miles58

What kind of Doctor???

I don't care how you do it, you can't have as much to worry about as a man sneaking around in the bushes in the park.

Yeah the 6.3 software limits the number of chips you can put maps on and it's makes it just a little more of a PITA to use. It is not any less useful, just a belly button perspective idea from Lowrance making something more PITA to use rather than less.

It's not waterproof. It's not even water resistant. But, it will do everything else you could ask of it for caching, and it does mapping in spades. Just be careful and look for a MapCreate 6.2 mapping software package rather than 6.3

If by this you mean a single tablet, and not one per day for x days It might be a good idea to ask your doctor if that's what *he* meant. If that's what your doctor meant, it might be a lot better idea to seek a second opinion. There is no antibiotic protocol that is based on a single dose for any antibiotic. Even skin cleansing with betadine follows a three application protocol.

Without terrain features to key on, and with terrain obscuring forest to limit or eliminate the use of more distant terrain/buildings for sight lines it would be very simple to defeat a non-GPSr cacher. You can pinpoint a set of coordinates on a topo map or aerial photo pretty easily, but putting yourself at that location if it's any distance from a mapped/photographed feature is a whole 'nother ball game. The question is why would *you* want to, and why would *they* want to hunt such a cache?

Is the iFinder more accurate? That's going to depend on how you define accuracy. I have two, and find that the way EPE is calculated means nothing to the accuracy whatsoever. If I see EPE on either my iFinder Pro or the iFinder Hunt down under 20, more often than not if I have a map reference on screen I can watch the position shift as I shift the unit from hand to hand. That's accurate. With the maps from Map Create 6.2 I mapped my way to a cache today on a two tire tracks road that showed up on the map in the unit. That's navigating. The iFinder pro and above have a bigger screen and two processors so unless you can walk faster than 30 MPH you can forget about overshoot/settling after moving

IV x IV, The built in base map sucks when compared to the maps you get with the full featured iFinders. Giving up the speed from the dual processors of the full featured iFinders also sucked for me. Compare the unit to base mapping units like the Magellans and Garmin models and it looks a lot better because it *is* a lot better. OP, Look at the iFinder Pro and above units. You can't beat their maps, you can't beat heir speed. They have an external port so you can run a powered antenna which can make all the difference in the world in some situations. Their screen is large enough that you can mount it on the dash with velcro and use it all the time. The more I use my iFinder pro around water, the more I appreciate my iFinder Hunt. My last Garmin does paperweight duty now.

Place them all, by all means. But... also consider each location as well as you can. First impressions *DO* count here. You are out on the end of the earth and if a couple of the first people finding your caches can say good things more people will go to the end of the earth for you. If they say bad things you're going to need a gun and a rope to get them to visit. FWIW I placed two out on one of those end of the earth places and both had a visit in the first week. Someone with a GPS and access to the site came and trashed them both. There's a lot to be said for quality cachers as well as quality caches.

Nothing says junk much better than a used paint can or five gallon bucket that originally held paint or asphalt seal coating Comes with it's own camo dribbled down the side if you're lucky.

What is the matter with you people??? Is no one going to refer this poor soul to the panties in the woods thread? GACK! edited to correct the speech impediment in my fingers.

Like the fact that, no matter how long I watch that frog eat that popcorn, the level of the popcorn does not diminish. If he wasn't taking virtual bites out of a locationless site on the bag it would be noticeable.

Blenz, The 55 accuracy (EPE) figure probably doesn't mean squat. Your unit is programmed to calculate that it is 95% confident that the coordinates it is displaying are within a certain radius. As such the unit can be flat dead on with half mile EPE or with 15 foot EPE. A likely source of your trouble is the datum the unit is set to. Make sure it is set up to use the WGS84 datum. Hold the unit horizontally. Stand still with it for a few minutes in an open area to get good signal and allow the unit to settle. The unit will get you close enough to find most caches.

If you're going to pee in 'em you ain't riding in my car.

In addition to what IV x IV and treasure hunter had to say, when you go to buy the map software, get the mapcreate 6.2 and not the 6.3. The 6.3 is a PITA about registering SD chips. You can put most of what you want on a 256 meg chip and all of it on a 512 megger. There is no penalty I have found to having more in a single map file on a big chip. The is no advantage I have found to having one (or more) small maps on a chip. I would go here: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...ssPageName=WDVW and buy one right off. I use it in the woods, under bad conditions, when the unit is velcroed to the dash and find it a very useful tool. The cigarette lighter plug is great for in the car. The antenna is a powered antenna so it will add considerably to the battery drain so get yourself some rechargeable AAs too.

If you are bitten by a larval or nymph stage tick you may well not know it. Adult Ixodes are uncommon between May and September. The rash shows up sometimes, and sometimes not. I have reviewed studies finding it as little as 30 per cent of the time. Length of time a rash is present means nothing. A dermacenter tick (common wood or dog tick) is not a proven carrier of lyme disease. Ixodes family ticks are proven carriers. Standard protocol is to treat with doxycycline when an attached ixodes is found or diagnosis made by occult test or titer. If you become clinical you can assume CNS(Central Nervous System) involvement, and treatment on that basis, which will usually be doxycycline IV for an extended period.

Brian, Today I got a perfect example of what I am talking about. I used one of my Lowrances down on the S/W corner of the metro area and the maps were completely hosed up. Worse than no map sometimes. They would actually gain detail on zoom out in certain areas and scales while losing detail zooming in. The roads were not in the right places sometimes. That area has undergone a lot of growth but I was in areas that hadn't changed much in the last five years and the roads I was on had been there in their current position for quite some time.

I have a cache by a deer trail that's cut a foot deep and 18 inches wide down a steep highly erodable bank. I have seen bears mash an unbelieveable area. I have seen areas where wolves have had lunch very thoroughly torn up. One of my minor irritations is land administrators who think they'll minimize impact by restricting caches to a short distance off a trail. The further away it is the more possible routes there will be and the less chronic impact. We can still be careful no to make it worse.

Will there be a second phase to give us the rundown on the mapping software? I personally don't see enough difference between most models by most makers to worry about if you don't include the goodies that you spend the money to buy. With the mapping down played to second consideration even screen real estate is much less important because you can adjust the position to accomodate.

I certainly hope Brian didn't take that as ribbing. It wasn't. It wasn't meant that way. It's a dead serious question. Brian is doing a review of a number of units and this is the kind of information I would find most useful in mapping units. I have a couple Lowrance mapping units and I am annoyed at the inaccuracies in those maps. Having seen and used other mapping units I am mollified somewhat in that at least the mapping in my Lowrances isn't primitive. As I said, a cheap basic non-mapping unit that you can buy for well under $100 now has the same accuracy and can be used for caching every bit as effectively. The thing you pay for with the mapping units needs assessment, an some objective comparison. Brian is doing a review. I am asking for the criteria I'd like to see the units compared on so maybe the manufacturers will have some motivation to compete. Here's an example of what I'm looking for: I normally drive with the unit scaled at 3-4 miles when I am in areas I know well and know where I am going. In areas I am less familiar with I need to expand the map out to beyond 6-8 miles depending on how far I am going and what kind of routing I want to use. At 5 miles I have all the detail available on the map. The very smallest features, those little elements close together are hard to see but present. When I bump it out to 6 miles I lose the small features entirely and am left with main county roads and larger. I live in an area where the roads aren't all that straight and having to shift off of a smaller road that is more direct can easily add many miles to the distance you have to go. I live along the Minnesota/Wisconsin border. There are six bridges to get you across the St Croix river between Hastings and the point where it turns East into Wisconsin. Going back and forth makes for navigating roads in between the main roads with the bridges, that look like someone threw spaghetti at a map. Brian knows what I am talking about, Northern NJ has those kind of roads to get around the ponds and rock piles. It's the same problem, just a different scale here than there. With some of those bridges 30 miles apart it helps *a lot* to be able to pick the right roads to get you there. It can easily add 30 miles or more to the trip if you don't know the shortcuts.

In each of the pictures the Garmin and Lowrance are at different zoom levels. I tried to make them look visually the same and it turned out that they often didn't have matching zoom levels. Since some streets only show up on certain zoom levels I wouldn't take these as proof that one unit or another is missing streets. Brian, This is exactly the point of the question. You have the units as closely matched for zoom level as is humanly possible. The screens are for all intents and purposes identical in size. The scale or whatever the manufacturer wants to call it is matched by the area covered. With the information missing in the comparison it tells us that there is a difference. A quantitative difference maybe. As you zoom further out the comparison of the difference may be much more important to the convenience/useability of the unit. Or, it could disappear entirely. In the case of the two units in the example it won't likely mean squat to finding caches when you get down to the last twenty feet. The purpose of the maps is to get you from cache to cache or for the less serious among us from appointment A to appointment B. If all I want is the last little bit to a cache, a unit costing<$100 can do that every bit as well as either of these. What I am asking is some sort of quantification of the detail level differences in the maps and at what scale(s). In each case the Garmin in the example has obviously less detail than the Lowrance. Without your review and quantification, I have to go buy one of each to find out for myself if the garmin is consistenly lacking, or just looks like it *sometimes*.

Believe it or don't believe it. It's going on all around you. I have notified the local sherrif on three occasions after having found the stuff. If you find a strange looking package that you know dadgum good and well isn't the cache, you are well advised not to mess with it. It may be even more dangerous to you if it's a used lab than new supplies.

Streets are labelled better and they actually stand out better on the screen. I didn't notice any additional streets. That doen't mean they are, or aren't there. That's what I do. Its foolish to rely solely on a GPS when in the backcountry anyway. They are tan on my GPS and yellowish on my PC. Brian, Thanks for the S/S compaqrison shots. Your comments about not noticing any differences in the streets shown is contradicted by the pics. Considering the amount of info presented, and the amount of difference, That's substantial to me. In your capacity as a reviewer could you please dig into this a little more from the base point of these photos and then step the units out in range and show the same comparisons to give us an idea of the amount of information difference? I ask because I use my units for navigation across country frequently combining minimal maintenance roads with regular county roads/highways as part of my business. This is not dissimilar to the way I use the units going from cache to cache(OK, *sometimes* I do slip a cache in between client visits.) Today as an example I picked up another cacher at his campsite in a private campground. All of the access roads in the campground were part of the map and made for a very simple pickup. The detail is important out in the boonies because many of the roads are one lane dirt.

Go to a Gander Mountain or Cabella's. Look in the fishing tackle section for prismatic tape to customize baits. It isn't camo, but it does come in lots of colors/patterns. You can match/blend into a lot of backgrounds.

I have two Lowrances currently. When I bought the first one I looked at the software options and found that the Map Create 6.2 was "unencumbered" by the restrictions you are fighting with Mapcreate 6.3. I bought the 6.2 software separately. It can use any SD card/reader. It doesn't try to register the card. I don't believe the maps are any less up to date with 6.2 or 6.3. For my money the iFinder Pro and above units are the equal of any handheld, and that hosed up idea with Mapcreate 6.3 is going to hurt Lowrance. I would return that package tell them why, and buy a 6.2 package. 6.2 will work with your unit and any card reader that reads/writes SD cards. You may have to go direct to Lowrance to get your money back, but it is in their interest to fix this fast before the package burns their reputation in these forums. You'll be a happy camper with 6.2.