FourForty

As a newbie who's only cached in the city so far, the SWAG hasn't been anything interesting so far. I have ordered a whole bunch of swag. All decent enough stuff. i bought it wholesale so it's inexpensive. Out of the eight i've found so far, the SWAG has consisted of things such as an expired fast-food coupon, a dirty rubber worm/fishing bait. nothing really made me say "hey, nifty". I plan on throwing SWAG in the caches even if i don't take. just to help. I also plan on putting each one in with a note to remind to replace with equal value SWAG. Most likely going to be fairly pointless, but i want to try.

Man, I just bought a Colorado 400 t and never saw or read anything about that... I'm a I just took the plung for a full year... I'm always a day late and a dollar short... No big deal, I woulda bought it anyway so, its not much of a loss... Plus, now I can feel like I contributed something to helping maintain the site... I believe it will add another 30 days to your subscription on top of your premium membership. somebody please correct me if i'm wrong. Also, i've never gotten it to work. i just got my Venture HC and it keeps saying "detecting plugin" yet i've confirmed it works with the above link to garmins site. i've also registered it on the site as well.

I follow the arrow or roads/paths to get fairly close. once i'm in the 25ft range i try to circle the cache to get a better understanding of where it is if possible. then i put my GPS down and start hunting. At this point my buddy tends to take the GPS and try to get to ground zero, but hasn't beat me yet.

i had a few protective screens for a nintendo DS. i applied that and then just cut the excess with a blade. it was far cheaper then buying those overly expensive ones that are designed for the GPS units.

not in English, but it gets the point across.

Thanks. I sort of figured it would just be easier to buy the official maps, but i'm on a budget otherwise i would have. I couldn't find a HC unit for a reasonable price so i went to eBay. and even after a bidding war it was less then retail, until the C.O.D. hit my door. heh. oh well. I managed to get icybus to work on my unit/mapsource. it was just a real pain in the but. i managed to fluke out and accidentally find a youtube video that explained it and various other things. very informational. I loaded up Vancouver and the lower mainland plus Victoria, Nanaimo, and most of northern Vancouver island. That was on the highest detail (i don't know if that detail option in mapsource effects what gets transfered to the map, if not, disregard) It seems like enough for me for now. i can switch out maps if needed. i was worried without an SD slot i would be short of memory but this seems like enough for my uses. If the higher quality maps allow me to fit more on there at a better quality or with more updated map data it may be an idea for me to upgrade in the future, But for now i have to stick with the free stuff. Thanks for the info. it helps.

I have the newest version. I downloaded the Ibycus map twice already and it errors every time i try to unzip the file. i just want a basic road-map for my city or the entire province. This is starting to get frustrating. This is starting to persuade me against even getting into this.

Apparently this post messed up when i hit post. so i'll put it as a reply. is this forum always this glitchy and slow? ---------Original post-------- I got a eTrex Venture HC and i'm trying to put a map for my province on it and am not having much luck. I tried downloading the 3GB ibycus map, but it failed, so i'm downloading it again. I tried another map i downloaded and MapSource wouldn't recognize it. After doing a bunch of research both on this forum and online i was directed to try a bunch of things such as a MapToolkit, and a command line map thingy called cgsmapper. Basically, i just want a Map on my unit that's better then the default one that only has major highways. i would prefer one that shows structures/roads. I don't know map sizes, so i don't know if my unit could hold the entire province (British Columbia Canada), if not, then i'll just take my city if possible. Can anybody give me a good guide as to how to achieve this? talk to me like i'm an idiot as well because i'm really new to this GPS/mapping game. i don't really know much.

1. http://www.gpsfiledepot.com/maps/view/21/ 2. yes, saves money in the long run 3. yes, no 4. not printing on paper. use a pda to store the cache info, some gps units will save this info. 5. get a case/screen protector for it. Thanks for the reply. Great information there. When you say cache info, do you mean the coords? or more things like the cache name/description/results? as long as my unit can hold the coors (preferably multiple ones for when i go on a day out), i wont mind having to write down the rest. i plan on using a notebook to record my finds/failures.

So, i've wanted to get into Geocaching since the start, but at the time GPS units were expensive and it wasn't a very big hobby so i didn't want to invest. now i have. I just got a Garmin eTrex Venture HC from ebay. What should i know about this unit that isn't on the garmin website? mainly pertaining to Geocaching. any tips/tricks/warnings regarding the unit? a few questions. 1. does it come with road maps for the Vancouver BC Canada region? if not, where do i get maps, and how much are they? and what are the best maps to get for caching? 2. Does NiHM batteries make a difference compared to regular batts? 3. Can i send coords directly from the pc to the unit via USB? or do i have to manually enter them? 4. what exactly is "paperless". i hear that a lot, yet can't find a definition. 5. Any special care or maintenance things i need to do/know regarding my unit? that's all i can think of. at this point i'm such a newbie i don't even know what i should know. so any information about anything would be greatly useful and appreciated. thank you. -Yet to find his first cache.