neat_guy

I've tried different area calculations many times with my Oregon and not once has it come out close. Many times the field shape isn't even close. Most of these I am not under any obstructions from satellite view or any other hinderences. One of the most common frustrations in doing these field "borders" is that if I begin in a given spot, encircle the field, and end at the same spot, the unit says I am anywhere up to 350' from that spot. This is where my opinion almost useless comes in.

I haven't kept up on the new units for a year or so, anybody know of any with a reliable area calculation? I have a Garmin Oregon which I have found about useless for this purpose, but great for everything else. I do a lot of recording borders of farm fields and such with an HP Ipaq with third party software but really would like a navigation type unit (Nuvi, Roadmate, etc.) with this capability. I think I'm looking for a needle in a haystack, but if anybody would know of anything, I would find them on here! Thanks

Its just a plain ol' Vista with 24Mb internal memory. I am just toying with a small map (about 3Mb) around our area to figure out how to use the unit.

Nope, no memory card. If I go into the setup, it is showing 14% memory used, so I think the maps are on there taking up space. I wonder if I try a firmware update on the unit, if it would possibly over-write any glitches it may be having?

Been scratchin' my head over this for a few days and my desire to find an answer has finally over-ridden my need for a good mental challenge! In the process of becoming engaged, I found out that my fiancee came with an etrex vista. (BONUS). My background with gps has been more in the industrial sector using mostly 3rd party mapping software with a Megellan Explorist and more recently a Garmin Oregon thrown in for good measure. This little etrex seems to be a pretty handy little unit, but I am experiencing some unexplained paranormal map problems. I loaded some topo/road maps onto it using Mapsource without incident and used it 3-4 times over the period of about two weeks. A few days ago, I turned it on and there were no topo/road maps on the display. Going into the map setup also revealed that there were no maps loaded. I re-transferred the map set from Mapsource, which seemed to be working with the download indicator and everything looked normal (at least to this newbies eyes), but after restarting the unit, still no maps loaded. I have done a "hard reset" on the unit and reloaded the maps and caches, still to no avail, although the caches and waypoints work just fine. Please, help me out here, I'd hate to have to find a new girlfriend to get a gps that works right!

I've dabbled in almost all of these mentioned hobbies: Model Railroading, Jeeping, Nitro R/C Trucks, Golfing, and still live by these: Fishing, Hunting, Camping (the three combined would probably pay for a vacation home) but the most expensive by far was smoking. Gave it up a few weeks ago and my urge for geocaching has gone up. The cheapest hobby I have ever been hooked on is Napping! Last I checked, park benches are still free to use!

Thanks all for posting here! My daughter woke up sick today so that cancelled any and all caching plans. Thanks for giving me an amusing alternative. I also would like to say thanks to the Groundspeak guys for getting things straightened out in a more than reasonable amount of time. (in my opinion anyway). As a member for 4 years, any and all problems have been worked thru. In another forum discussion, the topic is user ID #'s, it is being discussed how fast membership is growing. Yea, these guys have been maintaining/operating this site for quite a while, but as fast as demands (and technology) are changing, I'm sure it seems like they are constantly in a new learning curve. Here's to you, Mr. Geocache Website Designer Guy, THIS BUDS FOR YOU!!!

Just out of curiosity, how would this make imports into GSAK any easier? When it downloads with his user id set, it will also bring with it any vital information from his logs... ie. found, dnf, etc...

Jan 27 was my birthday. Maybe the whole world was revolving around me???

Those caps UNSCREW??? I can't start to count how many of these type caches I've chiseled out of bridges...

Just to add a couple more cents to this conversation, go ahead and log finds from the warm comfort of your armchair! This saves me the worry that you may have gone out and actually defaced the physical condition of the cache so when I finally get to it, I can have the satisfaction that I put in the effort and feel good about actually finding it. But on the other hand, without false logs I would only be at <-- 67 finds! I'm not sure what I feel would be an appropriate time frame to log a find, but off the top off my head I can think of three caches I forgot to post a find for and enough time has passed I am going to go back and sign the log books again before posting.

At 212595, I'm in the same boat and like to think I'm more of the tortoise than the hare and eventually I'll win the race! If you really want to crunch numbers... Take membership fees vs. caches found. Looks like I am one hell of a supporter!!!

Wow. You were nervous that a hunter that is looking for a small floppy eared animal was going to shoot into the middle of his pack of hard trained and well paid for dogs and to shoot you???? So you left??? Wow. You do know that there are people carrying guns all around you every day and you will never know because they are responsible citizens who want nothing more than to go about their daily lives unnoticed, right? You never know... Rabbit, Coyote, Sheriff Deputy... http://www.columbiabasinherald.com/article...news/news01.txt

Thanks folks, the spanner program worked on two of my three applications. I think I have an issue with the gps interface on the third. All in all, a success.

Thanks all. I'm gonna try "spanner" this evening and see where it gets me. I am working with a 60csx and a laptop with no serial ports. Hopefully this will do the trick. 'nuther offer for help... All three programs I want to try this out on only list "com" ports in the gps settings. From my experience, "com" ports refer to serial connections and not usb, hopefully this program takes that into account and my pc will find the signal. If anyones tried this before, I would love to here your experiences before something catches fire!

Please tell me I'm assuming wrong... From what I've gathered on the Garmin 60 csx, the supplied usb cable will only provide garmins format as an output source. If I want the NMEA, I have to use the serial port??? I've been flailing about in garmins support website and I'm lucky I found my way back here! Thanks for any help.

Thanks fellas... I read thru a few online product manuals and started finding the usb is also an output. I've always cached with an ipaq/navman sleeve combination, and use it professionally with other windows based programs (hence the laptop as well) so I have had almost no experience with these dedicated units. Thinking of finding a sole purpose handheld unit just for caching. Better battery life, ruggedness, dependability etc., are looking pretty good about now. Garmin 60 or 76 csx... any opinions between them? Thanks again

Does anyone know of any units (preferrably garmin) capable of sending gps info to a laptop (usb/bluetooth), to act as a receiver when using pc based software? Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!

Hey, Thanks a bunch... I knew I seen that before, but just couldn't find it again today!

This may seem like a newbie question, but is there a way to download gpx files without using the pocket queries??? Any help is appreciated!