G.O. John and Carol

I'll be visiting Winnipeg from IL on a caching trip for a couple of days this week - probably Tuesday and Wednesday. I plan to focus on adventure labs and many of the most favorited caches while there. I'll have my bike with me, and I'd love to do some bike trail caching as well. Easy to moderate terrain please. What are the best options in the area? Just a GC for a cache on the trail or in the park will help. Also, any special casual restaurants I shouldn't miss? I'll mainly be eating egg salad and tuna salad sandwiches out of my cooler, but I wouldn't mind a couple of meals out. Thanks! John

We have a 19.5 hour layover in Warsaw, on our way home to Chicago after a vacation in the Netherlands. We are not experienced international travelers, so I thought it might be a good idea to see if any area cachers would be willing to spend a few hours with us, showing us some interesting caches and some interesting sites. We arrive about 9:30pm on April 26, and our flight leaves at 4:50 pm the next day. We are staying at a hotel VERY close to the airport, so we would have the morning and part of the afternoon of April 27 to play. If you're interested in helping us out, you can reply here, or you can e-mail me through gc.com or directly at jjmalley@comcast.net. Thank you very much!! John

After several weeks of using the 62s, I'll say I'm almost completely satisfied with it, and I'm a 60csx owner. I had serious doubts about it at first, but after a fair amount of configuration, I have come to love it. It seems to be even more accurate than the 60, and it holds a signal better for sure. Having the cache info at hand is just awesome! Oh, it gets a lock on the satellites much faster too, although it takes a bit longet to boot up. The screen is a bit darker than the 60, but I've adjusted to it, and it's rarely annoying. It's great in bright sunlight. I LOVE the battery saver mode. It might drive a lot of people crazy, but it's optional. I also love the compass. I HATED HATED HATED the 60's 2 axis compass. 2 things I DON'T like, and they're both pretty big issues with me... 1 - I still hate the fact that individual caches can't be deleted or edited. I wish Garmin could come up with at least basic file management tools. I understand that caches are now much more than a simple waypoint, but some tools would be nice. 2 - I don't remember. I'm really tired right now, but I'll remember soon... I don't like touch screens much, so for me, the 62s is, for the most part, a combination of the best of the Oregon and the best of the 60. If you want a touch screen and the better resolution and bigger size of the Oregon's screen, then that's probably a better choice for you. Documentation for the 62 is very very poor. Thank goodness for this forum! Can't comment on the tracklog capabilities.

I've been using shipping tape as a screen protector for my 62s since I got it, and it has worked very well, except for having to change it frequently. Anyway, Zagg now has their Invisible Shield available. Thought you guys might like to know. Also, be sure to use the promo code "ZAGG20" for $3.00 off. http://www.zagg.com/invisibleshield/garmin...ns-shields.php#

No doubt about it, that's a lot of GPS for the price. I'm one of those who owns a higher end gps, but I always thought the GC would be an ideal starter unit. Hope you enjoy your new toy!

One option... You can load the caches from GSAK and use the special tag "%smart". That will create a unique name for every cache. I use the following special tags in the "Name" field when loading caches from GSAK. %smart %dif1a/%ter1a%con1 %drop2. It almost always allows the smart name, difficulty, terrain, cache size and complete GC# (minus "GC" to fit in the cache name field of the Geocaches page. I'm an old 60 user, so I use the classic dashboard and the following pages: Satellite, map,compass, geocaches. Makes things much easier for me. Using those settings, all the basic cache info is available with just a couple of presses of the "Page" or "Quit" button. Hope that makes sense and helps!

Once you choose the cache and push "Enter" to go, puch "find" again, and choose recalculate on road. Not the most intuituve way of setting it up, but it works!

You can delete individual waypoints on the 62 using the waypoint manager, but the rest of your wishlist is good. Those limitations are not a deal breaker for me though, since the 62's advantages far outweigh those issues. Everybody will have different opinions. After a period of not being too sure, I've come to love the 62s. It took a bit of cornfiguring to get it to where I like it, but now it's great!

I think you can just give it a different name. Not sure though.

I love the compass on my 62s, but don't use the altimeter. After coming from the horrible 2 axis compass on the 60csx, I think the compass is easily worth $50 extra. That's a real subjectve thing though. BTW, I almost always had the compass turned off on the 60.

Wow, thanks! Great idea using the classic profile. I did finally figure out the Find Page issue. duh! Thanks though.

So, just turn off some of the cooler features (and expense) over the 60CSx? Yes, I would rather turn them off than deal with a map that's harder to read. Then why spend the extra money on a unit advertising cool features that you're just going to turn off anyway? I only turned off one or 2 of the features. I'm still benefitting from the other new features. I don't feel obliged to use EVERY feature just because it's there.

So, just turn off some of the cooler features (and expense) over the 60CSx? Yes, I would rather turn them off than deal with a map that's harder to read.

Thanks, that's the post I was looking for. Must have looked right past it.

The screen on my 62s seems to be darker than the 60 series screen, especially on the maps. I'm thinkin' some of it may have to do with the colors, and I thought somebody posted a link to some suggested settings. Now I can't find it, so could somebody point me in the right direction? Also, When I change the item order on the find page (to put Geocaches first), the change doesn't stick after I turn the unit off. Is there a way to save the order in which items appear on the "Find" page? "Recent Finds" keeps going back to the upper left corner. ALSO... When I mark a cache as found, I get a message that states the name of the cache I just marked as found. Why do I need that info just then. I think the name(s) of the next closest cache(s) would be much more useful, since this is the screen that gives you the option of finding the next closest. Almost done... I love the battery saver mode, but the first keypress (to get out of the battery saver mode) should not be active, except to turn the screen back on. One other thing for now. What's the purpose of the black page band that appears before the unit advances to the next page in your sequence? Why not just go to the page like the 60s did? Thanks for any help/advice/opinions! John

Sounds like great news! Looks like Garmin was aware of this all along and had the fix ready to go. Gotta give them credit there, but this just points out how terrible communication typically is in corporations.

I was SO relieved to see this thread. I was stuck on the Garmin screen for 20 minutes and afraid to do anything. Haven't even used the thing to find a cache yet, going to a mega event for 3 days starting tomorrow, and I'm dead in the water! OH NO! How could this happen??? Fortunately, the battery pull seems to have done the trick. Getting too old for this drama!

Personally I like recording my tracks so I can tell how many miles I have hiked and how many feet I have climbed. (340 miles and 78000 feet so far this year.) My first hike with the 62st came in at 8000 vertical feet, when my hiking partners logged 2000. For me this is a fatal flaw. But sure, you can certainly find caches without looking at altitude at all. If you don't care about altitude tracking buy a 60 (not s or st) and save $200. I think we all want the 62st to be a deserving successor to the 60csx. With this flaw it does not deserve that title. With a fix for this I suspect it will. That's why I expect Garmin to fix the issue asap. Gotcha! I couldn't care less about the altimeter, but I think I'm going to love the 3 axis compass (coming from a 60csx). Can't wait to try it out. I also want the micro sd slot, so there are other reasons to choose the 62s and st over the 62. Anyway, I hope the altimeter issue gets resolved! That IS serious! Thanks for the reply.

Sure, that's to be expected. At this point just one support engineer has seen my data, has shown it to one help desk person, who has forwarded it to one engineer - who hasn't yet looked at it. Nobody else knows even this much is going on. Patience is a virtue at this point. Let's give them a few days to digest the situation and decide what to do next. Of course, the clock is ticking and lots of folks are watching. A point I made to them firmly, by pointing out that i'm posting the info here and elsewhere. If I don't hear positive feedback in 7 - now 6 - days, we should go postal on them. But for now let's let them investigate and ponder for a few days. If you want to call or email to let them know you are concerned about the issue that's super, but I wouldn't be surprised if the low level rep you talk to doesn't know anything about the issue yet. I'm sure I'm going to feel like an idiot for asking once I see the reply to my question, but why is a momentary spike with a button press an important issue? If just holding the unit in a normal manner interferes with the reading, I can see that being more serious, but even that - why is that so important to a geocacher?

Got my little squeaker (more like creaker) today. I'm in the camp that doesn't much care about the noise. I probably wouldn't have given it a second thought if it hadn't been mentioned here. There are plenty of things I'm going to like about this unit, and some I don't care too much for. I'm moving from a 60csx, and I LOVE the compass on the 62. The electronic compass was a waste of money for me on the 60, and it was always off. I wish the 62 could handle a zipped gpz file, but I'll probably be loading it from GSAK most of the time anyway. Can't wait to give it a good workout!

I'll bet that's the problem. That tripped me up a couple of times before I figured out what was going on.

Emailing the larger PQ's would definitely up the load on the GC.com mail servers. The other thing to consider is some ISP's are pretty stingy on the size of attachments allowed. You might find your getting your PQ's mailed but that they are stripped by your ISP. If the only concern with e-mailing them is possible file size restrictions, then an option button should make everybody happy. Thanks for the upgrade folks!

I'm having the same type of issue. Love the new PQs though!

The visibility is not great outside in direct sunlight. I will, however, say that it blows the D20 out of the water as far as resolution, clarity, and over-all brightness. Do you miss the larger screen of the D20? Also, a review I read said that the response of the unit was a little slow. Do you find that to be the case? That review also mentioned the infamous Magellan slingshot effect. Have you noticed that? This sounds like a very good unit for the price, but I think I'll wait for an upgraded model that has auto routing. LOTS of attractive features though!

Please answer "yes", because it'll be less tempting.