parson11

I have had good success with Beeline GPS. It has always led me to the cache.

I was in the US Navy from 1960 to 1963. I left as an Electronics Technician Petty Officer second class. I was on a ship the whole time, first on the USS Cadmus a repair ship out of Norfolk, VA then on the USS Mauna Loa an amunition ship out of Bayonne, NJ. The Mauna Loa was part of a recommisioned fleet that was involved in the Cuban Missle Crisis. I never regret my military experience and feel it was a time that a young man of 18 grew up and matured. I also thank all our military personel that are now and in the past serving our country.

Interesting encounters!

I think the site is fine the way it is now. I think also the membership cost is reasonable. I do think it would be possibly good to have a 30 day trial to this service and then require joining the membership. After 30 days someone should be able to determine if the service is valuable enough to join.

Wow! I've always felt that leaving a tract was like sending out an advertisement or solicitation. Some will be responsive and it will meet the need, others will throw it away. Obviously it must work in certain circumstances or advertisers and Christians would not continue to use this method. However, leaving or giving a tract without showing concern for whom you are giving it to leaves much to be desired. In sales training you are taught not to sell the product, but to sell yourself as a person they would want to deal with. Many times tracts are left with the attitude of doing a "duty" of selling the product with out establishing a relationship with an individual who could then trust what they are saying or giving away. I wouldn't discourage tracts but I think it would be much better to show yourself as a person others can respect and trust, and then give away your faith and beliefs if requested. Again I know in sales it isn't hard to sell your product when they believe in you. They may even request your services and demand to buy what you are selling. People and relationships are more important than objectives. In faith it is not I believe "the end justifies the means". If I know you as a genuine person I would want to get to know, I will want to read what you have left for me to find.

I think it would be great if this post or another could be used for South Suburban Chicago Geocacher posts of interest. As far as breakfasts, lets see over this month how many would show an interest in such an event or get together and we will do it. One thing I know is people will any excuse to put a good breakfast in their stomachs. With the weather getting better we probably will get that springtime urge to try and redo our winter bodies to some great shape with walking exercise. Mine always thinks I'm joking!!! Great to hear from you guy's and some of you South Suburban lerkers drop a line too!

Well I ordered Direct route Monday from KMART ...$106 total delivered price. It arrived today Thursday April 8th. I tried it while driving my route and found it to be very accurate in representing the streets around here. I loaded most of metro Chicago and south Indiana in about 55 meg on the sd card. I will describe later any observations I make that may be helpfull. Thanks to everybody for the advice!

As of Saturday April 3rd they had some left of the merigold and two of the geko 101's. I tried the Geko and it was very accurate and even worked in the car. It also was very small and handy for recording walkind like a pedometer. I compared the accuracy against the Merigold and it was down to 16 ft most times. What I didn't like about it was the fact that it used AAA batteries and used them up quickly and that there was no pc link for tracking waypoints. But.... for $40 you sure can't beat the price.

I have a IPAQ 2215 and bought the Ambicon CF card GPS at Circuit City. This unit comes with an auxilliary antenna which greatly improves the signal. The software that comes with it is a trial version of Pocket Map. To update the trial version would cost $80.00. I found that the GPS worked great if you were in a car but the unit would not work reliably without the auxilliary antenna when geocaching. The display is great but it is awkward to use with the antenna attached and walking. I thought it was too much to pay for the included trial software upgrade and looked around and found Mapopolis. They have basic navigation software which is very detailed for a subscription of $30 a year or a routing detail software for $99 a year. The benefit is you can have the latest upgrade by downloading. The software includes Canada and Europe. They do have a CD but it does not include upgrades or Canada and Europe. You can download all the data to your computer or make your own CD's. I found the detail very accurate. Well, I returned the CF card GPS and bought instead a Magellan Gold which with a cable I could hook up to my Pocket Pc for voice routing when in the car and use by hand when geocaching. Mapopolis will actually route you by voice turn by turn, I may buy the Direct Route for the Magellan Gold but for now I put the waypoints on the Pocket PC and use the Magellan while in the field. One side point: I also have Microsoft streets and find that the address search and location is a lot faster on the Pocket PC probably because it has less data to search. So my vote goes to Mapopolis and I use GPXSonar also.

Wow! Thanks for all the info. This is what this forum is all about, gleaning the experience of others. Well I guess the bottom line is this: Having used Direct Route would you have purchased it if you knew what you know now? What price point would you put on this software that you consider would be a fair value? Maybe Magellan could monitor some of these posts to get user feedback. Again you have all been very helpfull to me as well as many that have silently been following this thread.

Thanks for the reply! Lets see if there are more out there in the south suburbs of Chicago that are interested in getting together at some future date. It would be good to have a list of South Suburban GeoCachers.

The responses have certainly been helpfull! I would like to know a little more about my original question which was how much more detail do you see of the streets? Does it get down to your home street address or just more of the main roads. Does it show any trails or bike paths? I purchased the Magellan Gold at my local Orland Park, IL Walmart on closeout. I noticed other Walmarts still had the higher price on their units so it could have been the manager of that store was closing out his selected stock.

Recently Walmart was closing out Magellan Meridian Gold units for $120.00 and Geko 101 for $40.00. I purchased the Gold at that price and am well pleased, but am wondering how much more street detail I will get if I purchase Direct Route software. I use Mapopolis on the IPAQ Pocket PC for routing and use present gps position from the Gold. How about a review from those that are using Direct Route software. Much thanks

Just wondering if there is any planned outings on the Southwest Area of Cook or Will county, Illinois. Any meetings or get togethers planned?