Catlon

My very first cache I placed back in '04 was a large ammo box seeded with about $120 worth of quality stuff. The good stuff stayed there for awhile as cachers refused to trade. They didn't have anything of value on their person to trade. Eventually quality things were traded, but the value of the quality also diminished over time, until it finally held only McGeo junk. It is now archived, but not for that reason. Every cache I have placed since then has contained lesser quality swag, but in no case have I ever placed "junk" in my caches. And personally, I do not trade. I just enjoy having nice things in my caches for others.

Yes, it is already posted in the local forums. This is merely an attempt to reach anybody who may read this forum, but not the local forums. And it is also in the local papers. And yes, the local reviewer has already been notified.

NOTICE - Mt Airy Forest Park, and the adjacent Tanglewood park (Kirby trails) in Cincinnati are temporarily closed for the next 3 months or so until after the first of the year. This covers approx 1700 acres and affects almost 60 caches. I have disabled all 24 of mine in these parks. The reason for the closure is for deer population management, trail repairs, and other issues. So please don't make plans to visit these parks for a while. Thanks!

I'm sure you will want to do this cache, Shawnee Lookout Cache, which is the oldest cache in Ohio, and with a great view of three states. And you will want to do this one as well. It is a Lunch Series cache and is atop the tallest building in downtown Cincinnati. Be sure to bring your camera. Cost is $2 at the top. You will take 2 elevators. Another local favorite is an abandoned underground railroad tunnel, called RR2K#L. Bring a flashlight and some friends.

Hi, I live in Cincinnati, and have some caches in a very large and hilly 1500 acre park. Here is a Bookmark List of these 24 caches. Maybe some of these may interest you. Also, your inquiry has been posted on our local Cincinnati forum, called OKIC (Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana Cachers) . Sign on and check us out. You can read many topics about new caches, group hunts, favorite caches, park caches, etc.

I have had "TNLNSL" on my Buick since I started in 2004. Some of you may remember my car and plate number at the very first Geobash. I've retired that plate and gotten a Pet theme plate, but still have "TNLNSL" on the pet themed plate now. The original plate that was on the car at the geobash has been made into an Event TB. Click the link to see the "TNLNSL" TB. Here is the pet themed plate on the car now. It is for the State of Ohio.

I am 62, way overweight, but love to get out on the trails. I don't like micros, but do them just to clear the slate. I love caches that take me on semi-rugged hikes with great scenery. By great scenery I mean trees, rocks, hills, overlooks, winding trails, lakes, wildlife, etc. My buddies might get there a little before me, but I'm not too far behind. I'm part of a crew that caches on Wednesdays of every week. I'm the oldest, the youngest is in early 50's. I used to go out alone, but now prefer the company of others. I guess it's mostly because of a fall or injury... or heart attack (heaven forbid). Face it - it could easily happen. But at least I'm doing something I love. My wife turned ill with a brain tumor before I started caching, and recently passed away. She never knew geocaching, or my passion for the sport. Recently I developed a pinched nerve in my right side that causes tingling and numbness down my right leg. It requires me to sit or squat for a minute every few hundred feet. I have a Street Pilot III, and a Nuvi 680 for the car. For back country I have an Oregon 400t, 2 Garmin 76CSx's, a Garmin 60C, an Explorer 500, and probably 1 or 2 more somewhere. I use my Nuvi, and a PDA for paperless caching, but will soon include the Oregon, as soon as I can figure it out (just bought it). I hate humidity, and measure the success of my caching day with phrases such as, "It was a 4-shirt day today." My walking staff has saved me many a time, but I have still taken some rather spectacular face-plants. To this day I have never broken a bone or been under the knife. I guess my tough Norsk stock takes care of that. I have 57 personal caches that I am maintaining, 13 of them for the county parks. If you're ever in the Cincinnati area, stop and say, "Hi!"

I whole-heartedly agree on the 76CSx. The 76CSx and the 60CSx are basically identical, just different outward appearances. In fact, it is one of these major physical characteristic that makes me choose the 76 over the 60. Stability! I just lay the 76 on the dash while I'm driving. With the rubber backing on the 76, it has not slid off the dash yet. It just sits there, looking pretty. The 60, on the other hand, wouldn't last 3 seconds on the dash. This is assuming you don't have a mount for it. I don't, because I use a Nuvi for navigation. And with a center console and a passenger, I have no place else to put it. For me, that one difference made the sale. Also, it used to be that the 76CSx was more expensive than the 60CSx. Since the demand for the 60 went up, so did the price, or should I say the price of the 76CSx went way down. $269. I'm buying another one, maybe two of them.

Not sure about the exact time, but it was around 9:00 pm my time (Eastern), which would be only 6:00 pm on the west coast.

The log says June 11, but the GPX file says June 12. It only happened with the "Needs Maintenance" log. It didn't happen with the DNFs.

I placed a "Needs Maintenance" Log in GC1D33Z on the evening of June 11. It shows up correctly in gc.com as June 11. However, a PQ I received today shows this log as having a date of June 12. When I go to the cache page and "save as GPX file" it, too, shows June 12. Any idea why? All other logs I placed during the same time frame are OK. I'm using GSAK to read the logs. Clyde said his program reads the dates from the GPX file, and the GPX file shows it as June 12.

The "List" needs to be edited to include the fact that the police and the neighbors that were evacuated are now laughing about it; also the police even put some swag in the container before replacing. This one had a good ending. Let's give it some credit in the "List", or remove it from the "List", but don't leave it at "confiscated"!

I have used the Explorist 500 for 16 months and it was an unbeatable unit; that is until the SiRF processor was put into the 60Cx and 76Cx units. I personally liked the Garmin features better because before I got the Explorist I had a 60C. However, because of continually dropping satellites I switched to the 500. But now that Garmin has a better antenna, I switched back and bought the 76CSx. Note: except for looks and a couple of features, the 60 Cx and the 76Cx are basically the same unit. Comparing the two units - Although both units have never lost a lock, the 76CSx acquires lock much faster than the 500. Both units hold lock indoors, and under heavy canopy. But for me, I like the bigger Garmin unit, and the geocaching features of the Garmin unit better. Today, I experienced my first issue with the Explorist. The USB cable no longer screws into the back of the unit. I believe the screw hole in the back of the unit is stripped. I've always felt that the USB cable on the 500 is the weak point of the unit. It is extremely tiny and flimsy. On top of transferring data, this cable is also used to charge the battery. This might be something to keep in mind when purchasing. I will be sending my unit in for repair. I did purchase a 2-yr extended warranty with it. Foresight! But to answer your question - for me personally, the new SiRF processor units will be a strong competitor to the Magellan units. And I do like the features of the Garmin better. So it's the Garmin Cx units for me.

...and the ability to edit the caption that goes with the photo!

There are many memorial (tree) groves planted to honor presidents, authors, heroes, statesmen, freedom fighters, and so on. I'd like to suggest a "Memorial Groves" sub-category under "Plants & Trees."

The reference I made being close to a minute for loading the Detail map was just plain wrong! I think my cat was sending me mental messages and confusing me. I did, however, redo the test again today when I was fully awake and it actually took 30 seconds, but that was from the point that I changed detail maps from one to the other. It actually takes even less upon startup. The 17 seconds you quoted for the 60 mb file is accurate. And it also takes only 17 seconds for the 121 Mb file. I took it a step further this morning and tried with a 225 Mb chunk of map. This time I used a USB 2.0 SD card reader/writer, and chose "Upload To SD Card Programmer" option. It took 1 hour and 1 minute to create the 225 Mb map chunk on my laptop, and only 40 seconds to upload it to the SD card. And only 17 seconds to bring in this detail map upon startup. So it appears that 17 seconds is accurate for all sizes.

Thanks, Embra, I stand corrected on the size limit. I had not tested anything bigger than a 60 mb chunk, because I knew that some units had a limit of 64 mb map size. I just now did a test on a 121 mb map region, and it converted and uploaded just fine - a bit slow though!. However, keep in mind, the larger the map size, the longer the E-500 takes to load into memory (close to a minute).

Not at the current time - at least none that I've found.

Here are some learnings regarding an SD card and uploading maps to the E-500. I am using Map Send Topo 3D USA, and my SD card is 512 Mb. First use Map Send to define your regions on the map to be uploaded. Once the map regions are chosen and marked, I then "upload" them to my hard drive first. This has to be done if uploading to an SD card. I am creating map regions in the 60 Mb size, give or take. About 8 of these regions will fit on a 512 Mb SD card. If you are uploading more than one map region to the SD card, you will get a message stating that you can only upload one map region at a time. Ignore this, as it is meant for uploading directly to the internal memory of your unit, and of course your unit can only display one map region at a time (in 64 Mb or less chunks). After choosing "Save to hard drive", it will then create the map regions and save to the default folder which is in the main program folder on C-drive. I have yet to figure out how to save them to My Documents folder. Now I don't know what process Magellan uses, but creating and saving these map regions to my hard drive takes a long time. And I have a Pentium 4 with 2.4 Ghz processor, and 1 Gb Ram, and a high speed hard drive on my laptop. It took over an hour to create these 8 map regions on my hard drive. Now you're only half done! Now you have to use the supplied Magellan Conversion Manager to convert and copy these map regions from your hard drive to your SD card in the E-500, using the supplied USB cable. It must be USB 1.0 in the unit because it takes almost as long to copy these map regions to the SD card as it did to create the maps in the first place. All in all I spent well over 2 hours just to upload these 8 map regions to the SD card in the E-500. By comparison, the GPS Map 60C takes less than 3 minutes to upload a 50 Mb map file. I do believe Magellan has a long way to go in this area. I don't know how long it would take using a data card programmer, but I assume at least the upload portion would be a bit faster. And of course, you only have to do this once, then the data is there to be used over and over again. You could set up the entire country on 2-3 SD cards, and not have to mess with it anymore. I place only my maps on the SD card. The waypoints (500 geocaching points) will only use up a few Kb's in the unit's internal memory. Of course if you have more than 500 points, then you will need to store the rest on the SD card. I did have a problem one time early on when I came out of "transfer mode" to "power only" mode. I went to set my default Detail Map, and it showed nothing. I tried to look at the SD card and it acted like it wasn't there. So I removed the SD card (a 256 Mb card) and plugged it into my laptop which told me that the card was unformatted. That's funny, since I had been using it for several months. So I went ahead with the format, re-uploaded the maps, and everything has been fine since.

Listed are some of my learnings from using the Explorist 500: It appears that you are only able to upload a maximum of 200 cache points using the Geocaching Manager software, even though more are displayed on the Geocaching Manager screen. The options are: 1) All Geocaches, or 2) only those selected. No matter which one I choose, it will only upload the first 200, based on Cache ID (alphabetically). So, that means that if you want to upload more than 200 at a time, then the newest caches will be left off, since they are farther down the list alphabetically. However, there is a way around this - just create another cache file to hold another 200, and so on. This is true, whether you are saving to the Internal Memory, or to an SD card. And nowhere is this litle detail mentioned. I also have an issue with the only 2 choices for using the GOTO button, which are "Nearest" or "Alphabetically". Alpha means just what it says - it sorts it alphabetically, and you have to go thru the list one at a time to get to a cache starting with the letter M, for example. There is no fast way that I know of to scroll down the list, even though there is a slide bar on the side of the screen. Another issue - The default naming convention is "the cache name". I, however, like to use the cache ID for all my caching - however there is no option for this on the unit. I did find a workaround solution to this, though. However, it won't fit everybody's needs, based on the tools they have at their disposal. Here is what I do based on my geocaching tools. I pull my Geocaching.com Pocket Query into GSAK (Geocaching Swiss Army Knife). Then when I'm ready, I Export the file into a LOC file (instead of GPX). Before hitting the generate button, I enter the following into the "Cache Description Format" box: "%Drop2 %Name (%Dif/%Ter)" (without the quotation marks). Then I generate/save the file and load it into the Geocache Manager transfer program, and send it to my Expl 500. Now each waypoint in my GPSr looks like this (I'll use one of mine for example): "MWKX Green's Half Ac", instead of "Green's Half Acre (2". Also another quirk I found is that when hitting the transfer button on Geocache Manager, then clicking OK, I always get an error notice that "No Unit Was Detected". However, I immediately do it a 2nd time and it finds it easily and transfers the data. That's all for now!