AussieDexter

I started geocaching with a Venture HC. I ended up buying a Nuvi 550 because we wanted a GPS for the car as well. This model was recommended by a friend who is heavily into geocaching. We wanted the car GPS to be able to do both. I recently went geocaching with a friend and her little girls who have never been caching before. I gave the girls the Venture HC and let them lead the way while their mom or I worked with the Nuvi. The Venture was MUCH more accurate than the Nuvi that particular day! Haven't cached with them both before, but I will be again to see what happens. I was glad we had the Venture along with us that day or the girls may have been very disappointed. It may be a case of the satellite reception in both our cases. I would suggest maybe turning off the Venture and acquiring new satellites, and mark a waypoint and see how the accuracy is. Sometimes I believe you acquire more satellites than others, and that could be part of the issue (I would imagine, the more satellites you have, the more accurate, but I'm not an expert). Don't give up on your Venture HC, we've found many caches with ours. Good luck!

I tested my fix with one of the caches I hid so I would be able to judge accuracy quickly and it worked just fine. Here's the "fix": Put the unit into walking mode, go to -->tools -->settings -->navigation, it needs to be in "off road" mode. Evidently, mine somehow got changed to "on road". Hopefully this information will help someone else and save them the hours of frustration that I had. I called Garmin and gave them the information (the rep was supposed to be researching and calling me back). Thanks again for the suggestions. Happy Caching!

I think I may have found the problem. NOW I have the compass option on my main screen and just a walk around our back yard showed it was apparently working. I didn't even have a needle on the compass that was on the tools menu before. Now I have a needle and it appears to be pointing right to a cache I placed and the distance seems right. Will be going out shortly to actually drive to one of my caches using the unit and will report back. It was one of the settings that somehow got changed. I have no idea how, since hubby and I are the only ones who have touched the unit and the settings that were changed were pretty deeply buried (not around anything we'd have been playing around with during normal use). If this corrects the problem, I am overjoyed and will report the exact changes I made to correct the issue here so anyone having this problem in the future can benefit from my trial and error (and frustration!). Thanks to all who replied!

That was my thought mpilchfamily....In the second paragraph of my original post, I stated that I did a master reset and a software update. Garmin rep that I have spoken to told me that their help desk told her that the only compass is on the tools menu. I KNOW this is not true! I just loaded one of my own nearby geocaches and went to "look" for it. I brought up the compass from the tools menu. It tells you what direction you ARE going, not what direction you SHOULD be going to find the cache. Can someone confirm for me that there are two different compasses on this (just so I don't start thinking I've gone crazy)? One is accessible from the main menu when you switch to walking mode after arriving at a geocache location (next to the red stop button) and the other is on the tools menu.

Just got off the phone with them. Person I spoke with had no idea. She's researching it now and is supposed to call me back. She said the help desk told her that the only place the compass is accessible from is from the tools menu. I know for a fact that it shows up on the main screen under "where to" when you change from driving to walking mode. I've been using the unit for over a year for geocaching and I know I never went to the tools menu to get a compass. The compass under the tools menu doesn't even look the same.

I have a Nuvi 550. Have had it about a year, have done many geocaches with no problem. Get to the destination by car, switch to walking mode, press compass from the main screen and follow it to the cache coords. NOW....all of a sudden, there is no compass option on my main screen when I switch to walking mode after arriving at a cache location! WTH? Anyone had this happen to them? The last time (about a month ago) I used the Nuvi for caching, it worked just fine, and I haven't done any updates or anything to the unit whatsoever. It just all of a sudden is magically not working! I just did a software update and did a master reset and still don't have the compass option when arriving at a cache location and changing to walking mode. I'm having to follow the stupid little feet on the screen and triangulate the direction by watching the distance go up or down. Talk about frustration! I'm supposed to be taking out a friend and her girls tomorrow to introduce them to geocaching. Went geocaching over the weekend and discovered this problem. Please help! AussieDexter

I'm in the same boat. Doing all the same things I've always done with a PQ and getting only two files that are not GC files, such as 995211.GPX and 995211-wpts.GPX