JeepCachr

What methods are people using for sorting there cache files for storing on the explorist? What good does all this memory give me if there is no good way to sort and store the caches. Now that GSAK supports it natively I'm trying to figure out a way to sort my caches into manageable chunks and make it intuitive to select which geocache file I need depending on the area. The 200 cache limit means I need lots of files.

That tells you where the car has been but not where it is.

Treasure hunting, thats what I do it for. Sometimes the treasure is the swag other times its the view, and my favorites is when its the journey.

what's wrong with flamingos? i'm from michigan. don't nobody be dissing no flamingos. I apologize to the flamingos and to those who are fans of the flamingos. I meant no ill will or mockery towards either. I thought the flamingo was an Ohio thing and being from Michigan I was unfamilar with its relevance to this event or to geocaching. I was just trying to find out what was the deal with the flamingos. Do I need to bring a flamingo with me to this event to identify to others that I am a geocacher?

Won't applying power to the tap via a PSP cigarette lighter cord charge the GPS with the cable in the down position?

definately not if it was a surface mount. One cold solder joint will mess you up if you happen to drop the thing one day. I used to work at a place where we replaced chips and whatnot on circuit boards, some of the things we did required magnification, and very precise tools. As for any mods that I've made, well, not quite yet, but I did aquire a delorme tripmate that I'm going to be converting into an APRS tracker which I'll have in my car with me. Theory is it'll be all self contained and running, all I'll have to do is make sure it's plugged in to the cigarette lighter, and it'll do the rest. What good will that do you say? It'll allow me to report my position while I'm driving around caching/whatever. Since I don't own a cell phone (personally I just don't like to be always be reached by people, when I'm away, I like to be away), this will be handy if anyone needs to know whereabouts I am. If not a cell phone what does that use to broadcast your position?

I call shenanagins. The only way you could make statements like you have just made is to have been going to 10 known confirmed known locations not to geocaches. Not every geocache has accurate coordinates. There is no handheld consumer GPS with the accuracy you think you have. Its just not possible if you look at the underlying technology. Of course the best GPS to most GPS users is the one that they own and they would choose no other.

Whats the deal with the flamingos? Please excuse my ignorance, I'm from Michigan.

If Lil elaphants doesn't adopt try posting over at the michigan geoacching organization. I'm sure someone there would be happy to adopt. Its a little far for me in a direction I don't travel much.

Geocache mode on the explorist falls just a little bit short. I think its better than Garmins attempt on the 60CS but it still has some glaring faults that are preventing me from using it. Most noticebly is its limitation of 200 points per file. It was hard enough for me to go from a GPS that could do a thousand POI's to the explorist which does 500 (per waypoint file) but then to use the geocache manager I have to limit it to 200 and I can't edit move or delete them on the gps. They sure look pretty on the map though.

I know I'm probably pushing the envolope now but is there any way to do it on a pocket PC? My brother lugs a laptop along and I use a pocketPC. He'll use this as another excuse to justify carrying that monstrosity along. I think we'd generally just do it the night before a cache hunt and not do it on the fly.

Thanks! GPS Babel Geocaching tricks We have a group hunt planned this weekend and would like to hunt only caches that none of us have found. gpsbabel -i gpx -f yourarea.gpx -i gpx -f myfinds.gpx -i gpx -f hisfinds.gpx -i gpx -f herfinds.gpx -x duplicate,shortname,all -o gpx -F todolist.gpx Translation: Start with a PQ of the entire area. Merge the 'found' cache lists from each cacher on the hunt. Discard anything that appears on the list more than once. Obviously, if the PQs aren't for exactly the same area/cache type, additional filtering may be needed.

Just for reference for others West Marine will pricematch online prices. Online or in their stores. West Marines price matching policy

Weren't the 60 and 76 Garmins responce to the Meridian Platinum and color? So Magellan hasn't updated those units yet but they were first. Few people realize how much bigger Garmin is than Magellan. Magellan is doing pretty good considering. Heres some statistics exerpted from this article on in house production advantages- Pinpoint Production published in December of last year. Garmin has the following percantage of the market in these categorys- recreational handheld - 70% aftermarket automotive receivers- 60% boaters between 30 and 40% Aviation - 90% Recreational hand helds is the category geocaching is in and Magellan shares that 30% space with other companys like Lowrance and Cobra. I don't have any statistics on Magellan.

I have an explorist 600. At this time it is not compatanle with the blue nav maps. Its screen is smaller than the meridians or the garmin 60cs but it is a much higher quality display than the display so in my opinions its easier to use. Held side by side to a Garmin 60CS both screens are very good but I'd give the edge to the Garmin. Overall the device is much smaller. I was surprised by how small it is. You can't have a huge display in a tiny device, so its a trade off. You need to decide whats important to you. There are some flaws in the 600 like its compatibility with maps. Hopefully Magellan will address and correct these.

Other than the Keenpeople.com online tool has any one found or written an application that could take a bunch of GPX files of different peoples unfound caches and generate a GPX file that only contained caches none of the people had done?

Streets and trips has good routing. GSAK can output to a file that you can import your caches as pushpins. If you don't want to register GSAK for $20 you could use GPS Babel to do that conversion. But if you give GSAK a try I think you'd be paying the $20 in a heartbeat. I think there is a plug in available to give you voice prompts for turning. I know for sure its available for Map Point and its only $10. The problem with any mapping program is that it isn't going to show you the best place to park. So while the mapping software will get you close it usually doesn't show the parking lot. My favorite mapping software is Mapopolis for the PPC. Its big advantage over any PC based mapping software I've tried is its ability to dynamically re-route if you make a wrong turn or decide to try an alternate route to the cache. It also lets you easily import caches into it and set them as your destination by clicking on them.

I checked your profile, congrats on finally logging one!

This looks to be a great event. I just logged my "will attend" and sent Trippy an email about presenting a pocketPC session.

So that I wouldn't have to fuss with the cable and so that I can load or unload the memory card from my PDA. I could potentially share waypoints or routes with other explorist users that I haven't met yet. Idealy I'd like to remove the memory card by removing the battery door but not have to remove the battery. That way the unit would remain water tight but would still have the card easy to remove. Because of the way it goes into the explorist I rarely remove it.

When you plug the USB cable into the explorist you have to chose whether you want to see the 8mb internal memory or the SD card to be visible as a drive letter on your PC. You don't need the SD card to have multiple waypoint files. I'd just as soon pull the card and use it in my various card readers, and pocket PC's but having to remove the battery and recalibrate the compass every time makes it troublesome. Though it is nice to load files to the SD card in the field with just my PDA and no cables. Isn't a dirty battery door gasket a potential for leakage in every GPS? I don't see why having a memory slot in there would make it less waterproof. That is unless your saying the garmins battery compartments are sealed from the rest of the gps and would still be water proof without a battery door on them.

Definately post that over at Migo. I'm sure you could get a few people interested. I like the rules, they seem fair and balanced.

Yeah I'm hoping to attend that event to. Its already June and I haven't been to an event this year. I'm feeling event withdrawal...

Mapsource is the only one that will load maps into your GPS. There are many other mapping programs that you can take the data from your GPS and use it. Heres a great review on 3 products- GPS Passions website PC mapping review There are other programs like oziexplorer, usa photo maps and expert GPS that can take your GPS data (waypoints, tracks and routes) and plot them on free satelite or topo maps from the internet.

I've seen this mentioned before as the reason why Garmin doesn't do memory cards. I don't believe it for a second. On all of their units that aren't sealed with a battery inside (like the foretrex 201) there is no reason that the memory card couldn't go in the battery compartment like the explorist 600 does. I don't like taking the battery out to swap the card though, that part is not optimum. Another thing I have never understood is why Garmin won't allow you to load more than one set of waypoints. Now that I have a magellan and have the ability to use a memory card I've stopped using the memory card. If I ever drop the money on their maps I can see the need for the memory card. In the mean time the 8mb of internal memory can hold more 35kb 500 waypoint files than I can imagine loading. Thats right 35k per 500 points.