RenHoek

Glad I stumbled across this post...I just realized I've never set the "My GPS" field in my profile until now. Sorry to skew the numbers towards the 60CSx by 1 more though -RenHoek

Another vote for the twist-lock suction cup RAM mount - Also, you can pull out door-dents with it (I'm serious - it's THAT good). -RenHoek

...ahh...good times...what GPS12 user hasn't scratched their heads for minutes trying to remember what MTSN54 really meant...at least there were several different icons available to help make it clear! We were ahead of our times back then - nowadays EVERYBODY has a GPS stuck on their dash and they go on and on about their cool new tech gadget.... -RenHoek GPS12 (circa 1996) 60CSx (2006) ??? (in another 10 years)

Hi, Jem- I have a GPS12 sitting on my shelf too! They were great units in their day - rugged, accurate, and JUST FINE FOR GEOCACHING. Yes, you'll have to manually enter the coordinates, but that's not too hard on these units. I'd recommend that you DON'T spend any $$ on a cable for this unit - just save the $30 and put that towards a 60CSx in a couple of months, if you're still interested in caching. The GPS12 is NOT map-capable - don't worry -- you don't really need the maps. In fact, I drove all around Rome and Naples a couple of years ago just fine with my GPS12 (w/o maps). Just spend a little time before you go somewhere (caching, trips, etc) to enter some key waypoints from Google Earth or this site, and you're good to go. Just knowing that a particular waypoint (the Colosseum, for example) is 5 miles in THAT direction really goes along way in helping you get around w/o getting lost. Also, once you've driven around for awhile, the "breadcrumb" trails you've been leaving end up making crude maps on their own. I've noticed that since I've upgraded to my 60CSx (map-based), I'll drive around watching the maps and not get a very good idea of the lay of the land - the tool is so good, that you end up totally relying on it and have no good feel of how to get around w/o the maps... I'll defer to others regarding Mac-compatible software for the GPS12 - I've always used PC-based tools. But for this unit, that was mainly just to back up my accumulated set of "Waypoints of Places I've Been" since this unit only holds 500 waypoints at a time. Congrats on having some old-school fun! RenHoek BTW - the GPS12 makes a nice bike computer also - I've used it in several MS150 rides to show me how much pain/torture I have left in each leg....

I've had a GPS12 for 10+ years and now a 60CSx for 1+ years. I've used them for the following: Being able to answer the kids' "Are we there yet?" questions 4WD trails in CO/UT - nice to know the way back... Hunting public lands - we can find those obscure WIHA plots in the dark at 4AM! Basic "where am I now" info when traveling in a new city -RenHoek

Isn't CES season fun? Garmin came out with a Nuvi-like GUI app for notebooks last week: https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=13484 At a glance, I'm not sure if it's worth the $60 (software only, $100 w/GPSr dongle) over their nRoute app (currently a free download) if you've already got City Nav NT for your other GPSr. Per their site - No Mac support (yet), but might be cool on a UMPC someday... -RenHoek

Because I don't want to move to Kansas City. HEY!!!!!! Kansas City is a great town. Is that Kansas City,Kansas,or Kansas City ,Missouri? We Brits find it strange that the Americans were so obsessed with drawing straight lines on the map that they would cut a city in half Technically, neither -- Garmin is in Olathe, KS, a subdivision of the "greater Kansas City metropolitan area". For further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_City_Metropolitan_Area http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olathe%2C_Kansas http://tinyurl.com/3y8l5n -Ren Hoek

Cool! I'll download/install this when I get a chance and give it a look! BTW - I saw your 4WD trail maps on your site, too. How are you getting that data? Driving the trails or digitizing other maps? We go out to the SW CO area (Ouray, Durango, etc) every couple of years and would like to have detailed and accurate maps of available trails out there. Thx- RenHoek

I've got both, and for my purposes (pheasant hunting), I mostly use the older version: - The small county roads that we use to get to various public hunting areas out in the middle of nowhere are drawn at only the lowest level (Most detail) with TOPO 2008. In v3.02, they are drawn at the higher levels. This makes it hard to see the actual roads in the new maps when you're zoomed out to a reasonable level (5mi+) - there's too much topo data being displayed too. - (not a biggie, but something to note) The altitudes of certain points have changed (right? wrong? I dunno...) For example, there's a 14er that I've climbed (with my ol' trusty Garmin 12) that is 14001' (yup...just barely a 14er....Sunshine peak, if you're interested). On the new version, it shows up as being something like 13950' (don't recall the exact elevation right now...) Searching the boards (here and elsewhere) show many other altitude differences like this Having said that, since I have a 2G card installed, I usually put BOTH sets of maps on it so I have options in the field. -RenHoek

...uh...they haven't gone with a touchpad...there's no mention of a touchscreen interface in their specs - just the Rock 'n Roller input wheel.

In a kinda-related topic, there's a free app out there called Google Earth Voyager (GEV) that you can use to automatically load up your PC's Google Earth cache (2GB max) with GE images taken at a specified altitude for a specified area. I used it recently to be able to have access to GE while being off the grid while pheasant hunting in South Dakota - came in handy for scouting public hunting land remotely. I was surprised at how much area I could capture with a 2G cache - almost like being online. Instructions and a link are here: http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/other-cool...th-voyager.html -RenHoek

For the RAM mounts, you don't have to get the big arm for a bike mount. They have a short sturdy option like this (60CSx shown, but would work with their Vista cradle too): http://www.gpscity.com/item-ram-mount-gpsm.../rap274ga12.htm That being said, here's what I use for my road bike/60CSx setup: http://www.gpscity.com/item-garmin-emap-bi...emapbikemnt.htm (I clip it into the Garmin brand cradle - same interface as eMap, so this works and is cheap) -RenHoek

I ran some battery tests awhile ago on my 60CSx. Here's what I found using a new pair of Rayovac Hybrid batteries: Backlight off, compass on, WAAS on: 16.30 hrs -- Reference Backlight off, compass OFF, WAAS on: 16.80 hrs 3% gain Backlight ON 50%, Compass OFF, WAAS on: 10.51 hrs 35.5% loss Backlight ON 25%, Compass OFF, WAAS on: 12.64 hrs 22.5% loss So, the compass is relatively negligible compared to the backlight. -RenHoek

WOW2: In addition to recording tracks to play with AFTER the flight, have you seen the various glider/hang-glider functions like "glide ratio to destination" you can use on your 60CSx DURING the flight? Here is an article I came across awhile ago that talks about practical issues and recommended improvements with them: http://www.aeroexperiments.org/GPSglide Enjoy- RenHoek

@8Nuts: Another thing to note if you're not aware of it: The 60csx (and the new HCx units too) have a max number of map segments that you can load into them at any one time - 2025. That's not an issue for the City Nav NT maps, since they've generally made each state a segment, but the Topo maps are still broken up into a bunch of segments (presumably to keep each segment's size small for the smaller memory handheld GPSr's). So for topo maps on a larger 2GB microSD card, you'll max out the segment limit before you max out the memory limit. The recommended approach for having all of the TOPO maps in the field is to get three 1GB cards, and fill them up accordingly. For more info, search around this forum for "map segments 2025". -RenHoek

BTW - Garmin's US Nat'l Parks Topo DOES have routing capabilities, but they only cover the parks, so not much good for national coverage...

Nope. While Topo has vector images of roads, it doesn't contain the road routing info that the City Navigator maps have, so you can't do on-road routing with it. Now, if you have two (or more) waypoints, there's nothing keeping you from creating a point-to-point(-to-point...) route to get from point A to point B.... -RenHoek

"Some Assembly Required" comes to mind...The data is free, but the actual maps require some elbow grease. Start reading here: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=155835 Other search terms of interest: cGPSMapper MapEdit MapSetToolkit GPSBabel Enjoy- -RenHoek

Yup - you can. As pointed out above, the easiest way is to trace them in Google Earth, export that to KML, convert KML->GPX or Garmin's GDB with either GPSBabel or even Garmin Communicator-enabled sites like http://www.takitwithme.com/ge2gps.html, then import that (GPX or GDB) into Mapsource as a track, and upload it into your GPS. This all sounds confusing, but it's pretty straight forward. For the next level of complexity, refer to my post above about pulling in the state WIHA maps into Mapsource as new maps, not as simple lines (tracks). -RenHoek

That's a good recommendation - pulling a PDF into PhotoShop gives you the option for non-antialiased, which makes the boundary edges nice and sharp (assuming they're not already anti-aliased in the PDF doc)! Now, if only somebody could figure out how to get the vectorized data in a PDF map like South Dakota's Atlas directly into MapEdit.... -RenHoek

Hertzog- I'm just using the Snapshot tool in Adobe Reader 8 to grab the image. For the KS maps, I use the Marquee Zoom tool to maximize the display (on a 1280x1024 monitor) and that's been good enough. I'm starting in on South Dakota's atlas and it needs a higher magnification. So, you can zoom in to a fixed level (like 200%) and THEN use the Snapshot tool to grab the image. Starting at the upper left corner, the screen auto-pans when you get to the scrollbars in the lower right corner, so you can end up with a big fat (8MB+) bmp. If that chokes your system (or OziExplorer), you can use something like PaintShop Pro/Photoshop/etc to reduce the color depth to 16 colors - that results in a more manageable 1.5 MB BMP file. -RenHoek

For any radio geeks out there, the Astro actually uses the license-free MURS radio band: Frequencies: 151.82 MHZ 151.88 MHZ 151.94 MHZ 154.57 MHZ 154.60 MHZ Being a lower VHF frequency that the UHF that GMRS uses, it should work a little better in the woods than GMRS. The "5 miles" is still a reach, tho... Also, you're not required to pay for a GMRS license ($80/family/5yrs) like you are with a Rhino (you guys DID pay the FCC Man, right? ) -RenHoek

txmusic: Check out my "tips" post a few lines up...go here (http://rwsmaps.griffel.se/) and download the "Features Test" test map. When you install it and then use MapSource to push it out to your GPSr, you can see what each type really looks like (in MapSource and then in your GPSr). Sounds like you picked one that is available in MapEdit, but not really supported in MapSource/GPSr. I used this test map to find out that the 60CSx doesn't have that many different colors in it...unless I'm doing something wrong with some setting somewhere.... I ended up using State Park (0x1e) for the transparent areas, (TYP'd them to change them to transparent), and Airport (0x0e) for the solid areas in black. Here's what my hunting .MP file ended up looking like. From the "Level 1 Copies" on, I used a source code text editor to block search/replace/tweak instead of doing it all manually in MapEdit. LblCoding=9 ID=54540032 Name=KS WIHA 2007 Preprocess=N TreSize=511 TreMargin=0.00000 RgnLimit=127 Transparent=Y POIIndex=N Levels=3 Level0=20 Level1=17 Level2=15 Zoom0=0 Zoom1=1 Zoom2=2 [END-IMG ID] ;;;;;; Level 0 Areas (transparent when zoomed in close - so topo shows thru) [POLYGON] Type=0x1e Label=3-158 Data0=(39.42169,-98.32901),(39.41482,-98.32901),(39.41482,-98.32077),(39.42169,-98.32077) [END] . . . ;;;;;; Level 1 Copies (for when zoomed out - easier to see black than semi-transparent) [POLYGON] Type=0xe Label=3-158 Data1=(39.42169,-98.32764),(39.41345,-98.32764),(39.41345,-98.31940),(39.42169,-98.31940) [END] . . . ;;;;;; Borders (Black line around Level 0 areas) [POLYLINE] Type=0x0 Data0=(39.42169,-98.32901),(39.41482,-98.32901),(39.41482,-98.32077),(39.42169,-98.32077),(39.42169,-98.32901) [END] . . . ;;;;;;; POIs (don't have a hunting symbol, so I chose the "Zoo" Elephant) [POI] Type=0x2c07 Label=3-158 Data0=(39.42169,-98.32901) [END]

I'm in the process of creating a set of maps based on the KS WIHA (walk-in hunting access) 2007 atlas that can be loaded into my Garmin 60CSx. It's pretty easy now that I've got the various tools setup, just tedious...lot of little squares to hand draw... I end up with all the areas overlaying the topo map, in pseudo-transparent form so I can see the topo details under them. I'm also putting in a POI for each section, so I can do a "Find/Goto" for any of the particular areas. I requested the raw data (shape files, etc) from KS dept of wildlife, but haven't heard back, so I'm doing it manually: I started with the Atlas (in PDF), took a BMP from that into OziExplorer to geo-locate/calibrate. Then the .MAP output of that into GPSMapEdit where you do all of the drawing of polygons. A little text editing on that .MP file to duplicate the polygons into POIs, outlines, and duplicate polygons at other zoom levels. Then export that .MP file over into a Garmin-compatible .IMG file using MapEdit/cGPSMapper. Then use MapSetToolKit to install that .IMG file into Garmin's MapSource app easily. THEN use MapSource to load it into the GPSr, along with whatever TOPO & street maps I want. See! Isn't that EASY?!?!?! For reference, here's the atlas - I'm putting in all of the little yellow/brown sections in the major grids that we hunt: http://www.kdwp.state.ks.us/news/kdwp_info...l_hunting_atlas Here's another post with a great video tutorial of the basics, using Google Earth as a data source: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=169270 -RenHoek

There's the tiniest bit of vibration, but nothing at all like the Garmin. I was surprised at how big/substantial the RAM mount is when it came (compared to the Garmin), but it doesn't seem too big now that I've had it awhile. Anything too much smaller would cause the 60CSx's antenna to interfere with the windshield. The suction cup works great - in fact I used it to pull out a door-ding somebody left me a parking lot the other day -RenHoek