Entropy512

You might want to wait a little and see what the street price of the Garmin Dakota 20 turns out to be, and what chipset it uses. I've used a DeLorme PN-40 (for about an hour before it failed - DeLorme's been having a lot of quality control and/or design flaw problems with the unit's power supply circuitry - see http://forum.delorme.com/viewtopic.php?t=16868 . It's been a known issue for 6+ months but no resolution yet) and a Garmin Oregon 300. I love my Oregon 300, it's great - i'm actually glad the PN-40 died so quickly, driving me to purchase the Oregon. The screen is easy to read and MUCH larger than the DeLorme's, no special software is required for transferring waypoints/tracks/caches (only for maps), it uses a standard mini-USB data cable and can be powered by my existing pile of mini-USB power adapters. The free topo maps available for Garmins at http://www.gpsfiledepot.com/ are in my experience better than the DeLorme topo maps most of the time, which eliminates the main price advantage of the PN-40 (included maps with the $250 unit)

huuuh? Based on your description it sounds like you're not using rechargeables. Why? I strongly suggest getting a set of good ultra-low-self-discharge (aka "hybrid" aka "pre-charged") NiMH batteries and a GOOD NiMH charger like the MaHa MH-C9000 or LaCrosse BC-900. (Don't skimp on the charger - cheap chargers can kill batteries prematurely. I have 3-4 sets of older NiMHs that suffer from significantly reduced capacity due to improper charging with a cheap charger.)

As others have said, that particular app violates the Groundspeak TOU. It is not permitted to even mention its name on these forums, even when discussing its TOU-violating status. Most likely Groundspeak is actively checking for accesses from said app and blocking them.

I've been using an Oregon 300 (basically same as 400t except w/o preloaded topo and less onboard memory) for a few weeks now and love it. Pros: Free maps available from gpsfiledepot.com Decent road routing with City Navigator maps Transflective display allows for daylight reading even with low backlight settings - people complain about this unit's backlight but in sunlight it blows away the device it replaced for caching (AT&T Tilt) Transfer of non-map data does not require any special software - the Oregon stores all data internally as GPX files, transferring waypoints, tracks, routes, and caches is drag-and-drop. Very well built with a unique "rail" type mounting system - the included carabiner mount rocks! Uses bog-standard USB cables for data transfer Uses the same "dumb charger" signaling convention as HTC PDA phone devices (Pin 4 on charger <=17k ohms to ground) Cons: STM Cartesio - both of the top dogs in paperless geocaching (PN-40 and Oregon) have this rather "meh" chipset Does not use the Motorola/Blackberry "dumb charger" signaling convention (Mini-USB Pin 4 220k ohms to ground), but a simple software workaround allows the unit to be powered with chargers designed for Moto/BB.

Sounds a lot like the Mullica River in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. Great place to go canoeing.

So Cacheberry actually has a feature where you can "spontaneous cache" with your Blackberry. You can have it detect your coords then it will connect to gc.com and append the url with a search command and your coords. Then you can look through the listings and download the GPSx file or use the search to create a pocket query that you can email yourself, then open with Cacheberry. Admittedly, the UI and the process is clunkier than Trimble, but developer says he working with cg.com on an API agreement. That would make it smooth as silk. ANOTHER QUESTION (sorry): Since I'm new to caching and don't know how accurate a good GPS unit is supposed to be, I'd love some perspective/feedback. Lately, my BB Storm has only been able to get me within 15-30 feet of a cache, regardless of the tree/building situation. I thought this was par for the technology until a friend with an Oregon told me she gets within 3-4 feet. Is my phone just going to be less accurate even though I have like 10 satellites? Is it the Cacheberry software? Can anyone give me any guidance? Thanks so much! Nicole It's hard to quantify what's "good" vs "bad", but in general, I've found the sensitivity and general performance of the Qualcomm GPSOne solution (used in nearly all phones with built-in GPS) to be pretty "meh". Slow lock times, poor sensitivity, etc. My Oregon locks far faster than my AT&T Tilt on anything, and performs better in general. Neither of them can touch my MTKv2-based Bluetooth puck though. That said, the Oregon carries great benefits for caching due to having an integrated electronic compass in addition to a decent GPS receiver.

Ammo Can. I'm oldschool like that. I was quite amused by the first micro I ever found, which was an Altoids tin stuck to a rather unique road sign in the middle of the desert in Anza Borrego Desert State Park. Subsequent micros have been less amusing, to the point where I leave micros out of most of my PQs. Unfortunately, some caches I have liked (stored in magnetic key boxes) are on the border between "small" and "micro" - It seems to be 50/50 what they get categorized as.

Disclaimer: I installed the Oregon 2.98 beta firmware almost immediately, and have not installed 2.99. I've never had my Oregon exhibit gross inaccuracies (like the 500 feet someone else claims). In general, I've had it more accurate than it claimed. e.g. if it claimed an accuracy of 40 feet and said I was within 10 feet of the cache - I'd actually be 10 feet away from the cache despite the claimed error of up to 40 feet by the GPS. The Oregon is clearly conservative in this regard. The chipset included is definately not as hot as the current performance king (the MTK v2 chipset), but so far there is nothing out there with the MTK2 (except for possibly the brand new Dakota 20). It seems about on par with a SiRF III in terms of non-WAAS performance. WAAS is the Oregon's Achilles heel - I've only seen it lock WAAS once. This should improve soon, the DeLorme PN-40 has proven that the WAAS performance of the STM Cartesio can be improved (although still not to the ability of a SiRF III or MTK2 to lock onto a WAAS sat and apply corrections.) Some people complain about screen brightness - Yes, the default brightness (about 40-50% of maximum) is dim, but it's easy to crank it up. The screen is incredibly easy to read due to the high resolution and large size. Being accustomed to a PDA phone (AT&T Tilt), anything smaller would have been a step backwards for me. Compared to my Tilt (which I love), the Oregon's sunlight readibility is superior due to the transflective screen (i.e. readable even without backlight, although you have to be somewhat careful of angle) and the Oregon's slick user interface. As others have said, the Oregon has some major advantages in paperless geocaching features. Drag and drop a GPX file to the device and you're ready to go. The 3D map view can be useful sometimes, and the DEM relief shading is useful frequently if you use a map with DEM data. Depending on what chipset it has, the new Dakota might be a good choice. It pretty much looks like it'll be a mini-Oregon.

In general: For road routing, you need City Navigator maps. For DEM relief shading, you need genuine Garmin topo maps. For topo contours and non-routable roads, you can get free maps for many areas from www.gpsfiledepot.com.

Hi there is a small problem, when you share the recipient does not get all the info just the waypoint. Or at least this is what i found between 2 300s If I recall correctly, this limitation was done on Groundspeak's request. (Data licensing issues.)

In general: For road routing, you need City Navigator maps. For DEM relief shading, you need genuine Garmin topo maps. For topo contours and non-routable roads, you can get free maps for many areas from www.gpsfiledepot.com.

What exactly does this ColoradoExport macro do? It seems to me like the macro is corrupting the files in a way the Oregon doesn't like, i.e. it's changing the caches so the GPX is formatted differently from a standard PQ results file. I've never had a problem like what you describe when loading PQ results directly into the unit.

This has been my general experience (currently running firmware 2.98, and basically have been running that since I bought the unit) with the Oregon - it seems to be pretty conservative with its accuracy estimate. The only bad thing is that WAAS support in the STM Cartesio used by the Oregon is pretty dismal. The DeLorme PN-40 has the same problem though (same chipset). The PN-40's latest firmware puts WAAS support at slightly better than the Oregon, but I'm fairly certain these improvements will be in an Oregon firmware update soon since they are sourced from the chipset supplier, not the unit manufacturer.

The unit was designed to deny advance features to an untrained person if it fell into the wrong hands. Sounds like you have a set of those. If you weren't an authorized used, how did you find yourself in possession of one? Yeah, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Advanced_GPS_Receiver, even without a crypto load they're still treated as a CCI.

My point on the voice is that it doesn't matter if you hold a phone to your head or the phone is handsfree, the same distraction applies. I would argue the same with the voice activated GPS unit as well. It's not the hand operation but the concentration on the operation that makes it "dangerous". The laws are stupid, plain and simple. This is completely untrue. It IS the hand operation that makes it dangerous, because there is a HUGE difference in available control between one hand on the wheel and two hands (or, for those who drive stick, one hand on the wheel and one on the shifter vs. something critical to driving is getting ignored because you need two hands and only have one free.) People also tend to tilt their head somewhat when handholding a phone to their head, and it's a lot harder to move your head when you're holding a phone to it. Handsfree headsets (especially Bluetooth wireless ones) permit far more head movement (for checking blind spots and such). Yes, driving while talking is not as good as driving while not doing anything, but there's a massive difference in driving ability between talking with both hands free and talking while trying to keep the phone near your head with one hand.

Two different sources for the hydro info. NYS source was from Census, probably a mix of 24K and 100K, names for wide water courses, and 'tested' for many years. NE was from NHD 24k which is fairly recent, does not name wide water courses and has some issues with polygons - oceans and lakes in some parts of the US. Take you pick - always nice to have a choice. Thanks for the info!

Primary differences: Major ruggedization Access to the military P(Y) encrypted signal on both L1 and L2. Civilian receivers only have access to the Coarse Acquisition (C/A) code on L1. The C/A code can have Selective Availability (SA) applied to it to degrade its accuracy. This was done globally until 2000, when Clinton signed an executive order to turn it off. It can be applied on a regional basis, although typically due to availability and cost issues with military GPS units (read: lots of ground troops with civilian units), it usually doesn't get turned on even in conflict areas. In fact, I recall seeing a story that it got turned *off* for Desert Storm due to the aforementioned issue. Using a dual-frequency approach, a receiver can determine the signal errors introduced by ionospheric propagation and correct for them, this is one of the primary sources of GPS position errors. Without access to two separate frequencies, a receiver needs to be told what the ionospheric errors are. This is usually done by using a reference receiver at a known location to determine the errors. These measured errors can then be sent to receivers at unknown locations in order to improve their position fix. This is known as differential GPS (DGPS). Initial DGPS approaches (which are still in use) used fixed stations that broadcast corrections on a rather low frequency (a few hundred kilohertz) radio channel. This is how the Coast Guard DGPS system works. Newer approaches send data to receivers using other methods, the most common now being via satellite (SBAS, of which WAAS/EGNOS are particular installations of SBAS). SBAS is, indeed, a form of DGPS. The end result - without a crypto load to access the P(Y) signal, a military receiver will probably not perform any better than a commercial one, it may likely even perform worse since it was optimized to work with the P(Y) signal and civilian receivers were specifically designed to perform as well as possible with the C/A signal (It's amazing what people have been able to do with the C/A signal, achieving accuracy FAR greater than it was intended to provide). Give a civilian receiver WAAS and it will definately beat the military receiver unless it's receiving some sort of corrections.

Depends on if your focus leans more towards navigation features or geocaching. Garmin really has two "dual use" units (or series of units). One is somewhat more road-oriented, the other is more trail oriented. The Nuvi 500 series is the road-oriented device that has capabilities for trail/geocaching work, but to my knowledge doesn't have an electronic compass which can be VERY nice for caching. The Oregon series are the trail-oriented devices that do road navigation quite well. The big thing the Oregon lacks compared to Nuvis for road navigation if you have City Navigator maps installed is voice prompting. Edit: As to Lowrance, as of around 2005, while they used SD cards, Lowrance required you to use a special SD card reader with MapSend. Normal SD card readers would NOT work for writing maps, and the Lowrance card reader was about as large as the iFinder H2O my father purchased it with. Do they still require you to use a special card reader?

Same here with the Oregon instead of the Colorado. The Oregon seems to be getting a little more development attention than the Colorado - it seems that given a choice between touchscreen and "rock and roller", touchscreen is proving more popular. The Oregon is easier to find in stores, and given that Garmin's next unit coming out (the Dakota) is touchscreen-based, it looks like Garmin has decided that touchscreen is the way to go for future highend devices. I LOVE my Oregon.

Oops. Could've SWORN it said Oregon before! Sorry!

Yup. The NYS Topo is pretty good, although I somewhat prefer the "Northeast Topo" - it seems to be slightly more accurate (shows marshland as marshland, not ponds.)

Official memory limit on the Oregon is 4GB. That said, 8GB cards work fine and I'm guessing anything up to the SDHC limit works fine. The issue is that the Garmins load maps from a single file on the SDHC, and FAT32 has a 4GB file size limit. So while an 8GB card will work fine, you can only use 4GB for maps. The remainder is: 1) Storage of other data, or 2) You can load a map file, rename it, then load another one, and switch maps by putting the MicroSDHC card into another device by renaming files. As to OS compatibility: The PN-40 has procedures for loading maps by dragging and dropping precut maps to the SD card. This ONLY works for the topo maps - A Windows machine is currently required to access the Map Library (aerial, etc.) to my knowledge. All other data exchange requires special software, there is limited Mac support to do this. The Garmin requires either Windows (MapSource) or MacOS (RoadTrip) to build mapsets for loading onto a device (although I think there may be open source mapset builder alternatives, I haven't tried them yet.) Once a mapset is built it can be "dragged and dropped" onto the Oregon SD or internal memory. Transferring other data (waypoints, geocaches (treated differently from other waypoints by the Oregon), tracks, routes) is drag and drop on any operating system. The Garmin stores all such data internally in GPX files! Garmin profile files also are text-based, so are drag-and-droppable and hand editable (although it's far easier to copy/drag/drop them and do editing by changing settings on the unit.) Based on various reports, it seems like the Garmin maps require less disk space for a given area of coverage than the DeLorme.

No such problem with 2.98 Beta. The only time maps get enabled that weren't before is if I build a new map .img file with Mapsource.

To my knowledge, BasicGPS and RichesseGPS have always been OK, as they load GPX files and don't screenscrape the site. There are other apps that violate the TOU, and mentioning their names is not permitted on these forums. Unfortunately, it's currently not possible for any developer to legally match the featureset of the Geocaching iPhone app without violating the TOU, so us Windows Mobile users are stuck in the dark. See the "Who are Groundspeak's Trusted Developers?" thread in the website discussion subforum. I gave up and bought a Garmin Oregon 300.

I tried but my oxen died and then entire family died of dysentery since I was a Banker and then my raft broke up on the rapids Then I died of dysentery. Ah, the oregon trail game. Circa 1988, if memory serves me correctly. I played that game a LOT after an OLD computer was given to me in 1999. (No, I had a top of the line machine at home but this was my work, goof off machine) That computer had a HUGE hard drive. I think the disks were 8 inches in diameter and there were 9 of the things. I still have the magnet from that hard drive. It's the most powerful magnet I own (and I own a LOT of magnets) A classic "kid's" "educational" game. Where, at least on the version I played in elementary school, the winning strategy was to buy a gun and as much ammo as you could and shoot everything (whether for food or defense). Real good values taught there! As I understand it, more recent revisions don't have such a clear-cut strategy.