sarhound

It is quite possible to "get lost" even when you are intimately familiar with an area. Case in point: I was out in a nature preserve that I have been tramping around in for the last 4 years. I know the area inside out. I was with my bloodhound, Miss Molly Maguire, who has participated in several search and rescue missions. She has been training in this park since she was a 3 month old puppy. It was approaching dusk, and I was hunting for a cache in an area that was in heavy brush and undergrowth. I got slapped in the face with a mesquite branch that had 4 inch thorns. It ripped my glasses off my face and tore a hole in several places on my body. I heard my glasses hit the ground behind me. I immediately stopped, dropped to the ground, and did a spiral hands and knees search after flagging the area with my flagging tape (I had my small search pack with me that day.) I never found my glasses. I got a phone call out to my husband, who is our search team incident commander. He got out to the scene when it was full dark. He is not as familiar with the area as I am, so he was having difficulty finding me. I dug my whistle out of my pack and started signalling, so he was able to finally reach me. We got to the area I had flagged, and we both did a search on the ground. We still didn't find them. I am almost blind without them, so I was having difficulty in even seeing my GPS, let alone seeing the breadcrumb trail, and we were having to bust brush just to manuever in the area. I was hot, tired, bleeding, and thoroughly unhappy. Miss Molly was hungry and ready to go home, but we were now in the position of not being able to find our way back to a trail that would lead us back to the truck. The GPS could give us the general direction, but trying to find a trail in the dark was next to impossible. One good thing about having a search bloodhound-- I gave her the command to "take us back to the truck." She cast around for a couple of minutes, then set off. Within 5 minutes, she had us back to a dirt trail, and within 15 minutes we were back to the vehicle. When I compared the backtrack on the GPS later, she had taken us out almost exactly on the route that we had taken into the brushy area. Thank God for bloodhound noses. Moral of the story-- I now pack a spare pair of glasses, and even on short jaunts, I go nowhere without at least the small urban pack that I carry on searches. If the distance is longer, I go with my full pack. I'm also teaching the other 2 hounds how to "take us back" from whatever place we start from, so they will be able to find the truck and return us in the event of emergency. BTW- this nature preserve is only 9 miles from my house, and is probably only 300 acres in size. It is in the middle of an urban area, bounded by major roads and is fenced on 3 sides. I still managed to get lost in one of the more remote interior areas which would probably be only a half-mile hike to one of the boundaries, as the crow flies. It's tough to do when it's dark, you're blind and bleeding, and the terrain is as uneven as it is out there.

I always wear leather work gloves and poke with a stick before I reach in to get a cache. I got bitten on the inner thigh 20 years ago by a brown recluse spider; the resulting damage came within a couple of millimeters of the femoral artery, and I almost lost my leg. It took a few years to heal up the injury. I still carry a scar, and I've lost sensation in the area. Needless to say, if it has more than 4 legs, you'll usually see me headed in the opposite direction...

I love my GlobalSat BT338. Just got it last weekend and I've been flying around with an iPAQ and Mapopolis all over BFE with only the occasional hiccup-- usually when I'm so far out that the dirt roads don't show on the map. HAL gets a little frantic when I overshoot a turn, yelling "Turn around! Turn around!" He eventually settles down and reroutes when he figures out that I'm not going to cooperate. He even survived a fall where I thought I squished him (the BT unit was in a pouch on my belt, and the PDA was in it's hard case in a fanny pack.) Not only did he survive the fall; I kept a satellite lock, to boot. HAL is my new best friend.

I'm in the Frisco area, so drop an email if you're interested in going on a cache run. I usually try to get a run going twice a week.

I have to second the ability of Mapopolis on a handheld, with a Bluetooth GPSr. I gave mine a test run yesterday going to some little bitty burgs in Oklahoma. It routed us from North Texas to the cache sites WAAAY out in the country. We named him "Hal." The voice prompts were a little soft, so I've got to find some way to amplify the sound. "Hal" would get frantic when we overshot or deliberately ignored his directions, but then he would refigure the route and give us a pleasant little "BING" to let us know we were on course. He had no problem finding the little county roads that we were looking for. The only problem I had was in trying to figure out which of my points I wanted to navigate to, since the GPXtoMaplet conversion doesn't give you a default label that appears on the screen. You have to tap the point to get the label to show up. After you figure out which point you want, it's not too bad to get the navigation to work. When we hadn't heard from him in awhile, Deputyhound asked me if we were coming up to any turnoffs. I told him that "Hal" had stepped out to get a cold beer, but he'd get back to us before we had to make any major decisions. All in all, the package deal was excellent-- BT receiver and mapping software for $209. "Hal" and I are going to give it another try in a couple of days. I'm waiting for a windshield mount with a power cable to arrive. Should free up a hand to be able to work the gearshift in the Jeep.

82. If it doesn't bite you, sting you, or poke you, it's not a Texas cache. Corollary to #82: 82a. The five inch mesquite thorns are always at eye level. Furthermore, they attack you when you least expect it.

OK, I admit I'm obsessed... Even the hounds are getting into caching. As soon as they see me pick up the GPSr and the PDA, they start heading for the door.

I'm primarily going to be using the bluetooth receiver for in-car navigation to geocaches, and if it works well, we will start using it during search and rescue for routing to staging areas. There are times when a staging area changes on the fly, and we may not have maps available for some areas, so the PDA maps with voice alerts would definitely be a major help. Not to mention that I need a new toy to play with....

I'm looking for a Bluetooth unit to use with my PDA, and I'm considering the Garmin GPS 10. I'll have to admit that after all the research I've done, I'm starting to have a minor brain meltdown. I've read on some websites that it is compatible with both Pocket PC and Bluetooth enabled laptops, but I thought that I also read somewhere that it can be used with a Palm unit. Does anyone know if this is true? It's using Mapsource CitySelect as it's primary software for map transfer; it includes nRoute software for PC laptops and Que software for Pocket PCs, so I'm assuming that I can shovel some POIs over from GSAK just as if I were going to send them to a regular Garmin unit. (You'll have to forgive me-- I run an Explorist 500, so I'm not familiar with Garmin software.) Am I right? If I can run the software on both my Palm and my husband's PPC and be able to load a boatload of caches, this would be an ideal solution. Then it won't matter which unit goes out with us. Otherwise, we have to decide which version of Mapopolis to run. They've got a package deal with a map card and a bluetooth unit, but it only runs on the Palm. If we go the PPC route, we've still got to find a separate bluetooth unit, which will run the bill up a little higher. Can anyone tell me of their experiences with this unit?

Testing to see what's happening with the forums...

I just tried it again today with 2 different areas, 100 caches apiece. They showed up as geocaching files today. Actually, I ran dual files today, both POI and GS. I tried a couple of the GS files, but it seems like the unit runs more sluggishly when calling up a new geocaching point. It just feels clunkier. I don't see an overwhelming advantage to the format, so I'm going back to my tried and true POI files. Since I'm using GPXSonar for all the pertinent information, anyway, there's no need to fiddle around with the Magellan implementation. At least I know I CAN make it work, if I need to. I just don't think it's going to be necessary. Thanks for the help; I love how quickly problems get fixed here. I'm glad there's folks around who can iron out the wrinkles that I run into every so often.

OK, so now I'm the one who's having a problem with my 500... I've been using GSAK to generate POI files that I store on my SD card and have had no problems moving the files; I've got 700-800 loaded currently. I wanted to experiment with Geocache files to see what happened with the firmware update. I generated the GS files; they transferred to the SD card (I can see it as an 18 Kb file in Windows Explorer), but I can't activate it as my default POI file on the 500. It doesn't show as being present on either the card or in internal memory. I generated the file from GSAK using the "%smart" tag; does it have to be generated with the "%code" tag instead? I wouldn't think it would make that much of a difference, but maybe it's something in the coding on the Magellan side. I'm not where I can experiment with it right now, but I think I was able to put .gs files on the SD card when I first got the unit (with the original firmware.) I changed to the POI format because I wanted to be able to delete the points after I found them, and it's not possible with the .gs format. I'm interested in finding out if there's any improvement since the new things came along.

I just upgraded my Windows Firefox to 1.5; the tab problem at the top of the profile page is fixed, but when I go to the Gallery, the last row of pictures are cut off half way through the middle. I think that's the only thing that I've found that's still broken, so far. It's looking pretty nice now!

It rolled off of the table, and onto the floor, And then my poor meatball rolled right out the door... Ahh, that brings back memories of Girl Scouts....

Hey, kiddo, (aka Mrs. DayHunter,) Let me go fiddle with GSAK later tonight and I'll see what I can do to get the points to your Garmin. I couldn't remember what kind of GPSr you had. See ya soon! sarhound

I downloaded the eval copies of Quakemap and MapAdvisor a few days ago, but I can't get the maps to show on my LifeDrive. I tried a 2 level zoom and an 8 level zoom, putting them into the folders suggested on my SD card. They weren't available. The only map I got to work was a 2 level zoom that was installed directly into main memory. What steps did you take to get the maps to show on your LifeDrive?

If you go here, GPS coordinate converter, you can enter the coordinates that you have, which are in DD.MM.MM and it will convert them to decimal degrees for you. Copy the N decimal degrees, paste it into the "N" field on the Lat/Long tab of the FIND window of S&T, then copy the W decimal degrees and paste it into the "W" field. You should show up in the right place. I spent about 20 minutes last night trying to figure out the recommended approach to a cache last night and ran into the same problem-- it took me a bit to figure out that S&T took a different coordinate format, since I wasn't paying attention to the error message.

Barring any unforseen circumstances, I'll be there, too. Love those geocoins!

The hounds of the sarhound and Deputyhound team, First Response Search and Rescue, at Christmas... From the left: K9 Alejandro Rojo (Zander), K9 Miss Molly Maguire, K9 in training Curly Jo

I actually have had the cache in my hand and not realized it. I thought it was a piece of trash that I'd picked up, but it was a log hidden in a Bic stick-style pen, stuffed under a brick wall. It took me 5 tries to get that dadgum cache, and my GPSr was reading "1 foot" at the location. I had even set the GPSr unit down on the cache at one point. Talk about feeling like a doofus...

He must have been caching on company time.... I'd like to have that kind of job.

We had a cache that was drilled into a 20 pound rock. I couldn't get the surrounding container opened, so I lugged said rock back to the cachemobile in order to extract it. In the meantime, a building inspector pulled up right next to the spot where the rock had been living. I tried waiting him out, but he was parked for the duration, shuffling papers back and forth on a clipboard. I wound up seatbelting the rock into the front seat and drove it around for a half an hour before the guy finally went away. To top it all off, the road I needed to use to return the cache was blocked off, so I ended up sneaking around the barricade with the cachemobile, hauling the rock over to it's hiding spot as fast as I could, and peeling out at warp speed, before the local police could come to ask me why I was behaving in such a bizarre fashion. Needless to say, my husband almost had a conniption when he found out I had driven a large rock around town on the leather seats. Well, ya just gotta do what ya just gotta do...

I would not hesitate to replace my 500 with another one. The SD card and the file structure were the major selling points for me, and they have not disappointed me. I've got well over a thousand POIs stored on the SD card, along with maps for a variety of areas. I keep a power inverter in the truck, so when we go on longer trips, I have no worries about keeping the battery charged. The accuracy is phenomenal. I usually get an indication of 3 to 7 feet when I find caches. I'd consider a Garmin if they had an SD card, but I've got a workable system now that takes very little time to maintain. I don't use Geocache Manager, since it's basically useless. GSAK does everything that you need to load waypoints. I just wish the Topo software wasn't so clunky to use. Mapping programs have come a long way in the last few years, so there's no excuse to have something that looks like it dates back 10 years or more. My Magellan and I have spent many happy hours together...

Most of us on our search and rescue team use the Silva Ranger. It's easy to use, has survived a bunch of banging/dropping/dunking, and can be used as an emergency signal mirror when needed. My husband has said that he also likes the Brunton model; he said the bezel is a little easier for him to read. You might check to see which one looks better to you.

I've never felt uncomfortable out caching by myself, but then again, I was raised in a correctional facility family. I learned at a very young age to pay attention to my surroundings. I also project an attitude that you really don't want to mess with me. Believe me, if someone wants to come after me, they'd better want to get me pretty badly, because I'm not going to leave enough of them behind to scrape up and put into a body bag. If I'm going, you're going with me , buddy. My husband is law enforcement, and he says he feels sorry for anyone who might try anything. It also helps when you have a couple of big dogs out with you. Most folks don't want to approach anything that is the size of a small pony. Best advice-- be aware of who and what is around you, and if you ever feel that something is not right, pay attention to your gut feeling. It can save a lot of headaches.