Pulvertoastmann

Well, the 60CSx' compass being only 2D (as opposed to the 3D-chips used in the more recent units) can be frustrating at times. Although I have to say it is working quite well for me, most of the time. My unit often asks me to hold it level, just like yours does. But I figured out that this message does not necessarily mean the reading is way off. Usually I have to tilt the unit far beyond the "hold level" threshold before the reading is actually thrashed. And even if it is off by some degrees, it doesn't really hurt. If you're pretty close to ground zero, like 15 meters away or so, jumping coordinate readings are the main reason for the compass to be inaccurate, because to the unit it appears like GZ has shifted relative to its own position. When VERY close to GZ, this can result in the red arrow pointing in one direction and in the exact opposite direction a few seconds later, even while you didn't move at all. That's because you're standing amidst a "cloud" of plausible positions between which the unit will jump around. Switching off the magnetic compass may lead to more "steady" results, but that's just because it won't update as long as you don't move. Try this: While close to GZ, stand still on one spot. Try to remember the bearing of both the red arrow and where the unit thinks north is. Walk back and forth some time and return to the same spot. Now the arrow may point to a different location, while north should have remained where it was before. If this is the case, the compass is working fine. Using a consumer grade GPSr (even the 60CSx) is not quite an exact science and so the limiting factor while using the compass is the GPS receiption and not the accuracy of the compass itself. By the way, I'll calibrate right when I'm starting my tour and usually it won't let me down the rest of that day. best, Pulvertoastmann

Just to have that on record too: I doubt it The only chance for your dream to come true would be DeLorme starting to sell their products worldwide, while keeping the price low. Unless they do that, there's technically no chance for them to overtake garmin. Let me explain: As far as I know there are like 400.000 caches in the US (source: german wikipedia), while there are 950.000 caches worldwide. If we assume for now the number of caches in a certain area is proportional to the number of active (!) cachers, then less than half of all cachers worldwide have the opportunity to use a DeLorme unit anyway, simply because noone outside the US is able / allowed to use or even buy DeLorme. If every single US cacher would prefer DeLorme over other brands, it still wouldn't work. Even if the assumption I made above is seriously inaccurate, it still gives an impression of the dimensions we're talking about here - almost every US cacher would need to buy DeLorme AND there need to be WAY more cachers per hidden cache in the US compared to the rest of the world for your prophecy to come true Last but not least, in my opinion "Garmin" is a much better brand name than "DeLorme", so even if everything I wrote above is wrong, the name "DeLorme" will stop DeLorme in time.

Of course I cannot prove that. It's just what I experienced two or three times when I was out caching in the forests. In my area the forests are rather dense and the terrain consists mainly of hills. On some occasions (in narrow valleys) this brings even the 60CSx down to 20 meters of accuracy, although it never loses its satellite lock entirely. Under such circumstances, when caching with others, the 60CSx just brought me closer to ground zero. You're right nevertheless, propably I should have mentioned more exactly that my statement was based on merely a handful of personal experiences (and what the circumstances were that led to these experiences) and not at all on a deliberate comparison. I can't even rule out the possibility that the others where maybe not patient enough, following each jump that their unit made immediately. I do not doubt that other units have the same or similar GPS-chips that enable them to aquire a position fix with the same accuracy as the 60CSx. I guess under a clear sky all available units will perform more or less equally. But I still believe, however, that the 60CSx is superior to other units, at least in terms of signal receiption, when it comes to demanding circumstances like the ones I mentioned earlier. Maybe it just has the better antenna connected to its GPS chip. So, I'm sorry for making the statement in question out of context and I hope this posting will resolve the matter. best regards, Pulvertoastmann

Yeah well at least you know she'll give something you really want

Tacho, stick with your original plan! The iphone geocaching app is the most comfortable way to carry your cache infos around with you. Since you already own an iphone + gc app, you're good to go! All you need now is a good GPS receiver. Judging from my own experience and from what I've read in this forum, the 60CSx is still the best choice in terms of accuracy, reliability and readability. Other units may offer you a more complete all-in-one solution, but in my opinion that is not what you really need: For you (personally), there's no disadvantage in using two devices instead of one for geocaching since you would bring your iphone along anyway - and it even allows you to update your cache infos while in the field. I am currently using the gc app on the ipod touch along with the 60CSx and I am more than happy with the combination. The 60CSx would still lead me to the spot under conditions where other cachers with their touchscreen enabled units are 30 meters off. By the way, my 60CSx is one of the newer ones with the Mediatek chip and it's working great. I am using the unit quite frequently while biking or hiking and there has never been a sign of drift or any of the other problems people seem to expect from GPSrs that utilize the mediatek chip. best regards, Pulvertoastmann edit: Since you're owning an iphone you'd be disappointed by the touchscreen GPSrs anyway - no other device features a touchscreen of a quality that is anywhere near the one built into the iphone. You have to press them harder to make them register they've been touched at all, panning is not as smooth and (compared to the 60CSx) they are just not as readable.

Hello, I'm sorry if this has been discussed before, but searching for "mac" doesn't work in this forum. Yesterday I've been out caching by bike and I tracked the tour. Because I enjoyed the tour and would like to share it with some friends, I created a route in Garmins RoadTrip software by creating waypoints along the track (with autorouting turned off). When I sent the route to my device (a 60CSx) it informed me that the route has been truncated. When I view the route on the map it seems to be complete, though. The route has 294 waypoints. What went wrong? Creating the route was not very comfortable anyway - I had to turn off autorouting because it created hilarious detours to avoid normal streets with no apparent reason. Is there a way to create routes from tracks automatically? I'm on a mac, the software I found so far was for windows machines only. Thanks in advance for your help! best, Pulvertoastmann

I would go for the 60CSx. A few weeks ago I purchased the vista HCx and returned it to the store only three days later, picked up the 60CSx instead. The vista I got suffered from almost every bug that has been discussed in this form - no more increase of backlight brightness beyond 40%, display flickering and - the main reason for returning it - it was drifting to the west right out of the box. Since I preferred the 60CSx' design and larger display anyway the exchange was not too hard for me. I bought the vista in the first place only because it was cheaper for apparently the same functionality. To be honest, I was even happy to have a reason to buy the 60CSx, because (for me) the eTrex design with the display on the bottom of the device and the buttons on top is rather ugly. Furthermore, some important functions (find and mark) are far more easy to access on the 60CSx because of the additional buttons. Just my 2 cents! best, Pulvertoastmann

Welcome to this beautiful hobby and welcome back to nature The devices you've used so far are all being outperformed by todays more advanced (and dedicated) gps receivers. First of all, neither of your units is WAAS / EGNOS enabled, which increases accuracy from 10-15 meters to up to 2-5 meters. Furthermore all your units are using small patch antennaes, not surprising since the gps feature is only a nice addon to a compact device and is intended for car navigation and the like and not for taking precision measurements. The eTrex Legend is an exception to my last statement, but it is still outdated. To give you an Idea about how big the difference is: My Garmin GPSMAP 60CSx provides me with 5 meters of accuracy in deep forests, in situations where my symbian cell phone wouldn't even get a satellite lock, not even a very bad one. Units like the 60CSx have a quad helix antenna, high sensivity gps chip and advanced algorythms to filter the gps signal to make it less "jumpy". Dedicated gps receivers provide an averaging function, which means you lay down your unit and let it take hundreds of measurements which will be averaged to reduce errors from bad satellite constellations (which will change constantly while the averaging is in progress) Even with a good gps unit we're still talking about probability and statistics here and not about absolute measurements. There is ALWAYS an error in the measurement which is immanent to the system itself. For this reason experienced cachers will return to the site of their new cache multiple times and retake measurements and average them manually to further reduce the errors introduced by bad constellations (this may be necessary under difficult conditions like in dense forests only). If you consider to stick with this hobby (something I can only recommend) I suggest that you start looking for a good advanced unit. Common choices are the Garmin Vista HCx, the Garmin GPSMAP 60CSx (which I own and which I love), the Garmin Oregon line of units, the DeLorme PN-40. Which one you choose depends on what you expect your unit to do - some units (like the Oregon or the PN-40) offer paperless caching functionality which means they store all the information like cache description, hints and recent logs for a cache, but they are quite expensive. Other units like the 60CSx are a little less expensive, and especially the 60CSx is considered by many to be a true workhorse and one of the most accurate units on the market. It lacks the paperless caching functionality however. Since you're using smartphones this may not be too much of a loss for you, since there are good applications for smartphones to manage your cache informations. Please browse through this forum for more in depth reviews and buying advices, this topic has been discussed a thousand times best, Pulvertoastmann

Hello everybody, first of all I'm sorry if this has been discussed elsewhere, but "OCM" "Open" and "Map" are all below 5 characters and thus cannot be searched for in this forum. "Opencyclemap" only returned two threads in the iphone section. While using the iPhone app on my ipod touch I found the topo map view which is using data from opencyclemap. I wonder if it is possible to extract map segments from OCM to use it as topo map on units like the 60CSx - just like it is possible to use the Openstreetmap data. Do you have any information if this is possible, and if it is, how is this accomplished? Thanks alot, Pulvertoastmann

That's what I needed to know - thanks! So my quest finally comes to an end Thanks for all the advice! Pulvertoastmann

Hello, after some time of use a lot of waypoints have accumulated on my 60CSx. I would like to manage them using my PC because deleting them one by one is not very comfortable. I've tried Mapsource and GSAK but I didn't find a way to remotely delete WPs in neither of the two applications. Maybe I'm just blind (I must admit I don't like the look and feel of neither Mapsource nor GSAK) but somebody recommended GSAK just for what I want to do in a different thread. "Send to GPS" and "Read from GPS" is all I found - but no "Delete from GPS" anywhere. Please help me and tell me what I have missed... thanks, Pulvertoastmann

Hello Cache-R-Joe: Are you recalibrating after every battery change? It is my understanding that this is required. Good Luck Mike In the manual they recommend calibrating even more often, I think. After replacing the batteries, after moving more then 200 kilometers, every couple of hours... I don't care about that, however. I do calibrate my compass right before I embark on a geocaching trip and usually I do not need to recalibrate during the same day. Sometimes however I just "feel" the compass needs calibration, then I'll recalibrate, just in case. After all it's quite easy and quickly done. There's also another thing that I think might be important: When calibrating, I first rotated the unit in my hands, keeping it as level as possible. But when you're navigating the unit will (almost) always be pointing away from you, with the mass of your body in its back, so to speak. So I recon this should be the case when calibrating, too. I now calibrate by holding the unit in front of me and rotate myself two times. I wouldn't bet on it, but my gutt feeling says it's more reliable now. best, Pulvertoastmann

It may be too late and I don't want to disturb you, but in my opinion you should go for the CSx. The plus in "bells and whistles" of the CSx over the Cx is quite worth the extra money, especially for geocaching. I don't care about the barometric altimeter too, but the eletronic compass was one of the main reasons for me to buy a GPSr in the first place. Before I bought the CSx I was geocaching using my mobile phone, which lacks a compass but has good GPS accuracy. When I was closing in on a cache and missing it, I often had to walk back and forth in a straight (!) line to give the GPS a chance to figure out were north is. Unless I did that I only knew how far the cache is away, but not in which direction. That increased my wandering around a lot and in dense vegetation this makes things very difficult sometimes. Even worse, in dense vegetation the GPS receiption is usually not that good, so you have to walk even further back and forth to get a bearing. Imagine yourself trying to walk 15 meters dead ahead in rough undergrowth just to learn you're just walking away from the cache. With the compass that's all a matter of the past. To me the compass is even more important then the high accuracy of the CSx because knowing the right direction is saving you more time than knowing whether the cache is 1 or 3 meters away from you. If I were you I'd return the CX once you get it and order the CSx instead. After all, you're about to spend a lot of money for a device that should accompany you a good while, so why don't you spend just a little more to get all you might need? Maybe it's just me, but whenever I had to choose between buying one thing and another version of the same thing that was slightly more expensive but had some features I didn't care about in the beginning, I was later regretting that I tried to save some money because I was back in square one when I figured out that indeed I wanted the additional features. The advantage of having an electronic compass may seem negligible, but only as long as you haven't had one. just my two cents... best, Pulvertoastmann

According to the information behind the link you provided, the new methods main advantage is to repeat a standard averaging at several times when the satellite constellation has changed significantly. You could recreate the method with any "old" unit by averaging 4-8 waypoints with 90 minutes between the measurements and then average the results manually. The only true advantage of the new method is that it is suggesting the proper time to take the next measurement and that it autmatically averages the averaged waypoints. Please don't get me wrong, your comparison is by far the best that I have seen so far. But there are some factors which, in case you would like to repeat your test in the future, could be improved: - The units are placed very close to a steel post (the benchmark), which may be blocking the line of sight from a unit to one or more satellites. More importantly, since the units are arranged around (!) the post, each individual unit may have a blocked view to a different set of satellites. - The units should all point to the same direction - The units should be positioned with some distance to each other I would suggest an arrangement resembling a "T" - draw a line from the benchmark, one meter in length, in a known direction (1m north of the benchmark, for example). At the end of this line, place one unit. Place the next unit 50 cm to the west of the first unit, and the third one 50 cm to the east. This way the units would not show the same location, of course, but you still know the true position that each unit should come up with. Then you can compare each result to the true position of each unit. This may not have anything to do with every day usage, but if you want to truly compare the units you have to eliminate as many sources for errors as possible best, Pulvertoastmann

Last time I heard about that they claimed it's a feature to preserve battery life, not a bug. Returned my vista because of that "feature". Maybe I would have kept it if only I had known it was a bug which would be removed in the next SW version... But no loss for garmin there anyway, bought a 60CSx instead Seriously, I just don't understand why they think their defensive communication ("That's not a bug! We don't know about bugs! What are bugs anyway?") to the outside world will improve their sales... I would feel much "safer" if they would just admit that there is something not quite as it should be, so at least I know they're working on it. If they claim it's not a bug I have to assume that simply they are unable (or to stubborn) to get it right. What's that good for?

Great, glad to have helped Yes I heard of PC users with similar problems too, although it's far less common. I think I remember it may happen on the PC if you're throwing stuff from the memory card into the recycle bin instead of deleting it - the pc would then create a hidden folder to contain the "trash" similar to the mac, which will cause the same problem. Whatever the cause - the 60CSx seems to be a bit thin-skinned in matters of "stuff it doesn't expect on a memory card". I'm using my memory card exclusively with the garmin now and try to keep it clean from everything else... best, Pulvertoastmann

Does the error persist if you unplug it from your laptop? Does it work normally if you remove the memory card? If so, and if your computer is a mac, I may have a solution. My 60CSx did exactly the same just a few days ago. When I turned it on, after a few seconds of aquiring satellites it would fade out and turn off. I found out that it has trouble interpreting the hidden .trashes and a few other hidden files and folders which the mac creates almost everywhere on any drive connected to it. After removing these files (using a windows PC) everything was back to normal. hope that helps, best, Pulvertoastmann

Hello, I love the "Send to GPS" feature. Works like a charm. But I'd love the geocaches name instead of the GC number to be used as the new waypoints name. Looking for a specific cache can be quite annoying when you have to look into each wp just because you don't happen to remember the gc code for that cache. Is there a way to fix that? I don't want to rename the waypoints manually, entering text on the 60CSx is not exceptionally comfortable thanks alot, Pulvertoastmann

For those of you who are REALLY willing to pay such an amount of money in advance...: I don't know what kinds of bank accounts they offer in the US. In Germany, there's a thing that's called "Tagesgeldkonto" I don't know how to translate that. It's an account where you keep your spare money and which is reduced in functionality, you don't get credit cards and you may transfer money only to one reference account. In exchange for that they give you good interest, like 3,5% to 4% and the money is still accessible at any time, no risks involved. So, what you may want to do is to just get such an account, put 1000$ on it and wait. Each year you'll be receiving a little more money in interest than what you need for your gc.com membership. Oh, and the 1000 bucks are still yours, too! best, Pulvertoastmann

Hello, my friends and myself are looking for some special caches at the moment. Lost places and the like. Now, I tried to just enter "Lost Place" into the search by keyword field on the advanced search page and I got lots of results. The only problem is that they are from all over the country. Of course I am most interested in those close to my home location, so how do I sort the list by distance from home? The distance from your home location is not even shown in the list of results, so you have to visit each caches page to find out how far it is away. So, my question is: How do you sort the search results by distance? If this is not possible yet I'd hereby like to request such a new function Oh and while you're at it, it would be nice if pocket queries would support search functions too thanks alot, Pulvertoastmann

That may well explain why I don't see the "Garmin Taiwan" Waypoint in Find Nearest while it is shown in Find by Name. But for the mysterious caches, as I explained they cluster in an area approximately 30 km from my current location and are NOT shown in Find Nearest. Two caches, both about 80 km away (which I loaded for a trip last weekend) ARE shown in Find Nearest though, despite the fact they are further away than the ghost-caches. The Icons, by the way are the regular "closed treasure-box" icons, no parking or other icons. Even if, I never put any caches from the area in question on my unit, so I guess I shouldn't have forgotten to delete them anyway because I didn't put them there in the first place It's not that im overly concerned with the possibility my unit may have been in use before - somebody may have tried the unit and returned it to the store because he just didn't like it, no reason to throw it in the trashbin as long as it's not damaged or anything - but im terribly curious and want to know where the caches come from Here are some of the GC numbers: GC12FA7 GC1H9F2 GC1T36M GC1TR42 thanks alot guys, Pulvertoastmann

Hello, while playing with my 60CSx I just noticed something strange. While viewing the waypoints list I opened the menu and selected "Find by Name". Never tried that before. All of a sudden, there are some waypoints which I didn't see while in "Find nearest" mode. As a matter of fact it's not just waypoints, it's geocaches clustering in an area about 30 km away from my home location. I've never read these caches names before and I most certainly didn't send those to my unit. I can tell because I didn't copy any gpx files to the unit so far, just sent a few selected caches to the device using the garmin communicator plugin. Now, what does that mean? Maybe my unit was in use before I bought it and the memory wasn't sweeped correctly? That would surprise me, however, it seemed untouched to me when I got it, with the sticker still on the display and everything else in the box packaged nicely. And why are those caches shown only when I select "Find by Name", and not shown when I select "Find nearest"? It's not connected to the distance, I have sent caches to the device that are further away than the "ghost-caches" and they are shown in both modes as I would expect it. Any ideas? thanks, Pulvertoastmann

You can download waypoints and tracks from your unit using RoadTrip, but so far I have not found any other options concerning data on the device (like move, delete etc.). But I'll give GSAK a try, thanks for the hint! best, Pulvertoastmann

Hello, I've been using my new 60CSx for some days now. Over these days I have sent quite a lot caches to my unit and marked a few waypoints too. I would like to delete those I don't need anymore, but the list view on the device only shows the GC code. So I have to "open" each cache to see its name and decide if i'd like to keep it or not. Quite impractical. I would rather manage the waypoints via my computer - but I "only" have a Mac. Road Trip doesn't seem to provide what I need. Is there a way to manage the waypoints on the device using a mac? Thanks alot, Pulvertoastmann

There are so many people around with thousands of successful finds... I wonder if some of you are able to read the encrypted hints after some time without decoding them first, since the letter substitution is always the same. I suppose it would be possible to adapt or get used to the encrypted alphabet. So, hands up, please - who (if anybody) is able to read hints while they are still encrypted yet?? best, Pulvertoastmann