Ratsneve

No word from rriver79 yet. Can a moderator verify if his/her email address works/is active please? Bad things do happen. Thought of setting up a poll question on lost TBs and Coins but the feature apparently has been turned off. Have you ever lost a trackable item? If so, was it ever recovered or has it been lost forever? Thanks.

I've lost track of my 'Palauan Storyboard' TBM18C again and would now like it routed back to Central Oregon if I could be so lucky please. I'm trying to contact the last person, rriver79, who had the bug a couple months ago. I also seem to have lost email notification and cannot find how or where to set the feature. I use to get an update whenever my bug moved. Where do I turn this notification on/off? Thank you.

It would be nice if Garmin would point that out in instructions.

You are right--I just turned on tracking and it works on the Oregon too. I wonder why? I don't need tracking on all the time.

Just confirmed on my trip that the elevation graph is inoperative--no graph on my replacement Oregon 400t. I suspected this right after delivery but had to start the trip before any other considerations. The elevation still reads out and seems to respond accurately--just no graph. Anyone else see this? Am I overlooking anything to get this to graph to display?

I got my replacement Oregon. I had a long conversation with an experienced GPSr user who has convinced me that the Oregon really works fine and doesn't need WPA with the sensitive fast receivers nor WAAS in the Northwest at least since I never see any accuracy difference. My satisfaction now understanding and accepting maybe a 30 foot diameter accuracy zone and no longer getting bent out of shape if the pointer goes off over a hundred feet from momentary propagation errors which can be fixed by moving the GPSr around--not leaving it stationary--or cycling the power means I can start enjoying using and enjoying it. I've also discovered using a stylus on the screen is the cat's pajamas. It's nice that you can use fingers if that's all you have left but a stylus _really_ makes life easy and leaves the smudges off the screen. Garmin should market a nice soft case with room for several battery sets and styli--but rounding the end of a toothpick works great. For the Oregon Zoom Levels are you all using Auto or have you felt needing to tweak these zoom levels differently from Auto? What about Detail? What level have you settled on or do any of you change these options as the need arises?

How about if you turn shading off while street navigating. It won't turn the 24K contours off but might still speed things up? Under Advanced Map Setup there is Shaded Relief and Zoom Levels. Under Zoom Levels maybe turning off Land Cover would help too? The roads should be spot on since apparently (it has been mentioned) the MicroSD 24K Topo series includes City Navigator.

Can't you get your aerial photos from Google Earth and put them in the picture viewer for reference? Do you have to be able to track on an aerial photo in order to find this sort of complicated cache?

Great! It likes to drift off course but if I wait long enough it finds itself. If I can't wait I cycle the power and it is back on track. WAAS sucks--takes way to much time to appear and anyway, I never have seen on the CO or the OR any accuracy improvement in Oregon (the state of). Charting barometric pressure when turned off produces spikes when turned on where the pressure settles to a new level--so I can see the pressure trend when turned off but I haven't a clue as to what the real pressue is. If the pressure returned to the approximate same level it was recording when the unit was off then the spiking might not be noteworthy. I like the touch screen but it is just as hard to see out in daylight depending on the angle of things as the Colorado. I don't wear gloves or go out playing much in cold weather. I "accidentally" submerged the OR in 13" of water for around 5 minutes--no leaks at all. I was just about ready to call Garmin on all the drifts I was seeing--had several of over 60, 100, and 200 feet when I replaced a set of batteries to see if the drifting was going to stop or not on fully charged cells. A battery compartment tab broke and went flying off. That's that--it's being exchanged and I should get the new one next Thursday. I paid my shipping this time because I may have inadvertently stressed the tab. I'm glad I have unlimited calling because I'll have to get to Garmin's software department now for the third time to get my new registration and City Navigator working on the new unit. I'm hoping the new unit won't go off drifting as much as the old one. The drifting/wandering problem was cured once before when exchanging Colorados. I love to guess things out and think Garmin's BIGGEST problem is quality control and corrective action.

I would press them for a prepaid UPS label. Time before last I asked for a full refund of the Colorado. They refused that because I didn't buy it from them but a dealer. I told Garmin that that dealer didn't have any return policy on their GPSr and mine had all these problems. They still refused so I asked if I could upgrade for the price difference to an Oregon. The tech got this authorized and proceded to give me the address to send my bad Colorado to. I said wait a second, I'm not paying for shipping for defective units that are your fault to begin with. The guy checked with his supervisor and they agreed to the prepaid UPS label. Garmin is throwing money away with all these exchanges so there is no reason why they can't pay postage both ways. If it was your or my fault or partly our fault I'd agree to pay one-way but when we are beta testing their problems I wouldn't give an inch on this shipping issue--period. [i don't know where it is written, if anywhere, but in my book an "honest" company cannot refuse a full refund (for what you paid--receipts) infefinitely if they cannot fix a problem. How long they get though I suspect you'd have to take them to court to determine. I figure in the end Garmin will get rich off of the great in field testing we have given the CO and OR. I was a fool to buy the CO when I did and from the online store with no return policy--a total fool. The only thing that keeps me going is how much I enjoy playing with these units--the technology. ] Next time I'm going to pay a little more but still get it under list price from REI or the like that has an unlimited no questions asked (as near as I can tell) return policy. It's funny how the guy at REI, as expert at GPSing as he may be, isn't aware of 75% of the problems we have been "beta testing" on these CO and ORs. Sigh...

Did you say that the barometric pressure records properly when turned off in the normal fashion--not turning off by unplugging from drive mode on your PC? Also, I have noticed these spikes and pressure differences on the Oregon too. I haven't tried to determine which pressures values were correct or when. I don't know why but I don't think I ever disconnected from drive mode which leaves the GPSr turned off and expected or looked to see if barometric pressure was being recorded or not. I think imho that Garmin's approach to this pressure trending is all wrong. For one thing there should be an easy way to clear these charts and reseting the whole unit isn't the answser. Secondly, when you don't want to record when the unit is off and have turned this feature off there shouldn't be any straight line drawn from when the unit was last turned off to when it is turned on. The graph should show a time interruption from when it was turned off to when it was next turned on. Also, I don't recall the Colorado behavior exactly when I had one because we knew it wasn't working then, but the Oregon for sure now and the Colorado it appears now both exhibit these spikes and different pressure values that are not comprehended and leave one questioning what pressure is right. One minute the pressure is recording "properly" while the unit is turned off; then you turn it on, notice a spike of sorts and watch the pressure settles down recording again after a number of minutes, but it is at a different pressure level.

On the Colorado you use the R-n-R left-right or up-down to change 'x' and 'y' axis scales. On the Oregon you tap the scale units.

Another weird problem and some nice things to say about Garmin... Has anyone else noticed that inserting and removing batteries on the Oregon is a notch tougher then the Colorado? Well, when I removed a dead set the other day one of the battery terminals broke off and went flying--never did find it, but it was easy to see what was missing, and my fourth CO/OR was unusable. Now for the good news. I called Garmin early in the morning and got through in maybe ten minutes. The phone tech was sorry to hear what had happened and immediately started an RMA. I elected to temporarily pay for the new unit so it would start shipment that day. So for all the bad things I hold against Garmin they play fair and square and are quick about other things. Thank you Garmin... I went into the local REI store and met with their GPS Master. There is nothing better then a hands-on discussion with a GPS expert. We exchanged some questons and difficulties, thought it wasn't necessary for me to attend the class he holds periodically, and said just to come by and ask any questions I had in the future.

No, the Colorado and Oregon have no ID field when turned on but read on... Frankly, the chances are good that someone picking up your particular GPSr model isn't going to know how or where you have stored identifying data. I would keep it simple and obvious and tape it to the outside of the GPSr or maybe inside the battery compartment. The Colorado and Oregon have an Image Viewer. You could edit your ID info into an image that would stay viewable/readable there when that function was selected--that might be obvious enough to find. You could include a photo ID even.

Well, that confirms what I thought I knew once about the Hall Effect and why moving the R-n-R around on a Colorado doesn't have any effect on an operational 2-axis compass. And we've speculated that there are too many accidental magnetic fields a GPSr might come across that it couldn't really cause any damage--nothing worse then recalibration.

Unfortunately, this has been the only way I have solved my map software issues with two Colorados and now one Oregon so far. I realize many have sailed through this process but I haven't once. And the first line phone support at Garmin has never been able to help with software issues but the Software Dept. really knows what is going on. I would have saved myself pain if there was some way to reach them directly--they really know--my bonnet's off to that one part of Garmin at least.

The simply awful thought crossed my mind once. Now I prefere to think of it all this way: "the luck of the draw", poor in-house beta testing and quality control, and for myself being way to anal about the technology. Many things I relish on one could overlook and ignore or miss seeing all together--that wouldn't make any of the problems disappear. In an imperfect world one might be very happy with what one's got.

What if the marker wanders or drifts? If you are averaging it you wouldn't be able to discount the error would you? If you manually made WPs you would see the unusual drift and simply ignore it until it self-corrected or cycle the power and the drift would go away. Of course, if you were using an Oregon and WAAS was noticeably important you might have to wait a half-hour before you got it back if you cycled the power? As you may tell I'm still trying to figure out how important WP Averaging really is with such sensitive receivers.

I got the free replacement carabiner today for the Oregon. It was much better in two respects... the end of the strap didn't stick out half as far but would still interfere a little when installing. And this protrusion was not sewn or melted at its end so I could trim off almost 1/8". Now none protrudes at all and installing and removing the carabiner is a piece of cake. I can set this asside and move on to more interesting problems.

I'm not certain now (another ten-year-old memory-fade) that the Hall Effect technology used has to use a permanent magnet but maybe just a ferrous material? Apparently, because I do remember reading a R-n-R thread not to long ago, you can use a small magnet with the wheel removed to demonstrate the Effect--but maybe it wasn't a magnet at all but just the metal tip of a pen--I don't remember? Someone closer to this technology will have to jump in.

Thank you for that confirmation. I must assume then "normally" that one would deactivate screen capture via the menu when done capturing or else there is some sort of conflict of sorts between capturing and going to the page to adjust backlighting and/or locking the screen?

I continue to have wild spikes on occasion where the track has gone off several hundred feet even. Since the track left is a straight line with no apparent return path unless it has been exactly on top of the spike I don't think this type relates to the marker wandering or drifting. I have been able to watch some of the drifting or wandering occur and they too can go off a couple hundred feet it seems. The marker seems to settle at its new location quite happy it is where it thinks it should be. From trails it has seemed to wander back and fixed itself but more often then not I've discovered the drift and cycled the OR and this has always brought the marker back where it _really_ belongs. I know this because I've created a cluster of WPs--my own style of WP Averaging if you will. Because cycling fixes the location error I am assuming at this point that it does not relate to GPSs constellation changes but rather something else that irks the GPSr. Currently I'm trying to run a set of Ni-M-H batteries out while the unit is turned off but taking barometric pressure readings... This feature seems to work well in and of itself and the results look very good and similar to the results over a period of time when the unit is turned on, BUT... The transistions between cycling usually produce barometric spikes or erroneous movement in the graph when monitoring the barometric pressure. When monitoring the ambient pressure I haven't seen these spikes produced with the cycling. Unfortunately, when one of these spikes does take place a new pressure base line settles in that is not the same. So although you can see what the pressure trend rising or falling may be I can't tell what the actual pressure might really be. There may be a different or better way to calibrate or reestablish the actual pressure but I don't know what it is? Should I leave the elevation as fixed or a variable and what does that mean? Should the pressure be barrometric or ambient--and what does that mean? ADDED: I leave calibrating barometric pressure/elevation on Auto. Since I normally travel up and down on routes I normally leave the elevation on variable (not fixed). I've noticed that after taking screen shots with the Oregon when you return to the menu or some other yet unidentified screen or turn the unit off the screen shot feature is automatically deactivated--a good feature but I need to learn what does this.

For other GPSr's that have 2 or 3 axis electronic compasses will passing weak or strong magnetic fields hurt the compass in any way? Will it affect the compass calibration requiring recalibration? Is there any permanent damage?? How about over a prolonged period even near a magnetic source? Could a magnetic field set off other problems like jumping off course or position hundreds of feet? I've used the Colorado and Oregon compasses while driving or riding in several vehicles without any problem since while moving the GPS compass has taken over. I just tried using the electronic compass inside my car while stationary, maybe for the first time, and it is quite impossible and unreliable for certain. I hope/trust this may prove there is no harm done to the mechanism since the compass card movement is quite wild. There are it appears numerous points in a car, such as speakers, that greatly affect the Oregon's 2-axis compass pointing and operation. Even though I was holding the compass level I frequently got the "hold level" warning. This would of course be true using any sensitive magnetic compass too. I was surprised how sensitive the Oregon was inside the car--not needed but totally unusable while stationary imo.

I'd love to see what can be done with a PN-40 and XMap. There are some chart numbers and TOPO links in my last post that might be of use. I'm real happy to see that too so long as the Colorado and Oregon GPSr's are not ignored.

If your Oregon is anything like my new Oregon you to can look forward to wandering or drifting off course 100 or 200 feet even at any unexpected time. Sadly you can cycle the power and get right back on track. But will you enjoy this as much as I don't...er...do? "Oh, you silly thing...It says the cache is by that big tree...but look what you are doing...you're taking me to that nice big flat rock 100 feet away. That looks so nice and warm I think I'll take a little rest on it and wait rather then turning you off and on again."