MacBandit
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Posts posted by MacBandit
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I guess you haven't read the airline disclaimers or listened to the flight attendants pre-flight requests. All the commercial flights I have been on request you turn off all electronic devices and devices with receivers are to stay off the entire flight. I had several flights recently that even singled out GPS devices. The airline pages also lists GPS as a device to leave off during flight.
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I was getting this problem with my Vista a couple weeks ago and I tied it to slow screen response due to having WAAS on.
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PC-Mobile Re-Radiating antenna.
When I attach the re-radiating loop to my GPSMAP 60CS antenna my signal strength actually deteriorates.
When I connect the antenna portion of the PC-Mobile directly to the MCX jack the signal strength improves, and is superior to the 60CS built in antenna.
I'll test mine as well to verify that this is the case on multiple units. I'll get back on this soon.
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SATELLITE PAGE QUESTIONS:1. What is the little circle silver with red dot bug that travels around the outer ring with N/S/E/W? Does it represent the sun location or what?
2. Once in a while, one of the satellite bars has a "D" on it? Is it related to WAAS?
This stuff appears to be undocumented in owner's manual.
Thx.
1. The circle with the red dot is your direction of travel. Yes it moves around when standing still because GPSR commercial units are not exact. If you were moving and come to a stop it will remain pointing in the direction you were traveling unless due to the previously mentioned GPS accuracy it thinks you have moved in another direction.
2. The 'D' stands for timing differential. This means you received a timing differential update on that specific satellite. The regular GPSRs owned by us in the public sector typically only receive this update through a signal sent from the WAAS satellites. You can receive a timing differential update on any of the satellites that you are currently receiving. WAAS Satellites are any satellite you are receiving with a number of 33 or higher.
On a recent trip near Tacoma, WA I picked up both WAAS satellites and differential signals for nearly all 10 of the other satellites I was receiving. It was the first time I had ever seen that sort of reception and accordingly the highest accuracy I ever saw at 6 feet.
Here's a couple pages explaining WAAS in more detail.
http://www.garmin.com/aboutGPS/waas.html
http://www.trimble.com/gps/dgps.html
Also here's a link to the manual for the Garmin Vista. It's a .PDF manual. Check out page 5 it explains the 'D' and what numbers are WAAS satellites.
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Typically the limitation in Read/Write speed is not in the flash memory but in the Data I/O in the device it's being used it. Someone mentioned an advantage in digital cameras while this may be the case in the D-SLRs it's typically not the case in most cameras under $1,000. Also MP3 players I don't know of any that will take advantage of faster memory. I would have to say that I highly doubt that a GPS will take advantage of the faster memory.
As mentioned above the one place the faster memory will become an advantage is in a good card reader when you are copying your maps over to the card.
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Nothing works. I reloaded 3.02 also. It seems like ever since I tried the loc load one time, I cannot load another file.
ALan
I have had no other reports of this nature.
This does not at all makes sense and must be something simple we are mising.
Have you tried just the "load a single" file option?
I would suggest removing the program using the add/remove programs app and then reinstalling.
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So you are saying that by simply connecting the external antenna to the MCX jack on the 60C, it actually is amplified by the batteries within the GPSr itself? So this would cause additional battery drain on the batteries within the 60C?
So has anyone experimented with this to find out which is better? The loop and rubberband around the 60C with the re-radiator or just connecting the antenna portion of the PC Mobile device directly to the 60C using the MCX jack? Which gives you a better signal or would it be roughly the same?
I have not really experimented with it on my 60cs but will do so if you wish. The only issue I have with the PC Mobile antenna when connected directly to the 60 is that it is a really pain to get disconnected from the GPS. You practically need a pair of needle nose pliers to remove the connector because it's so small and fits so tight.
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Isn't that the same model he said he got but isn't big enough for his Garmin 176C?
If you have an REI in your area I would stop by there. They're and outdoor outfitter and seem to have every kind of case you could want. They aren't specifically made for GPSs but they should work.
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Sounds to me like the compass bearing is pointing in the GPS travel direction rather then the magnetic compass.
I don't have a magellan so I don't know what features there might be that need to be turned off or on to correct this.
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Get a large metal washer and put inside your hat and then stick the antenna to the washer from the outside of the hat.
I prefer to sew a little fabric pocket on the inside of the top of my cap. Advantages are that I don't have the weight of a metal washer on top of my head, I can take the magnets out of the Gilsson antenna to reduce its weight, and it hides the antenna so I don't get comments about the odd thing on top of my head.
That's not a bad option but I use the washer method because I hike in the rain. If you hike in the rain and you have the antenna covered by a piece of material the chances are the material with the combination of water will inhibit reception. I most often carry the antenna on my shoulder.
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Use gpx and not loc files from geocaching.com (requires premium membership) and you will get them with the correct cache icon. I download the gpx file directly through EasyGPS to my 60CS without modification and it works like a charm.
I guess if I can afford a new 60CS, I can afford Premium Membership. I'm such a cheapskate sometimes.
I bought the Premium membership before I got the 60CS. It seems like an almost necessary tool to go Geocaching.
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I got my Gilsson and had a chance take it out caching. It definitly improves reception. Surprisingly I was recieve signals inside my house. While out caching it helped quite a bit. However there were still a number of spots with nothing more than a leaves above that it there was no signal at all. While it was a definite improvement, I was hoping it would work a tad better for those caches in heavy tree covered areas. The main problem I had was finding a good place to put it while caching. Mostly I just held it in my hand for that the last 80 feet or so. I think the clip idea has some merit.
Get a large metal washer and put inside your hat and then stick the antenna to the washer from the outside of the hat.
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I think the reason you weren't picking up sat signals was because you wasn't holding the 60cs vertical
as you know for best reception you need to hold the unit vertical. Now this causes a problem with the
compass knowing that you have to hold the unit horizontal for the compass and you know how that is
one tilt one way or the other and you get that message to hold unit level.
Even with my unit horizontal I get overhead sats very strong there signal strength does not decrease. It's the the ones towards the horizon that fade in and out. So I typically at least maintain a 2D lock. I personally also use the compass for projecting waypoints and also for heavy tree cover. I only resort to it when I'm going cross terrain without reference points and only after I lose signal completely. Here in Oregon almost any trail you hike you will lose signal with any GPS the tree cover is just too thick.
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The PC-Mobile antenna will work with any GPS. It uses a reradiating antenna, which you attach to the GPS over the built-in antenna using a rubber band. It doesn't use the GPS batteries, it takes 3 AA cells inside the antenna amplifier. What you get is a box, which has the electronics and holds the batteries, with wires coming out on 2 sides. One wire ends in a loop, and this is what you place on your GPS, using a rubber band to hold it. The other wire has a small box on the other end, which is the antenna, and this antenna has magnets inside, to hold it on top of your car, or on top of your hat with a large washer inside. Sounds complicated, but it's simple to use. Just put in 3 batteries, put the antenna where it can see the sky, put the loop end underneath a rubber band (supplied) around your GPS, slide the switch to ON, and watch your signal strength max out on all available satellites.
You can get the antenna without the inductive amplifier. In this situation I do not know for sure if it will work on a 6v system. It's just a normal GPS antenna but it does have a higher gain and a different voltage and amperage draw then a lot of antennas out there.
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76CS: 6.2" H x 2.7" W x 1.4" D
60CS: 6.1" H x 2.4" W x 1.3" D
The problem with those measurements is they are the measurement required if you were to put them into a box. In other words they don't make exception for small protrusions or the antenna. I have had the 76c and 60c side by side and the measurements just don't add up in real world use. The 76c feels and looks much much bigger especially when held in the hand and put side by side.
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Just looked at the pc-mobile site. Their active antenna is supposed to work with the Garmin GPS-II+, but they don't list the GPS-II. I have one w/ sw V2.05. Yeah, I know, it's ancient. But it has sentimental value.
They say input voltage 2.5-5v.. so it expects the GPS unit to supply the voltage across the antenna connection? Ok.. but the GPS-II has 4 AA cells in series which makes 6v. Do you think it will work?
On another note...
I came into the forum today to find somewhere to tell folks that I was sorting through a box of old cables today and I found some thinwire ethernet cables. I said "Hmm.." and proceeded to put one of these cables (and a BNC tee) between my GPS-II and its antenna. It seemed to work fine with 4 meters of 50 ohm cable between the antenna and the unit. I really should have a barrel instaed of a tee to shield things better but I couldn't lay my hands on one. I haven't used thinwire in 5 or six years at least! Anyway, if I don't buy a new antenna I will probably try putting my GPS antenna on my hat, or on my pack frame, or something. Just to get my hands free ! THe "statue of liberty" pose is kind of a pita after a while...
You could email them and ask? I would expect that it would work but I can't say for sure. It would most definitely work inductively.
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I got it working without the patch though I have now gone ahead and applied the patch for Topo. My problem I think stems from me using Virtual PC on a Mac to run MapSource. It appears that if I run any other program or even switch from Virtual PC to another program running on my Mac while it is installing or even when it's copying the CD to the drive I'll end up with glitches. I've recopied the Topo East without disturbing it and it works now. I also had to run a repair on City Select North America and reinstall MapSource 6.1. Everything is working now.
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I think I figured out my problem. I have access to Hawaii, Alaska, West Topos but not the East. I believe it's a problem with the CD. It will bring up the East section and show the map zoomed out but then Mapsource crashes. Everytime from there on out if you load Mapsource it automatically goes to the last map which is the East Topo and it crashes. The only way out of this is to rerun the Topo Setup.exe. I've tried this several times with and without the CD in the drive and many other ways. I just have a bad East Topo disk. Not a problem really since I don't have a need for it also this Topo is many years old and I suspect there is a newer version of it out. It's version 3.00.
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I would like to delete my old waypoints and/or geocaches from the database but still have them listed in my calander showing when and what caches I found on those days. Is this possible or is it something that we need to bring up to Garmin about? If I delete a waypoint form my list it is also deleted from my calander as well. Would be nice to clear out all the old stuff and not clutter it up. The problem as far as I know is that there is only one user waypoint database. Each waypoint contains data such as icon and date information. When you go to Geocache mode all you are doing is telling the GPS to filter out of the database all the waypoints with a certain icon pertaining to Geocaching. When you go to the calendar all that is happening is the GPS is grabbing the date information for each of the Waypoints in the database. Therefore if you remove a waypoint you also remove all the information needed for dates etc..
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I have dun this by making a file named topo and copying disk 1, 2, and 3 into it so I ended up with 6 files named Alaska, East, Hawaii, Tdb, UnitCode, And West in the topo folder and then running the setup.exe from there.
For some reasons I'm not getting the option to install anything but the West file when I do this.
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I haven't tried moving my mount now that I'm using the 60CS. I had my mount as far forward on the dash while still being flat enough for the mount that I could. The reason was that even with this mounting directly under the windshield the Vista I was using wouldn't get it's best signal and if the satellite was behind me at all it would not pick it up do to the roof of the vehicle. This doesn't seem to be a problem at all with the 60CS.
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I have a eTrex Vista with a Patch antenna and a 60CS with a Helix antenna and I have to say that the Helix beats the Patch hands down in every situation I through at them. Canyons, foliage and buildings.
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Great I'll do this. Thank your for all your responses.
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They also have a stick on mount that has two adhesive disks one labeled permanent and one that's removable. Both discs come with the stick on mount. I use the latter myself.
Permanent sounds good. Is it REALLY permanent? Does anyone have experience in removing it? Will it damage the dash (at some point I want to sell the car and don't want to have replace the dash...)
I don't see a need for the permanent disks as I have been using the temporary one for over 2 years and it has never budged. Just be sure to clean the surface with some rubbing alcohol first before applying the disk. In fact I think it comes with a cleaning wipe.
SATELLITE PAGE QUESTIONS:
I would like to delete my old waypoints and/or geocaches from the database but still have them listed in my calander showing when and what caches I found on those days. Is this possible or is it something that we need to bring up to Garmin about? If I delete a waypoint form my list it is also deleted from my calander as well. Would be nice to clear out all the old stuff and not clutter it up.
Garmin Gpsmap 60cs
in GPS technology and devices
Posted
Choose a specific icon.