sarhound

Aha! Thanks for the help! I did finally get a result from the command line, but I think I'll just go ahead and download the beta. I was waiting for it to go to a final, but since I need the functionality now, I'll take a chance that it won't break on me.

I had read in the forum the other day about using ST2GPX to convert a route in MS S&T to a form that's usable with the GSAK poly filter. I did find the file, but I'm having trouble running it-- I can't get to the command line to run it. When I double click on the executable, I get a quick flash on the screen that it's been called up, but it blips off immediately. Bear in mind that command lines and I are not friends. Can someone give me a heads-up on how to call it up? I know, I should be able to figure this out on my own, but I'm a GUI/visually oriented person. I get a little dyslexic when a lot of text is involved. I also have a C> phobia. I'm trying to work a route to Branson, MO by Friday -- planning a cache raid along the way. It's a real pain to work with MapSend; S&T makes it a lot easier to get a decent route. Slowly plugging my way thru the software maze...

Gotta have the hound! Posted for 2 on CoinTracking, but thought I'd list it here just in case there's a problem over there....

I also have to attest to the fact that hot water will temporarily stop the itching. I got into a horrendous patch of PI this summer and had a major breakout, which popped up on top of the atopic dermatitis that I usually have on my arms. My allergist has me on everything under the sun for symptom relief, but the only thing that works on a consistent basis is parboiling the patches with water that is as hot as I can stand. It'll kill the itch for a few hours. I know, I was taught just the opposite in nursing school, but I just gotta go with what works, from personal experience....

Here are the bloodhounds from whom "sarhound" is derived. They are Miss Molly Maguire (black and tan) and Zander (big red boy.) Both came from Midwest Bloodhound Rescue out of the Chicago area, and they are soon to be joined by Miss Molly's litter brother, Curly. They are excellent caching companions, as well as my partners and best friends. Miss Molly is a mama's girl, while Zee is a definite daddy's boy. Both of them are so smart, it's scary; if Curly is anything like his sister, we're going to be outnumbered down here. They'll spend their days plotting mischief to create...

Saw the report on Channel 11 tonight. I thought I recognized DreamCacher! Way to go, girl!

The only thing that has made me consider another brand is to have the ability to project waypoints, but since I've got that capability now with CacheMate, I'd grab another Explorist in a heartbeat. Just wish Magellan would get around to making it easier to load maps. There should be no need to jump thru hoops using Conversion Manager to get a map on the unit.

I've got my explorist 500 set to the map screen, with distance to final and bearing. I'm used to working that way in the field during search exercises, and the explorist has been pretty accurate for me-- I generally get within 4 to 5 feet of what I'm looking for, and I get the occasional bonus of a "zero" reading which is dead-on accurate. Gotta love when you're almost standing on the cache (or literally standing on the cache like I did one day, when I scrambled up on some mini logs and found the cache between my feet.)

It's making me homesick, stuck down here in Texas! I miss the ferries... Will be waiting with baited breath...

I've got close to a thousand points stored in my 500, divided up into neat little chunks of 100 files, sorted by location. I use GSAK to transfer them to the SD card, and it takes only a few seconds to shoot them to the unit. I love this little GPSr even more with every cache run that I make.

We're voting for a coin that represents the floppy-ears of the world to go along with the pointy-ears coins that we have coming already. That would make a great matched set! (Drool is optional, of course.) sarhound, K9 Miss Molly Maguire, and K9 Zander (the floppy-ear members of the team.)

I'd like 2 coins, if they're still available. Thanks!

I'd be interested in 2 coins, please.

I'd like to be added to the waitlist, if it's still an option. Would like 2 coins, please. They look really good. Thanks!

I'd like to be put on the waitlist for 2 coins, if they become available. Thanks!

Ooooh, I didn't even think about that. I had it on a lanyard around my neck and tucked inside my shirt, since I had both hands occupied with 130 pounds of dog. That would definitely do it. Now to figure out a way to keep it in a decent position without losing it. (Hah, I can just picture strapping it flat on my head with a strap going under my chin...and getting stuck under low-lying tree limbs...) Thanks for pointing it out. It's something that I didn't pay close attention to, but now it's so obvious.

I opened up a tracklog in Google Earth to see a trail run by one of my bloodhounds. It's showing some rather extreme inaccuracies, which I'm trying to figure out. It was a fresh tracklog-- I dumped everything prior to starting my run, and stopped recording after returning to base. We were running on hiking trails with moderate to heavy tree cover. The skies were clear that night. This is the actual trail that was run (by my best estimation.) The circled areas show the track errors. On a previous track that I opened in Google Earth while doing a caching run in another nature preserve, the track was very true to where I walked and was accurate in distance (about 3 miles.) The trail I ran with Miss Molly was only 0.2 miles. I'm assuming that the tree cover must've caused some of the problems. I seem to remember that the tracklog recording rate could be altered so it wasn't "dropping breadcrumbs" so frequently, but I can't find a reference to it in the manual. I thought that maybe decreasing the recording rate might make a difference. Does anyone know how to access it? Any other ideas on what might have happened?

I'm almost ashamed to say that I managed to get myself lost in a small nature preserve near my house. I've been going out there for the last 4 years with my bloodhounds, and I know the area like the back of my hand. To make it worse, I'm the senior K9 handler for my search and rescue team.... I was out with my oldest hound looking for a cache; evening was approaching, and the shadows were lengthening. Miss Molly and I entered a thicket area that was liberally laced with mesquite trees (bear in mind that in Texas, everything either bites, stings, or stabs you here.) A branch whipped back and caught me in the face-- 4 inch thorns. It ripped my glasses off my face; I heard them hit the ground behind me. I froze on the spot, since I can't see my hand at the end of my arm without them. Being reasonably well prepared, I dropped my pack on the ground, tied off Miss Molly, and got on my hands and knees to pat down the ground. I worked my way out in a spiral, but couldn't find them. It was getting dark, and I was having difficulty seeing the GPS screen. I pulled out my flagging tape, tied off a triangular area where I had been hit, and got on the cel phone to my husband, who is our team incident commander. He knew I was in it knee-deep without my vision, so he hauled over to the preserve. I had managed to get back out to a paved path area, but Miss Molly was overheating, so I had to park there and water her to cool her off. My husband has only been out to the preserve a few times, so he wasn't as familiar with the trails as me; he was headed in the right general direction, but was off by quite a distance. After much whistle-blowing on my part, he finally found us. We decided to go back in to look for my glasses-- no driving, no work without them. We got there and he did a thorough ground and tree search, but no luck. By now, it's full dark. The undergrowth there was very thick, and we had no satellite lock, so the GPS was of no use. I was bleeding from multiple mesquite stabs, hot, and thoroughly pi**ed by this time and wanted nothing more than to get home to a shower and bed, but we couldn't find the way back out. Thank God for Miss Molly. She knows the command "take us home," since I use it on every return we make from training trails that we run. I looked at her (she was more than ready to get out of there by that time) and asked her, "Can you take us home?" Never let anyone say that bloodhounds aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer. She made a circle, then headed out. About 10 minutes later, we were on a dirt trail that I recognized. A mile later, she had us back to the truck. The eerie thing is, when I went back to check the tracklog for the GPS later (after replacing my glasses,) when the GPS picked up a lock again, she was almost exactly on the trail that we took into the undergrowth. There's a lot of folks who think that scent theory is voodoo science, but I can attest to the fact that it's an extremely valuable resource. Needless to say, I now wear my glasses on a tether when I go out. I think I'm also going to tell my husband to scent the hounds off the truck seat if I fail to show up one day...they'll find me. Gotta love those hounds...

Oh, dear God, I think I've died and gone to heaven....

I ran into the same problem when I first tried to shift waypoints to my "found" database. Run a filter that will show you only the caches that you want to move-- I either put a User Flag on them, or change their status to "Found." After the filter is run, you're left with the subset that you want to move. Go to Database--Move/Copy waypoints, and go ahead and move them. Only those points will shift to the new database. I ruined my "found" database a few times until I finally figured out what I was doing wrong. Hope this helps!

Thanks to everyone! I tried CondorTrax's method, and I now have a nice, new, shiny trail wandering thru the caches that I broiled myself for yesterday (it hit 104 down here yesterday, then dropped to 75 today. Go figure. Ya just gotta love Texas weather.) Now to strap a GPS on my tracklayer (aka "dogbait") and figure out how to carry one myself while being dragged behind a 120 pound, 4 footed black and tan or red drooling locomotive, also known as a bloodhound (without destroying said GPS unit when I get dragged flat on my face.) I'm going to overlay the tracks on each other on a satellite map so we can see how closely the hound trail follows the actual tracklayer's trail. See, I can justify my geocaching obsession. Look at what it's taught me to do! Now my husband, Deputyhound, (who is also our team founder and incident commander,) can't grumble so much when I drag him out to go geocaching. It's for the team, man! With GSAK, Cachemate, GPS Babel, and Google Earth, I can rule the world... Thanks a million, folks. I do appreciate it.

We're starting to use them in K9 training. We send a unit out with the tracklayer (the dog bait), and then have the handler carry a unit while running the dog. By overlaying the 2 tracks, we can see just how closely the dog runs on the tracklayer's trail. This info gets more important the older the trail is-- the dog may run several feet to a couple of hundred yards off the actual trail, yet still find the tracklayer. Gotta love technology....

Too cool. I'll give it a run tonight when I get home. I appreciate the help; we've been trying to figure out a way to display the setup for the navigation courses for awhile, and it will help us in the planning stages. We need courses of moderate difficulty, which can be a real killer for the setup people to do, since we have to fight our way thru the terrain first. We don't necessarily know how the final legs of the course will come out-- it's figured by computer. It's going to be nice to see that someone won't accidentally fall off a cliff by seeing where things actually fall on a satellite map. Topos for our training areas are pretty poor. Most of them just show a vast "blank" area with some contour lines, but I can personally attest to having hit bottom in a few places where gullies or water features have not been shown. Wish I could stay home today to do some tinkering...

You lost me there-- I've never been good with command line stuff. If I'm reading this correctly: -i is the input format (gps type); -f is the track name (which I should change to "explorist?") -o is the output file type (kml); -F is the actual file name. Is that right? My introduction to computer programming was so long ago that TRS 80s were still in use, and I never figured out DOS. My brain is warping now-- I've been stuffing it with things that aren't medical or bloodhound related, and it's going into revolt now. Aaagh! I also looked at upgrading to GE Plus, but there's no mention of which Magellan units are supported, and there's no contact information listed where I can ask someone by email. If it supports a 500, it's worth the price.

I'm trying to figure out a way to get a tracklog from my Explorist 500 to Google Earth. I've imported it into Mapsend Topo, but now I'm stuck... can't figure out how to export or convert it to a format that GE can use. I'm needing the ability to use the tracklogs on a satellite map as an adjunct to setting up a navigation course for a search and rescue exam. The topo map in Mapsend is useless, since it probably hasn't been updated in years and doesn't accurately depict the area that I was in today. GE's satellite image is excellent-- even shows some of the dirt trails in the area where we would base a route search off of them, but I need just a little bit more. Anyone with any suggestions?