treemoss2

Well, I tried what you said. I think I had tried that previously also. Does not work for me. Topo does not recognize my GPS (Garmin Legend). So I tried putting track into EasyGPS and then finding it (that was a chore) and it seemed to import it somehow when I went back to Topo and tried as a file, but it is lost somewhere in there. I think that Topo is great for basic mapping and making you own routes, but it fails in so many other ways since GPS came out. It seems that map programs want to be so proprietory that they frustrate all of us and in fact make it so that we give up and drop out of the GPS vs mapping thing altogether. My inclination is to never buy another map program or GPS after the major headaches in time and effort spent working to do what seems like should be simpler. After all, I's rather be out there geocaching, hiking, mountain biking, etc instead of sitting for hours in front of this computer with nothing to show for the effort but aggravation. Paper maps are the best. At least they are understandable.

I have seen inquiries to see if you can go from Topo into GPS with waypoints, etc. My question: Can I import a track from my Garmin Legend into my Nat Geo topo software. I see there is an 'import' feature, but as of now I cannot do it with a track. K As an aside and an FYI to anyone who might want to know. I can and did export from Garmin into Google Earth Plus which was nice, excepting that Earth Plus is very very much much slower than regular Google Earth. So slow it was pretty much unusable.

Thanks, But, I have tried every which way and am unable to import legend into sporttracks. The legend is available on the add devices but says fails to recognize. I have switched com port numbers. That seems to be the only option I hae. Aso fails with motionbased and garmin training center. I have dome numerous searches on web and unable to find answer. I am able to import into mapsource, but that seems to be just a basic map, no terrain/google type features, just the main roads. I have no trouble importing using my Forerunner 205 to all the above.

I have a Forerunner 205 and can load to Garmin Training center, Garmin Motion Based, and SportTracks. With this I can see my course on a map. Can I upload my Garmin Etrex Cx track and other info into the above like I do with the Foreruner? The USB cable fits both devices. What I would like more than anything is to see my Etrex track on the maps. Or, barring that possibility, is there any way to upload my Etrex track info into google maps? Thanks.

I have managed to put National Geographic state topos areas into my Sony Clie'. However I find it much easier to look at a paper map. The small screen of a PDA is, well, too small. It was a neat thing to do. If you have a Topo! as above there is a feature that lets you export to a PDA in the drop down menu.

Get cachemate as noted and GSAK. As far as getting them into your GPS, you should be able to export them into the GPS with GSAK. You do this before you leave the house. You then do not have to concern yourself with doing it on your trip, and why would you wait. There are two ways to get caches enroute. Look at the map on the GPS (after all points are in) when you are traveling. Go to find nearest waypoints in your menu on your GPS and it will bring them up in asecending order. Or look up the name of the nearest cache when you spot it and go to cachemate on your Palm and have it resort nearest waypoints from that one.

I already searched forums for lat/long with no finds. I want to know the meaning of numbers vertical and horizontal on a map I have. It is a 1:200,000 scale. It is bounded on corners with latitude and longitude coordinates in degrees and minutes. There are regular intervals vert and hor on map to break this down into 5 minutes. So I can get degrees.minutes.seconds. There is ALSO another breakdown along vert and hor map that I cannot figure out. They are not UTM coordinates. This is a map of a section of Costa Rica down by the Osa peninsula. For instance - the lower left (SW) corner of the map is 83 degrees. 45 minutes. Extending across the map are 3 digit numbers. The first is smaller than the second two, like this 500 then 510 and so forth. They do not match in distance with the minute map tics. They have no anchoring numbers on the map corners like the long/lat numbers. Does anyone know the meaning of these numbers and if they can be used in a GPS to plot waypoints FROM the map. I am trying to find GPS coordinates for Sirena ranger station in Cocovado.

Anyway I can get waypoints for the ranger stations in Corcovado?

How tough is an ammo can at protection of its contents? In a cache area with a flood like New Orleans or a forest fire like California what would be the protection of the contents inside? Seems like the water would be kept out, but what about heat? Would it char and burn paper contents, melt plastic?

I am paperless with a Clie PDA and a Magellan 330. I put pocket queries in PDA with cachemate and load those cache waypoints per GSAK into my GPS. My question is - what else is GSAK good for? I know I can do various sorts, etc but that is only on my PC. In the field there is no way to use GSAK. I can sort with cachemate. So excepting the use of GSAK to download multiple waypoints from my queries, it has little practical use. Am I missing some use that may be beneficial?

Unless you have a port you notice in your GPS you probably have altitude per triangulation. I have found this to be much more accurate than barometric. Barometric is very dependent on air pressure which is dependent on air temp and the fluctuations of weather. Start a hike on a clear cool morning and you will not be very accurate once it starts to rain, or the air heats up as the day progresses, etc. I hike for caches in Colorado with a topo map and altitude is helpful sometimes. I am using a Magellan 330. Compared to a barometric altimiter it is much more accurate. A GPS will measure the altitude of a plane in the plane at altitude and not the cabin pressure equivalent of altitude.

I went to Quakemap site and it loks pretty good. As a beginner I am confused at just how I would go about this technically to put it (maps?) on my PDA. Am unclear if there is some sort of interface required between my computer/PDA/GPSr. Is there some sort of tutorial for some rank beginners to use quakemap? And I do mean a BSIC runthrough of how to do it. Could I put arial maps on my PDA and scroll since it is just a small screen? How do the tracks get into the map examples you show? From wat I read it seems that you can plot your course in real time on a map on your PDA. Does this mean that the PDA and the GPSr are linked and the GPSr transmits track data to the PDA which shows on the map? Hmmm....

If you must use a groundsheet or footprint under your tent, I'd look into buying some TYVEK by the yard (2 yds/60" wide should do it = $7). Go to www.hikelight.com for a lot of info on the lightest stuff and links to it all. I would have put that website in as a hyperlink, but do not know how to do that on this forum. Have been unable to do a drag and drop. Having read all the posts under this topic, I'd like to try the L.L.Bean tents. They sure are small packed and light. And the price is right. Presently use a REI half dome. A good tent, easy set up, plenty of room for two. Got it at there back room sale one year for $50. Was returned by someone who said the fly didn't fit, but it does. So basically a brand new tent for $50.

If you "copy" and "paste" you can do it. But you have to do it through your Palm desktop software. Just highlight and COPY and then bring up your desktop and go to the memo feature. Hit PASTE and it will automatically create a memo for you. If what you had copied was larger than the max for a memo it will spill over into another memo. This is a good feature that I have used for moving info from any web page into my Clie' without having to use Plucker or any other multistep system.

Yup, Boulder open space gets a pat on the back for their willingness to look at creating a way to geocache on their (public) property. Meanwhile, Jefferson country (where I live) has let geocaching go on for years. Quite a few caches in those open space parks. Not only that, Jefferson allows mtn biking in the parks too. So here we have the great liberal bastion of Boulder considering allowing geocaching, still no mtn biking, meanwhile all the Boulder people are down in Jefferson either geocaching or mtn biking, or both. Oh, and it might be noted that Jefferson is mainly a republican county. I guess it is a case of NIMBY.

I am reading The Big Year by Mark Obmascik. It is about birdwatching and the hunt for a big year which is their definition of the most bird species spotted in the USA in one year. Was wondering if anyone had a similiar geocache record or hunt in one calendar year. In birdwatching there doesn't seem to be any official sort of thing for a big year, it is an individual pursuit and there is a history of people who have done it. Of course, birding is more or less determined, in part by skill and luck than geos with its known and fixed caches. I would imagine that anyone pursuing such a record would have to record untold THOUSANDS of caches. So maybe it could be per state instead of US. Of course, as with the birds there is a huge amount of honesty and credibility involved in finds. Thinking that with an almost unlimited number of caches there might be a way to make it more managable by selecting say, only traditional caches. No micros, no virtuals. Or some such variation. I know that I probably won't be doing this, but there are some geocachers who might be.

I recently posted about caching on a route such as on a trip also. I find it very hard to use GSAK to filter along an arc as suggested. Some people have had much success, it seems, with MS Streets and Trips, but that is not compatible with the Palm OS. Presently I use Pocket Queries>GSAK>Cachemate on PDA>Magellan GPS. Yesterday I returned from a weeklong trip into NM, AZ, UT, and CO. What I did was to go to the maps of those states and pick a city along where I was going and run a PQ with that as a centerpoint. I used varying radius of 20 to 100 miles. The only limitation was that my GPS only goes to 500 waypoints. A lot of the waypoints were WAY out of where I might be going but I had to get them in order to get others. I just ignored those and didn't worry about filtering them out. I HAD worried before, but it was too hard to do so. The BEST feature of all, is on my GPS whereby I can go to DATABASE and create a list of waypoints (caches) NEAR POSITION. That is, the position the GPS is in at the moment. Of course, I could see them also on my GPS map as I was traveling also. Then I would look them up in my PQs on my PDA and see if they were worth going to. GSAK has downloaded my PQs in a cachename (not cache number like GCH147) so that I only have to scroll down alphabetically to find the cache. What I found during this trip was that there are a lot of caches to go to enroute, but that after a few of them, you get tired of stopping every few miles and doing these little hikes, walks. You never get anywhere on your trip.

ROGAINE Rugged outdoor group activity involving navigation and exercise I didn't make this up. I think the term originated in Europe. For those of you liking geocaching in the woods and hiking in general, and like some competition, you might want to look up Orienteering in your area.

Finding things - that's the fun. Don't need no knickknacks in a container. Just the fun of the find. An orienteering meet, or even better, a ROGAINE. Next week is the World Rogaine Championships in Arizona. I am looking forward to it. It sounds more important than it is. Anyone can enter. 24 hours of looking for control flags (i.e. geo-caches) with point values. Most points wins. 50 square miles of forest. I could see a similiar thing for geo-caching would also be fun. The most finds in 24 hrs in, well, maybe your whole state. Proof of visits could be digital photos. Sort of a combination with a road rally event. Would anyone be interested in this in the state of Colorado?

Forget the hiking boots. Wear a pair of running shoes. Maybe running flats, while you are swimming. Food? Don't need no food for this adventure. How long you going for? Or else bring an energy bar that is packaged in a watertight type wrapper. Stick it in your pants, or use one of those miniture fanny packs. Or tow something as noted by others. Hey, I think I remember about Jack Lalane swimming across S.F. Bay on his 70th birthday towing a boat with people in it, while he was handcuffed.

Glad to see I am not alone in this. I had posted on another thread about this. The best reply I got was using GSAK filters, which was not as user friendly as it would at first appear. I did do a filter and got results, but need to check them visually, to see if the results are actually within the paramters I set, and that they are all there. I will only believe it if I see it. I am a visual sort of person. Plus, the whole object is to SEE the caches along the route. I will do a query and then a filter in my hone area along a route which I can then map the waypoints on my NG state map and I can SEE if it worked. In my photo program, in any PAINT program you can usually select a rectangle, circle/elipse, and encompass some object for cutout, paste, or whatever. THIS is the feature we would need for selection of caches along a route or within any defined area that is not a radius of a circle, which is the ONLY available choice now.

I entered data exactly as you stated. It said the latitude range must be +90 or -90. So I did that. I used N and W desigantions for long/lat. I finally found that you need to put lat first as in 37.35, 109.52 Then I could do the search. But - it said search revealed 0 caches, filter will not be set. So then I "checked" all my caches in GSAK for this filter. Same thing. Then I went to particular caches that I knew were along this line within my 20 mile parameter to confirm that there were, indeed, caches within 20 miles of a N/S line with the coordinates. Then I entered lat/long coordinates exactly on a grid mark on my altas, thinking maybe I had made a mistake when putting in numbers between the those grid marks. I am unable to get a search result per any of the above. I have not altered any of the default prameters on the first search filter screen. The HELP button reveals no new info for me to go on. Methinks this should not be this hard.

I have been unable to print the actual map on the map it feature. The map part comes out as a blank. All other things are printed, including the map borders. Does anyone know how to get the map printed?

What exactly is the way to enter coordinates in "arc, line, polygon" window of GSAK? Below the printing already in that box, I tried typing coordinates from my map that lie at either end of a road. I typed in 109 35, 36 09 109 35, 37 20 It could not do it with this. I then added W and N respectively. Still no go. Both those points are for each end of a N-S road. I got these off the edges of a map in an Atlas. So how would I define the points for arc, line, polygon in GSAK?

To K-9 I have a Sony Clie also. I had the same question about using streets and trips. It seemed such a good program. But, will not work with Palm OS. I have been reading through these forums and sometimes it takes a bit of searching to finally get to an answer. I am amazed at the technical things people are able to do by linking up different programs and wish I had the savvy to do the same. I have been slowly learning many things. You have to sit at your computer for many hours sometimes to glean the steps and processes you need to achieve results. I have managed to go paperless per Premium membership, pockets queries, and Cachemate. I am able to download color topos into my Clie with pocket version of National Geographics Topo! Technical life crawls forward for me.