Orion84

You are aware that you actually need to walk around with the GPS to play these games? You don't play them with the buttons. As such you also need a good GPS signal

The tracks stored on the card are something totally separate from the tracks you see in the track list and on the map. The tracks on the card are only restricted by the card size. If the option to store tracks on the card is activated, the unit stores one .gpx file for every day the GPS was active. Apart from that you have the tracks that appear on the map and in the track lists. Those tracks are not stored on the card as such (although the same track data will of course be included in the .gpx files), but in the internal memory. Which is limited to 20 tracks with a total of 10.000 track points.

Is there any info on the self-discharge rate of these units? Cold weather performance is nice, but I can't say I really have complaints in that area (partly due to the fact that I rarely find myself in serious sub zero conditions). However, I do like to be able to pick my GPS of the shelve and go out using it without wondering whether or not there is any charge left in the batteries.

In other words: when converting a track to a route, first filter out all superfluous trackpoints. MapSource can do this automatically for you. There is a filter button in the track properties dialog. With some finetuning and maybe some manual finishing touches, this should yield tracks below 250 points that are still detailed enough to use as route.

NiMH wear out. They're only capable of a finite number of charge-discharge cycles before the cell chemistry begins to degrade and they begin to exhibit a significant reduction in their ability to hold a charge. Needless to say, there are ways to accelerate the process and ways to postpone it and rapid charging is one of the best ways to accelerate the process. Rapid charging may be convenient, but the price you pay for that convenience is fewer charge-discharge cycles before the cells wear out. And that brings us to the main "buzz kill" observation I'd like to point out: The Eneloop charger is a rapid charger. And while I'm killing buzzes, here's another observation: The Maha and La Crosse chargers are just as bad if you use them in the rapid charge mode. But the Maha and La Crosse chargers offer a distinct advantage over the Eneloop charger: They also have a slow (or soft) charge mode and if you make a habit of using that mode you can significantly increase the service life of your NiMH cells. The Maha and La Crosse chargers also let you recondition cells, but that ability is of little real use for hybrid NiMH cells like the Eneloop as long as you treat your cells right in the first place. And as for my opinion of Eneloop cells? I love them! I've been a rabid R/C model aviator for many years and I've lost several planes due to battery failure. I should add that I have a huge investment in sophisticated programmable multi-chemistry charger/cyclers and computerized battery analyzers, but cells still failed on me and an entire pack of cells is only as good as the weakest one. But I haven't had any problems since I started using Eneloops. I have them in all my transmitters and most of my gliders and every cell tests like new despite the fact that several have been in use since Sanyo started selling them. And do you know who started using them first? Model aviators! We started using them when they were only available via the Internet from Japan which was over a year before they started distributing them in the USA. Model aviators stay on the bleeding edge of new battery technology and in many respects, they're the driving force. Eneloops in action in a "mission critical" role: http://www.vimeo.com/1760099 Pete Your comment about rapid charging is not entirely valid. A good charger will stop charging (or actually, switch to trickle charging) when it detects a drop in the cell voltage. This drop can only be noticed while charging at a sufficient "speed". For more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel-metal_...charging_method

The " low tone on shut down" is caused by using the card with an Apple computer, which puts some hidden files on the card. Somehow the GPS has trouble coping with these files. Removing those files will fix the problem. More info on this issue can be found in http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=221591 You should take a look at the Map Setup menu to solve your main problem. On the Map Setup - Points page you need to set an appropriate setting for the "Map Points" setting

Is the compass pointing in the wrong direction, or is the heading arrow pointing in the wrong direction? In the first case: did you make sure that there were no objects nearby that might have influenced your compass during testing? (like big metal objects, or strong magnets such as speakers). What was your reference, how much was the error? In the second case: how reliable was your GPS position at the time of testing? This also applies to the problem of an erroneous distance to destination.

Some more info on WAAS/EGNOS: http://www.kowoma.de/en/gps/waas_egnos.htm I guess you should be able to receive the EGNOS signal in the UK, I can in the Netherlands anyway. Not that I get the D's all the time, you do need quite a good view of the sky (since the EGNOS satellites are located over the equator, so not very far above our southern horizon).

My Vista HCx reported the Artemis satellite (number 37) as one of the "connected" satellites a few days ago and it caused the d's to appear in the other satellite bars, indicating WAAS/EGNOS coverage. My unit reported an accuracy of 2 meters at that moment, which is about 6 feet. (This was even indoors, with the GPS sitting on the desk in my room on the upper floor of our house) So yes, these new satellites can be used and 6 feet accuracy corresponds to what the unit reports, whether that might still be optimistic I don't know. In the case I just mentioned my position was spot on and remained very stable for a number of hours. Not that WAAS/EGNOS coverage and 2 meter accuracy in Europe is anything special. I have seen my unit reporting such accuracy before, with good satellite cover and WAAS/EGNOS coverage from satellite number 33 if I recall correctly. But maybe with a few extra satellites the chances of having WAAS/EGNOS coverage will improve a bit in Europe. However, the problem with those geostationary WAAS/EGNOS satellites is that they "hover" over the equator and as such it is quite hard to get a good view at them from higher latitudes. More info: http://www.kowoma.de/en/gps/waas_egnos.htm

Let me add a few remarks to the stuff mentioned above. Writing tracks to the card does not mean that memory is no issue. The tracks on the card are extra, the unit does not use those for displaying etc. The tracks displayed on the screen and in the tracks menu are stored in the (limited) internal memory. This internal memory stores 10.000 track points for the active track and saved tracks combined (as displayed in the track menu). The active track will wrap when this memory is full. So check whether you have reached this limit and maybe delete some old saved tracks to make room for a longer active track. About the track points display limit mentioned by DeadHead82: this might also be the reason for the track not being displayed entirely. Although 3000 trackpoints is quite a lot, if you log very frequently, it indeed won't capture an entire day of walking. So increase that setting if necessary.

Pressing the upper right button (Page/quit) also let's you leave the "keypad", which saves you some joystick action Instead of leaving the keypad you could actually use the keypad to search for the waypoint you wanted to check, to reduce the amount of scrolling. If you are mostly interested in displaying nearby waypoints, you might wan't to try out the Find Nearest option

I guess you should use the Project Waypoint functionality for this. Let's say you have found reference points A, B, C and D. Now you could project waypoints A', B', C' and D' one by one using the given bearing from each reference point (enter some large, unrealistic distance). If you could then draw lines from A to A', B to B', C to C' and D to D', you would find the cache in the place where these lines intersect. Now, how can you draw these lines? The only option I can think of is to set up a route along all those points in the following order: A -> A' -> B -> B' -> C -> C' -> D -> D' Using the off-road setting, this generates lines between all the pairs A and A', B and B' etc. (The lines between A' and B, B' and C etc. can be ignored). View this route on the map page and zoom in towards the intersection of the lines, mark that spot as a waypoint and navigate towards it to find the cache.

Didn't firmware version 3.0 remove limits on microSD cardsize and segmentcount? http://www8.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=3709 (Changelog is not very clear about this, but I believe I read something like that on the forums.)

It's the same on my Vista HCx and I wouldn't expect the Venture HC to be any different. 4 black bars when full, depletion causes bars to disappear one by one. For as far as I know these indicators are based on the voltage level produced by the batteries. As you are using rechargeable batteries (probably NiMH?) this might explain why it takes a long time for the transition from 4 to 3 bars to take place. NiMH batteries have a pretty constant voltage level and as such they appear to be full for quite some time. Often you see that it takes a long time before the indicator goes from 4 to 3, but after that the bars disappear more rapidly. Non-rechargeable batteries show a nice gradual voltage drop that allows a more accurate indication.

I would recommend the new kind of NiMH batteries. The Low Self Discharge ones. Sanyo Eneloop or GP ReCyKo for instance. They have a slightly lower capacity compared to normal NiMH batteries, but as their name suggests they hardly drain when not in use. As such, your GPS is always ready for use as well as the set of spare batteries even if it has been on the shelve for a while.

Apart from the segment limit, isn't the Vista HCx also limited to 2GB, somehow?

You could try to use the tool described in http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=196508 The detailed route can be saved to a .gdb file and using this wingdb tool, you can convert this to a track.

What you are saying is that walking due East (or West) is not the same as walking along a line of constant latitude? That does not seem to match what I read at wikipedia: If you walk along a line of constant latitude, that means that only your longitude changes. That is what I would call walking due East (or West) (since the N part of your position does not change, only the E (or W) part). And The Wikipedia article on rhumb lines seems to agree with me there? Or are you saying that these rhumb lines are not an accurate representation of spheric geometry? Edit 1: I just did some projections using fizzycalc. Projecting at a 90 degree bearing for large distances, and indeed, latitude changes, as you mentioned. So according to FC you would be right and my definition of walking due East is incorrect... Edit 2: My GPSr shows the same phenomenon and creating two waypoints in Mapsource that are on the same latitude does not result in a 90° bearing from one to the other. So apparently following a 90° bearing is indeed not the same as following a line of constant latitude. I still can't really grasp why, but I do see that something might be wrong in my original idea of "going due East" Well, never to old to learn something new, ey Anyway, I guess we can safely asume that if someone gives you such an offset in degrees, you can just determine the destination by adding/subtracting. Either because the scale is to small to show significant error, or because that is exactly the way the offset is calculated in the first place.

Measuring degrees with a piece of string seems a bit hard to me, since the number of degrees longitude the string covers depends on the latitude. Furthermore: if two people are walking due East (or West), one on X degrees latitude and the other on Y degrees latitude, I would say their paths are in parallel. For instance, one might be walking along the equator, the other along one of the tropics. They would both be walking due East (or West), and for as far as I know, these lines are definitely parallel? Correct me if I'm wrong, but please explain it, in stead of just saying it's not true, so we can all learn something

By using your favorite text editor?

No one is talking about miles, and directions. We are talking about coordinates. The reason for getting slightly different results (0.023 minutes offset in longitude) in your example is a standard effect of projecting using a distance and direction. You can simply check this on a slightly bigger scale using a piece of string and a globe. Starting at some point, go one length of string North and then the same length of string West and repeat that the other way around (first West then North), you clearly end up somewhere completely different, because the "circumference" of the earth at a higher latitude is smaller. (Lines of constant longitude converge, lines of constant latitude are parallel) But I don't see the relevance of that in the situation discussed here, which only deals witch coordinates and offsets in degrees (and minutes). Because if you go X degrees to the West and then Y degrees to the North you end up in exactly the same place as when you would go Y degrees to the North and then X degrees to the West (again, easily checked on a globe).

Call me stupid, but isn't that intersection of lines exactly the same point which you would get if you simply add/subtract the offsets from the coordinate? Let me try to refrase your method in a slightly more formal way (hope I understand it correctly): The first line you drew is a line that consists of all the points that have N46° 25.000 + offset as their latitude. The second line you drew contains all points that have W064° 26.000 - offset as their longitude. As such the intersection you found has N46° 25.000 + offset as latitude and W064° 26.000 - offset as longitude. Which is exactly the same as what I calculated. I guess you just made a slight error in adding/subtracting, or in drawing these lines and determinating the intersection? How did you do that exactly anyway?

Isn't that just a matter of adding/subtracting the offset values to the original coordinate? Which would yield: N46° 25.000 + 14.877 minutes = N 46° 39.877 (add, since both the coordinate and offset are Northings) W064° 26.000 - 7.137 minutes = W 64° 18.863 (subtract, since it is the coordinate is given in degrees and minutes West and the offset is to the East) Projections given a direction and distance are less trivial and are better handled by a special calculator or your GPSr if it supports that. But that's a different problem from what the topicstarter mentions.

You can also take a picture of your GPS clock during the trip. In that way you can calculate the offset (timestamp in picture metadata vs. gps clock in the picture) and often the geotagging software enables you to take this offset into account. This is especially useful if you have a camera of which you can only set the hours and minutes, not the seconds. And after all, gps and camera do not need to be synced to the second, of course. Usually you will be standing at the same spot for quite a while to take a picture.

You're not the first person asking this question. Take a quick look around in this forum and you will find some more topics on this particular choice. For instance: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...p;#entry3718842 I think (correct me if I'm wrong) that it boils down to the following: The functionality is pretty much the same. The 60 is often said to be to be a bit more accurate (different chipset and antenna), but the Vista performs pretty good as well. So I'd guess that, besides the price, the layout of the units is the only really important difference? The screens are different. Personally I find the screen of the Vista a little bit better, as I mentioned in the topic linked above. For the handling and button placement, it comes down to personal preference I'd guess. Maybe you know of some people that own one of the two devices, so you can try them out? Or visit a local shop that sells them both, so you can compare them yourself. If it comes down to handling and such, I believe that is the only way to go.