piper28

Heh, I sat down last night to figure out what I wanted to do with the lines in my area, only to discover that the two lines I thought were real promising aren't in the geocaching.com database . And a lot of our lines around here are along railroad tracks, which makes them tough to do. Did end up with a handful of things today, now I just have to figure out how to make them go together. No luck collecting any sort of flush though.

Been playing around with this a little more and came up with another question. I don't think there is, but is there any way to change what the color labels are? Basically I'm just looking to change either the yellow or green to something else, since I have trouble distinguishing them in google earth (somewhat color blind).

Heh, I've got my eye on two lines that seem to go through my area. One of them might not be real practical because I think it's right along a railroad track, but the other has potential. Of course, I know for that second line that I went looking for one once and never did find it (even though I found the witness post).

You did change the setting for battery type to NiMH, right (I'm assuming that's what those are). I think the one thing that setting does is affect how it shows remaining battery life.

Ok, I'll throw my hat in the ring too. This time I might actually even have time to find a few more than I did last time .

Ok, I see what I was doing wrong now, I'd downloaded the file from the archived shapefiles section, and though I was looking for a .dat file in there, when I was in fact looking for the "MI_dbf.txt" file. Using that and all is well. This will definitely make it easier to find lines of benchmarks . Many thanks.

Ok, color me clueless about shapefiles, but from the Archived Datasheets and Archived Shapefiles area, I don't seem to be able to get anything that actually comes back in a .dat format. Anyone want to point me in the right direction? Ok, I guess I can find .dat's of the counties, so I'm back to my original question I edited out originally, any way to get the whole state without assembling it from counties?

Ok, color me clueless about shapefiles, but from the Archived Datasheets and Archived Shapefiles area, I don't seem to be able to get anything that actually comes back in a .dat format. Anyone want to point me in the right direction?

I know I tend to leave my 60CS in the auto calibrate mode for altitude, and for me at least that's seemed to be entirely adequate. When travelling and driving by known altitude points, it's always seemed to be within feet of the altitude that it should be. I'd guess if you have a sudden pressure front come through it might take a bit to correct, but I honestly don't know how long. For me, based on this experience, it's never been worth the trouble to manually calibrate it.

Saw something in the paper just recently that says recent studies (study?) show that on longer flights what's commonly used for pressure cabin can still cause mild forms of altitude sickness. They were actually recommending that the cabin pressure be set for a lower altitude (something that apparently the 787 will be doing).

Ok, yeah, that's true. However, the captain's often hidden behind a locked door, so asking him can be tough. And I don't really recommend dashing up from row 35 to knock on the door to ask him either .

The important thing to remember of course is if the flight attendant says no, and still says no even if you show them it's listed as a permitted device on that airline, don't use it. The FA's word is god on the airplane.

There's a list somewhere out there that lists the various airlines that let you use them in flight and which ones don't. TSA shouldn't have a problem, but then again, TSA at some airports is on such a power trip they basically will do whatever they please. Lufthansa is one of those that prohibits them in flight, so I won't be able to use it on the flights for my vacation this year .

I'm waiting for the log "Benchmark destroyed when California fell into the ocean.

Hmm, that sounds like some sort of diabolical plan in the works.

At the risk of getting killed, the ones I've found (and of course never got around to logging until now): 5/28: NF0260,REG NF1042, REG NF1040,REG 4/14: MC0712,REG MC0711,REG 3/24: AA5398,REG NE0416,REG NE0426, REG (probably not verifiable, disc not engraved) AA5396, REG AA5428, REG

Hmm, does appear to have some higher resolution in some areas that google maps is missing. In the Lansing, MI area it seems to have constant coverage of the same res all across the area. Google maps has slightly better, except for the NW quadrant of the city. That quadrant on google maps has always been annoyingly very bad quality. Also goes out further to the west, I can find my RC field in yahoo, it's lost in low res in google. The yahoo maps are noticeably older for this area though. It'd be nice if you could another click in on the zoom, and they do need to work on the smoothness of the navigation, it had a tendancy to hang up in places when moving around. Hmm, and doing a little comparison, at least in my area (and expecially around the RC field), the data is the same in yahoo and mapquest. (Didn't yahoo buy mapquest some time ago? That might explain that). (Oddly though, there does seem to be a slight contrast change between the two, but it's definitely the same data there).

And walking around with a gps and palm connected together doesn't look even worse? I actually find that the 60 series is relatively unobtrusive.

Looking at their map viewer, it kinda looks like it's still using lots of small regions. Kinda surprising they'd continue to do that with the limits on map segments you can load.

I have to admit, I only ever use the backlight if it's dark out, so that's not really much of an issue with me. I'm still on the non-expandable versions, but is this really much of an issue? I'd guess most people would get a card large enough that they don't generally need to reload it, and can do it through the unit anyways. Again, I'm still on a 60CS, so maybe I'm missing an obvious situation that has people putting them in and pulling them out a lot. Are you sure the 60 series doesn't have this? I could have sworn I remembered it being added in a firmware update, and people them promptly complaining it was draining their batteries . I don't use it myself, but I could see how some people would, so if it is indeed missing in the 60 series that would definitely be a plus for some in the etrex. Probably a plus for backpackers, not really an issue for me. Although I'm not sure the ratings are realistic anyways, I'm pretty sure I'm not getting what I should on my 60CS . This is one I think the 60 definitely wins with, at least for those of us doing car navigation. Having the buttons right there on the front is useful. I know I also personally really find the 60 fits well in my hand, with my thumb perfectly positioned to use the buttons. But that's a feel issue, and is different for everyone, so others could find the etrex better here. Never know, maybe they'll improve that in the new etrex units. No real reason they couldn't.

Hmm, I would have quite frankly said the 60C line was pretty pocket sized. Maybe I've just got bigger pockets? I'd rather have th slightly larger screen, since I do use it for auto navigation also.

Well, I can see one big advantage of Cachemate over BeeLine or GeoNiche, it costs a lot less. One thing I've noticed a lot of these apps for the palm or ppc are that they seem to be trying to put too much into the app. Ok, yeah, some people might want a fully integrated program, but for me, I've already got the gps, I don't need gps support in the cache program. Yeah, I recognize that some people might, but I'd rather have the smaller app. I've recently been playing around with a few different choices because I just switched from palm to ppc, and wanted to explore the options. So far cachemate still seems to fit the bill for me, although I like some things about smache. Have some issues in smache with long database opening times, and it doesn't seem to like to keep my sorting choice, but there's some potential in the program (although like others, it's pretty big, and includes far more than I need).

The only thing I'd watch with portrait modes is that they tend to take a soft picture. With a hard to read disk, that might actually make it harder to read.

One other suggestion for taking pictures: if your camera has a macro mode, it might be worth giving that a try. I know with my small digital camera, I've been finding that turning that on is helpful because I'm often trying to take a picture of the disk with the camera pretty close. In normal modes, the camera is just too close to focus properly.

If you get stuck with the dreaded SSSS in the corner of your ticket, they may pull it out and swipe it with the explosive detection stuff. (Along with just about anything else electronic). Other than that, TSA isn't going to have a problem. (Well, anymore than they may on a given day decide to be a pain.)