miles58
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Posts posted by miles58
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The Lowrance is as accurate as anything available. Set it up with north up on the screen. The power saving is not going to make a big difference. The Mapcreate 6.3 software is very good. Get it. You may have had a less accurate map with the base map. Don't worry about which side of the river it looked to be on. Range rings and lat/long lines don't help.
I do like to customize the map screen with EPE, ground speed and alt on the bottom. If the EPE on a Lowrance is below 30 feet, in all probability you have a very good position. I have seen >20 foot EPE and been able to see the change in position as I shifted the unit from left hand to right.
Just keep bumping the range in and walk the pointer onto the cache and it's a piece of cake.
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Sounds like you're holding the unit verticallly instead of face up. The antenna is in the area above the screen and needs to have a clear view of the sky. What you just described is the way it acts with marginal signal. The EPE numbers on a Lowrance are very conservatively calculated and you will likely never see < 15 feet.
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Your H2O has dual processors and will always show position to within the limit of what you set the update to.
If you're driving down the highway at 60 mph you will be <=88 feet off if the unit is still at it's defaults from the factory. If you bumped the power saving then it might be a little slower if you pushed it all the way out.
Describe what you mean by lagging please.
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The sit still and leave them alone advice is only applicable to foraging wasps that approach you.
After you've disturbed them and they are defending a nest, you can't run fast enough. You can swat/brush/slap and it won't make it worse one the mass attack starts.
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An external antenna WITH a ground plane (I use a knockout from a computer chassis 5 1/4 inch bay) can make a tremendous difference in the signal quality your GPS receives. I use cable management velcro strips to attach the antenna to long sticks to raise the antenna to where it can get a good signal or to eliminate multipathing. Without a ground plane they can be actually less useful than an internal antenna.
Just as twenty feet or so to one side or another can be the difference between a jumpy position and a stable one, so can being able to get your signal from ten or more feet above your head. This is all the more true with multipating off rock faces and/or rock walls.
You can find most caches without, certainly. But, it can be a lot easier with.
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So, for a guy who just wants a GPS to find his way around the woods and around the marsh, which of these (or any other suggestions) would be the best unit? I hear the lowrance units are a little tough to learn. Thanks in advance,
Martin
Martin,
E. None of the above.
Go buy an iFinder GO. It's cheap, waterproof, as accurate as any unit on the market and it runs far longer on a couple of AAs than anything available.
You're right, Lowrance units are harder for Garmin/Magellan users to learn to use. It literally takes forfreakingever to break them of the habit of stumbling around in circles while their unit tries to get a good signal and settle down. Worse yet, it's almost impossible for them to figure out that you get much better features for a lot less money(Check the pricing on a gargellan with base mapping against the iFinder GO).
Lowrance units have a slightly different menu system than gargellans and if you're too anal or too dense to figure that menu system out you probably shouldn't be out in the woods with a GPSr anyway.
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It's pretty hard to beat a laptop with GSAK on it. If you just want this for travel, why not go that route and dispense with the PDA?
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I have an IFinder Hunt. I would rather use the IFinder Go for hunting, it's much smaller and lighter and it runs four times as long on a set of batteries. I hunt birds in big woods. and I don't feel like I particularly need topo maps for Minnesota. but when you're five miles back in, it's nice to know for sure where you left the car.
The compas in the unit is worthless. Get a real compas. Here where it *can* get cold and you can take off in the wrong direction nd have a twenty mile walk before you come out somewhere if you manage to walk straight, battery life is very important.
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If you need a compass spend $10 and you can buy a much better real compass than what comes with the unit.
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I have a couple pair of electronics tweezers that would get it out. Look at places that carry specialty electronics tools. You might be able to get a pair for $5
Alternatively try wedging a needle into opposit sides and the lever the barrel up to whre you can grab it with a needle nose.
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I often go caching with my ex-wife.
That is just sick and wrong on so many levels unless you carry a little jar of cremains, and *that's* sick and wrong on some other ones.
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You can hold your etrex face to the sky and that's about as good as it gets for that unit. They are known for having problems under leaf cover and that's just life.
When a GPSr has a poor signal and particularly when it is getting multipathed signal it has a tendency to be pretty jumpy. You see high EPE and if you wach the position it just doesn't want to stabilize. Under those conditions the best you can do is pick the closest area with the least canopy and hold the unit still and face up for maybe ten minutes to let it settle as best it can. If you turn on tracking it tends to make a plot that is elliptical and off to one side of where it thinks it is. Sometimes you can use this to your advantage. If all else fails back out into the open and take two good bearing from at least 90 degrees apart and use the intersection as a starting point. With four kids to use as markers, then searchers it should be a piece of cake.
A decent magnetic compass can be had for <$10 it beats the dickens out of the electronic versions.
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Be real. That's no help and doesn't offer anything with the tools he already has in place.
OP has found half a dozen caches.
His post indicates a probable canopy problem(poor losignal/lock), something etrexes just happen to be known for.
His post coupled with his stats indicate he's got the right datum or he'd not likely have found the 6+locations he has found.
Unless you have a better idea, you might oughta try what I offered him and see does that expand your horizon some. As an Engineer of some thirty odd years, I still find the first cure for poor RF signal problems is still today get the antennas up higher. The darn etrexes are hard to read though when you get them fifteen feet up.
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At one of my caches there's a nearby root beer stand/drive in. I drop film cans with plastic grocery bags and $2 for root beer rolled up inside, then labelled on the outside of the film can. I try to keep a couple of them in the cache at any given time.
Works for me.
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Speaking as someone who takes great pride in their hides, it can be the most simple thing in the world and it's not any ONE thing either...... Every cache is different.
As long a some of the finders have an "Oh Yea!" moment, the cache WILL be spectacular. It will be watched and talked about at events.
Exactly!
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Get a Lowrance iFinder PRO or above, and get an external powered antenna with a long cable for it.
The basic iFinders and iFinder GO/GO2 have single processors, the GO/GO2 have no external antenna connection processors The Pro and above have dual processors for update speed and you won't have to worry about them speed wise unless you can move over 40 MPH, and even then it catches up in one second.
Carry velcro cable ties with the unit and the antenna. When you get under canopy or in thick brush attach the antenna to the unit and then velcro it to a long stick and hoist it as high up as you have cable and stick to reach. Do remember that the antenna position and not the GPS position is what will determine position shown on the GPSr when you use an external antenna. Sometimes sixteen feet can make a big difference.
If you can't do a cache with that help, DNF it and be happy.
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Somebody's got to ask this question:
Doesn't this violate the rules as a buried cache?
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Hey,
I did a Google search for "Lowrance iFinder interface cable" and came up with numerous hits for sites retailing these.
Yeah, but there are an awful lot of different iFinders. This is particulalrly the iFinder-GO/GO2 and a function that Lowrance doesn't admit to as of yet.
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View->Map Display Options->Position Format->Deg,Min.
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Which iFinders are you referring to? The GO and GO2 are inexpensive (both under $100), but don't allow for PC connectivity which is a big negative in the mind of many, if not most geocachers.
I would have to disagree with this statement, as I have an iFinder GO sitting on my desk right now connected to my computer.
I am testing it for a friend, so I don't know the source of the cable I am using, but it looks identical to a Garmin eTrex connector with a slightly different pin configuration.
I know I can send waypoints to it and I know I can get a position from it, so far. I don't have any Lowrance software, so I am kinda walking around blind right now, but definitely have some level of connectivity.
Yo Greymane!
Would you please find out where that cable came from and provide the specifics of what you did connecting to it to dump waypoints to the unit?
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Probably one of the strangest things I ever found was a giant tooth. And I mean giant.
Now that might not be quite so strange if it hadn't been at this cache location.
Hey! I leave skulls and teeth in caches. I am going to start feeling a little iffy about myself if you keep describing that as strange.
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I have been amazed at the consistency in accuracy I have found. Almost all the caches I have done have been inside 25 feet. That is just mind boggling considering the variables involved. The user might not let the unit settle and that will affect the posit. The sattelite geometry can affect accuracy. The variation between units of the same make and model can affec the posit. Variation between different manufacturers can affect posit. Variation in the method used to establish the posit will have an effect. Variation in the overhead cover, weather, clouds, rain, snow, or leaves can have an effect.
Considering that about the best you can get is going to be averaged posits that will be accurate to a few feet when repeated by one individual with one GPSr it says a lot that maybe half of the caches I've done when the unit says I am there, I am within three/four feet of the cache.
Watch the position on your GPSr and compare it to the EPE. I find that a shakey position does not correlate very well with high EPE. I can have a very high EPE and very stable (and accurate) position, and a low/moderate EPE with jumpy position. Some days the sats and the weather all line up well and you can literally see it when you shift hands with the unit.
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How far can 4-8 yo kids go without getting done. I am going to place a multi that has a couple of clue micros and a couple of ammo boxes before you get to the big cache. Can I get away with stringing it out over a little more than a half mile one way if the clues and the ammo boxes are kind of evenly spaced?
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surely that should be witch doctor?
If he was a real witch doctor he wouldn't need no stinking doxycycline. Chicken feet and blood would be plenty good.
Seriously folks, find an on line PDR(Physicians Desk Reference) and look up doxycycline if you have any thought that this might be a workable course of action.
Lowrance Ifinder H2o C
in GPS technology and devices
Posted
This sounds like you are not holding the unit face to the sky and maybe too close to your body. The patch antenna is above the screen and needs to face up for best reception.
I have never seen an iFinder show an EPE of less than 12 feet. If it's <30 you are good as far as position.
Set the unit up customized as I described. Drive the cursor to the cache coordinates with the joystick. Hit enter and set the waypoint. Page to the map screen and zoom in/out until the cache is visible. Walk the arrow onto the cache. With the GS/EPE/alt on the bottom of the screen you have three cross references to the cache position. If the GS (ground speed) is jumpy then you have bad signal and the unit can't be sure of where you are. If your signal really is bad, altitude in particular will be jumpy. It will jump up/down maybe 30 feet or more. If the EPE is <=30 and alt doesn't jump more than say 5 feet up or down, if you walk the arrow onto the cache at .02 range you will be standing on the coordinates and all you have to worry about is the accuracy of the hider's coordinates and your ability to spot what you are looking for.
Never worry about comparing your unit's accuracy to a gargellan. If you have the WGS84 datum set and your numbers were correctly entered then the H2O will either take you to the exact spot or it's broken.
Virtually all WAAS gpsr units will provide accurate positions to within six feet if the operator is careful about using it (even gargellans). Careful might mean picking up an external amplified antenna and some velcro cable ties to tie the antenna to a long stick to hoist the antenna up to where you are much less blocked by foliage, or to move it higer so that you are not getting reflected signal off water/rock/building/structure faces. If you do buy an external antenna, it will probably be a magnet mount. You need to mount it to a metal ground plane. A metal knockout plate from a PC 5 1/4 inch bay makes an almost perfect ground plane. An altoids tin works good too. Lastly, the external antenna also must face up when you use it.