Boardslider

Oh to be in such a cache rich area. 51 finds cleared out to 12 miles - but that is only 14 caches!

Exactly! Put the £100 or so to buying additional mapping and a large microSD. Sounds like a plan, but my metroguide Europe doesn't even have most of Greece and certainly not Egypt. I've looked on the garmin site, but all their products offer 'parts of greece' which equates to athens......

Just noticed that I clocked number 50 yesterday, and realised that it has taken 25 months! I saw a log the other day when someone noted it as their 23rd in a day, so realise this is no huge achievement but wondered if there were any other slow coaches like me out there. The worrying thing is that 8 of the fifty have been in the last week - addiction? no I'm in control sort of.....

I would have to disagree that the base map is useless. I used to have an Etrex Vista with the atlantic basemap and due it its memory limit could not fit loads of maps in - the basemap gave a fair level of detail for towns airports main routes etc. I have tracked my way across Europe on a plane many times (OK OK we've had that discussion before) even to the point of it having the airport in Egypt I ws travelling to and the airport showing. In Corfu, the main road was shown, and the border with Albania was clear - even the names of towns there. Now whilst you probably couldn''t navigate accurately with it it was pretty impressive for the free base map. I recently got a 60CSX with an american basemap. Now the world part of the basemap that covers europe is rubbish - my house is shoing about 3 miles offshore, as is the waypoint for the hotel in Egypt - no doubt the us is now as well covered as europe was on my old one. So, in conclusion, the basemap for Europe is not useless, and it is certainly better than the default world basemap, but is it worth the £100 difference between the two models? No.

I've been finding this sort of thing a problem for a while, I have a magnifier at home but haven't yet got to the stage of taking it out with me. The thing is I wear fairly mild glasses for those other little un-important things in life - like driving and much to my internal embarrassment and shame now can be seen peering at the coin inscriptions with my glasses held up on my forehead - just like the apprentice master my friends and I would rib mercilessly as he squinted at a drill bit to read the size What goes around, comes around - now where's my zimmer

try Here or Here for starters, Ooo I love google

get in the office, boot the PC, get a coffee, log on to GC.com Well even certain events in the Middle East wars have been timed to co-incide with peek viewing in the states so it should hardly come as a surprise. But getting through a boring day in the office without certain diversionary activities is a real downer

Can't get to any gc.com page that hits the db. Got caches and TBs to log

Having used an Etrex Vista before, the question about whether to get a cx or a csx was a no brainer. Just the fact that you can still see a bearing without moving is a huge plus in almost any situation. Altitude might be less valuable, but then GPS altitude calculation is not as good as positional anyway. As to general comments about accuracy - so far I have never seen my CSX report an EPE better than about 11 feet whereas my Vista would often claim better. In practice geocaching the CSX has led me straight to caches even under cover, so the reported EPE might just be 'modesty' on the part of the software.

I set out a few weeks back specifically to bag a couple of coins, to find they had been taken some weeks before by newbie cachers and although obliquely mentioned in the cache log (wasn't clear it was taken) they had failed to log the take on the bug page. So I sent a friendly email mentioning that they were trackable and needed to be logged and moved on. Received a pretty quick reply which apologised and offered to log the finds, but as yet nothing has happened. The newbies don't appear to have logged in July at all. I will now send mails to the owner's of the coins to let them know with whom they reside. One concern is they 'may' have been dropped somewhere else without being logged and it could be months before they re-appear on radar, the others don't bear thinking of.....

Yes, because whoever finds it: say in another cache, by the side of the road (or even on ebay ) they can grab it and then drop it into another cache. Thanks Boardslider. I'm guessing you found one of yours on ebay????????????? Now thats what I call a cache or cash! No, but some turned up there recently. I have a TB in the boneyard though - it went MIA before even getting started

Yes, because whoever finds it: say in another cache, by the side of the road (or even on ebay ) they can grab it and then drop it into another cache. I think they are a neat idea, although it might be nice if they were completely locationless.......

I have done this for all the caches in the UK in Tom Tom. Use GSAK as you said to export for TT - this will produce an ov2 file (I call it UK_Geocaches) then create a bmp icon with the same name - I used the GC logo (needs to be about 20 x 20 I think). then copy both files into your main TT map directory - you may seee some ov2 files there all ready. Then you will see caches by their icon as you drive by - you may need to zoom out to get a better picture

Also on my Etrex Vista, when WAAS was enabled, two channels of the receiver were reserved for WAAS birds, whether they were seen or not, so effectively it reduces your receiver to 10 channels...... This doesn't seem to happen on the 60CSX, which seems to intelligently allocate the channels.....

But remember, you can also use the card to store tracks, custom POI's with icons and with the latest software there is a usb mass storage mode so you also have an extra 'secret' file store....

I thought I read somewhere that performance can suffer if too many map areas are loaded at once into the memory card. This might make sense as the map data is stored in one large file on the card, but as the builtin memory is so much smaller it must either read directly from the file or page small areas of it as used. I have a 1Gb card installed and currently the whole of UK and Ireland is about 120Mb. Obvioulsy I could go and add most of Europe, but just wondered about this performance question.........

Shouldn't types 1 & 2 actually be offset caches? By my interpretation of the descriptions they should, which would mean that 3, 4 & 5 are the real puzzle caches and easier to rate. BTW I was looking at one of Pharisee's the other day for half an hour and couldn't even figure where to start

I just tried a bunch at random and can see no discrepancies. I have about 10,000 Custom POI's exported from GSAK and then loaded into my csx. All the ones I looked at the coords for the poi were exactly the same as listed in GSAK. As to being off at a cache, that's a different subject

Just to add my 2 cents, I have seen similar on my old Etrex Vista and even (although no track log) have seen an elapsed distance (odo) error on my forerunner. In contrast to the poster who thinks the track log is more accurate and the Odo a mere average, I would hold with the opposite: The odo records continually, whereas tracks are point readings at a <preset> interval. The same run on my forerunner came out to a significantly different distance over two days, and when I looked into it I saw that the number of trackpoints varied in quantity and distance. One day was wet and cloudy and the other was fine. Similar with the etrex. The track log distance is calculated by adding up each track point -by drawing a straight line between each- now add in the logging interval and the fact that due to drop put some points may be missed or in the wrong place and you can see where the error is coming from. I would imagine that the odo is calculated on the fly using every 1 second update so the chances of the same averaging issue shouldn't arise.

I've followed all these threads with interest and am now actually getting somewhere. But I am limited to this lates release of poiloader which has the proximity bug (always trys to set alerts) and also I'm haveing loads of trouble with the comment text not wrapping - presumably because the proximity data is on the screen. I am also having loads of issues importing gpx files (most of the time it says its not a valid file). For example if I run the GSAK macro to export to csv files it works, but if I run the one for GPX files only about four of the output files are accepted. I have now got a big spreadsheet with all of the UK caches in, a bitmap to go with it and it loads OK, but I can't tell if my other problems are to do with the proximity thing or something else I'm doing wrong. What I really need to do is get hold of the older version of poiloader, but Garmin don't leave them on the download site. I have tried to google for it in case it's archived somewhere but with no luck. Does anyone know where I can get this file or will I have to wait for the next update to fix this problem?

There's another less visited, but still useful site here.

Well, I got my new 60CSX yesterday and when at first I didn't seem to get a WASS lock these threads had me worried. I actually had my new GPSr sitting next to my old Etrex Vista in the garden and the latter had a lock on bird 33 (I'm in UK) and a nice row of 'D's. EPE 10ft, the new GPS no 33, no 'D's EPE 18ft. But left it for about 20 mins and it all started working. Once it locks 33 (or sometimes 37) a row of 'D's IS displayed on the satellite page. BUT! and here it is: on page 97 of teh 60CSX manual here it states that because enabling WAAS where it is not available can actually reduce performance the 60CSX automatically overrides this setting if it thinks best. The way to notice this is on the satellite page: On the Etrex, when WAAS is enabled, the last two channels of the receiver are reserved for WAAS / EGNOS birds (numbered above 32) and will often be empty, leaving only 10 channels for normal reception; on the 60CSX the channels only get allocated once it 'knows about' and can 'see' the WAAS satellite. Other comments are also valid, without a WAAS lock I have seen EPE down to 12ft already, and with down to 9ft (although I once got 6ft on my Etrex). So apart from that pretty row of 'D's it's not a huge thing to get hung up on.

I think the 'x' refers to the fact that the Micro SD card has been added, although the 60 & 70 series x do have the SIRF chipset, this Garmin page covers the announcement.

Well folks it's update time: I bit the bullet last Tuesday night late and used buy it now to go for one of these units, total cost £267 inlcuding postage and insurance. This morning the postman rang the doorbell and put a nice big jiffy bag with US global post all over it, and didn't even want a signature. The customs form was declaring the item as a gift with a nominal $50 value, and so I had to pay not other charges whatsoever. As expected the unit has a US basemap, and came with a copy of Metroguide Europe V6.5. I already have MG 6 installed so the only moral dilema occurs when (or if) I sell on my Etrex and send off the MG disks with it. That said that fact that the software isn't protected probably says something about how valued it is by Garmin. My final decision on this is yet to be made. Anyway I replaced the 64Mb card with a 1Gb one I got on Ebay last week (about £25) and proceeded to load up most of the UK maptiles which comes to less than 100Mb. So the base map really is not the issue it would have been for my old Etrex Vista (non x). I also upgraded the firmware and this now has a USB mass storage mode as well so the extra storage space is available for other non GPS stuff. Conclusions: If you have no qualms about spending this amount of money on ebay, and avoiding all that nasty duty & VAT then this has to be recommended, and you all know the price of these things here, then this is a highly recommended route to go. I am slightly more concerned about the supplied software, but whether I or any other buyer chooses to use it is for their own concience I suppose. A further Brucie Bonus is that second hand Etrex Vistas (mono) are still fetching £100 or so on the bay.