CB_JeffH

New cachers just have to be educated. I use Trimble's software on my BlackBerry. When I first started, I didn't know that phrase annoyed people. If I hadn't ever browsed the forum here, I still wouldn't know. I may never find one of your caches, but thanks for hiding them. The newbies appreciate it, even if they don't know how to express it properly.

I'm sorry, but I'm unfamiliar with a UK Grid format. You can change the location format in Settings. The choices are Deg Min, Deg Min Sec, and Deg. Radar Mode does not have a map. It shows you your distance and bearing from the target on a fixed North Up display. You have Street Maps, Aerial View, and Topo View on the maps tab.

It's not an acronym. It's an expression of astonishment at one's lack of understanding. As in, "well, duh..."

One suggestion I've found that helps in the woods: hold the BlackBerry up and out, away from your body. You may be surprised how much it helps. If you're walking around hunched over staring at the ground, there's a good chance you're blocking the antenna with your body.

I found this thread while searching for info on the difference in performance between 12- and 16-channel GPS receivers. I use a Delorme LT-20 with Street Atlas on a laptop for general navigation, not geocaching. The LT-20 is a 12-channel unit that I bought in 2007. Delorme now has the LT-40, which is a 16-channel unit. The weak signal tracking spec for the LT-20 is < -145 dBm and for the LT-40 is < -159 dBm. Given the improved sensitivity, I would expect the LT-40 to do better in poor reception conditions than the LT-20. Would the increase in channels from 12 to 16 make any appreciable difference?

Thanks, you just cleared up a lot of confusion for me as well.

I live in an area with a lot of canals and waterways. Last Saturday I stood 100 feet from a cache location on the other side of a too deep to wade lake. A mile of shore line later I reached the cache. Aerial views in Geocache Navigator are very helpful for choosing a path when "as the crow flies" won't get you there. I don't consider that cheating, or any less fun.

I use Geocache Navigator with my Verizon Tour 9630. It works very well. Of course it requires your BlackBerry have a functioning GPSr. I don't think AT&T has ever blocked the GPS, but before you buy the app, be sure the GPSr works. If you don't have any other apps that use the GPSr, go to Options / Status and type the letters test. That will bring up the self-test menu. Go outdoors with a clear view of the sky and run the GPSr self-test. If if passes, you've got a functioning GPSr. You will have to have a data plan to use Geocache Navigator. Neither it nor your BlackBerry have any preloaded maps, so all the maps have to come through your data connection in real time. That also means you won't have maps if you are geocaching in an area with no cell phone coverage. That may not matter, but you need to be aware of it. AT&T has a history of blocking users from running apps that compete with apps they license. They block BlackBerry Maps, for example, because it competes with their Nav app. So it is entirely possible that you won't be able to run Geocache Navigator after installing it. It should have a free trial, so you can find out risk-free. If it won't run, there are work-arounds that may enable it. A discussion of those is outside the scope of this forum, but if you post your question on crackberry.com, you can get an answer there.

Check out the Field Notes section in geocaching.com. If you have a GPSr that is supported, you can automatically upload field notes to create a log entry, which you can then further edit. Field Notes are supported for smartphones and for some Garmin, Delorme, Lowrance, and Magellan GPS receivers.

The ONLY thing you can do from the field with Geocache Navigator is log a field note. Since you're using a smartphone, you COULD log into geocaching.com from the field and submit a proper log, but I prefer to compose a log entry from my PC back home. The Field Note created by Geocache Navigator has nothing in it except Trimble's tagline. You can't suppress creating that, nor can you change it to something else, but you can delete it from the log when you create the actual log from the Field Note. That's what I started doing after reading in the forums that some people found the tagline offensive. I still don't understand why it is offensive, but I'd rather remove it than offend the people who hide the caches and read the logs.

As others have noted, it's the tagline Geocache Navigator puts in a log when one converts a field note to a log. There is no way to suppress it in the app. I never considered the tagline offensive or in bad taste. I just added whatever I put in the log in front of it, so that it stayed a tagline at the bottom of my log. After seeing earlier comments in the forum about it, I started deleting it from the log.