hands off the keyboard and mouse while it's doing its thing. That may not be necessary with newer versions and a newer, more powerful computer, but it's a habit I've gotten into. ...ken...

Clearly. Of course, it is all of those things. I simply pointed out that, in addition to anything else it might be to all of the various participants, it is a monument to counting. It facilitates and encourages keeping score. It also encourages a serious interest in caching. Taking a 30,000 ft. big picture view of the geocaching.com site in its totality, it could be said that it panders to serious interest in virtually every aspect of geocaching. I say that not in judgement; simply as an observation. I think it's great. I don't object to your point of view nor your right to share it, or even to debate it. I just don't like it that you chose to belittle others who have a different view. That was somewhat at odds with your normal supportive actions in helping others with various aspects of geocaching and it set me back a little. The two are not mutually exclusive. The numbers may mean nothing to you. Just as clearly they do mean something to many others. The amount of support this site provides for "scoring" is proof of how popular it is. The fact that you don't relate to that should not give you license to belittle it when you see others enjoying a part of it that you don't care about. I rode motorcycles for over thirty years, and, for a decade, taught dozens of others how to ride. I was deeply into all aspects of motorcycling, short of competition. Some of my best riding buddies were heavily competitive. Even though I didn't have any great interest in racing, other than as a spectator, I was still able to understand why they loved to compete. They used their "scores" (finish positions) as an indicator of what additional skills they needed to acquire or improve and as a measure of how well they were doing that. There were lots of other motivators, but it was the drive to improve their skills so they could improve their "scores" that underlay it all. In associating with them, and riding with them, I was able to increase my skills and knowledge right along with them. I applaud that drive to achieve or increase competence in any endeavour, as long as one doesn't take it to an extreme. If a little glory rubs off as a result of those achievements, what's wrong with that? I think it's great to have goals -- to set them and to achieve them and to celebrate that achievement. If one can do it with others of like mind, so much the better. Be well. ...ken...

I had a Venture HC .... for half an hour. Then I boxed it up and sent it back. This isn't a knock on it. I liked absolutely everything about it. The problem, for me, was that there wasn't quite enough to it. I found that the internal memory didn't hold enough map data for me, especially when loading really detailed topos. So I sent it back and got a Legend HCx. It's just the Venture HC with a micro-SD card slot. So now I have all the goodness of the Venture HC plus the ability to load up all the map data I want. I use it more for bopping about on my mountain bike than for caching. The Venture HC is ideal for someone who doesn't care about the map data. ...ken...

So why do you have this need to knock everyone who chooses to take a serious interest in their hobby? (This is only the second thread I've read since I came on a few minutes ago and you're doing it in both threads.) This website and forum are a monument to facilitating the capture and documentation of numbers and encouraging a serious interest in geocaching. Is that a bad thing? If so, why do you participate? I'm genuinely curious because usually you are nothing but helpful and knowledgeable. Maybe it's just a bad day? ...ken...

Regarding all the other distractions that are being trotted out, this is about the 80/20 rule. With this legislation they'll get the worst distractions handled. If this reduces the incidence of just these uses by, say, only 2/3 it will make a huge difference. ...ken...

I'm with Brenda. This isn't about friend versus FTF. It's about what the friendship is based on. Brenda has a good suggestion. You could go out a little earlier than originally planned to get the FTF and then meet your friend. If your friendship is based on truth and intelligence your friend will understand and might even be able to suggest some other option that will work for both of you. I never try to make these decisions on my own. I always lay it out for my friend(s) and see if they have useful suggestions that will work all the way around. Although that may seem a little uncomfortable to some people, if you once try it you will find it takes a huge load of responsibility, and potential guilt feelings, off your shoulders and allows you to share the decision-making with your friend. This is also a sign of respect for your friendship that you trust your friend enough to be completely honest about the fact that you have a lot of your time and effort already invested in this particular search. ...ken...

But then what do you use for an excuse to buy a new toy?? ...ken...

Hi Tom, Your guess is correct. If you have multiple tracks listed on the Tracks tab in MapSource and download them to the Legend HCx (I have one) you get multiple tracks on the handheld and, therefore, the problem described in the original post. Your solution is the one I use. For the original poster ... Just select the tracks on the Tracks tab that you want joined into a single track, right-click and select "Join tracks ...". It's really that simple. You can review the combined track and if you're happy with it, name it something meaningful, transfer it to the Legend HCx and you're in business. If there is extraneous stuff in one or more of the tracks you want to join, you can use the Track Properties window to delete the segments you don't want. Once you have the individual tracks cleaned up the way you want, you can do the Join, etc. MapSource has some very powerful track management features if you take a few minutes to explore them. ...ken...