charlieromeobravo

If you read the beginning of this thread, maybe page 2 or so depending on your preference settings, you'll see that he's posted pretty comprehensive instructions on how to craft your own hiking stick.

I would call Magellan support. If it's supposed to perform at XYZ standard and it's not meeting that standard they may be willing to replace or repair it for you. Worst case scenario you're out the coast of the call...

How do you know that the satellite photos are accurate? Yes, I'm serious. Around here, the satellite photos on Google Maps are high-resolution and well-calibrated. I've found hundreds of caches using them instead of a GPSr, and I've found them to be at least as accurate as a GPSr. However, I've also seen places with less than 10% of the resolution and/or where the calibration is off by 100' or more. The satellite photos are a good indication that you haven't fat-fingered the coordinates and entered a location half-way across the country. In some places, you can use them for more specific verificationthan that, as long as you still "visit the geocache site and obtain all the coordinates with a GPS device." I understand that the photos are better in some areas than others. I live outside Chicago where the USDA Farm Services Agency seems to want to count the blades of grass in my front lawn I guess the reason I started this thread was because I've found a few caches that have GZ coordinates that are right in the middle of a sidewalk or some similar open space, per my GPS and my iPhone. We've found the caches near by but the coordinates would have been easily verified as inaccurate by just eyeballing a satellite map. I was just wondering if this sort of situation is just sloppy coordinate marking or intentional, as in the point it to get you in the vicinity so you can search the cache out from there.

Thanks for the replies everyone. Let me ask this: do any of you rely on satellite photos to verify the accuracy of you coordinate? I started this thread just because I'm curious about the ins and outs of cache placement. I realize that hand held GPS's aren't perfectly accurate (and the idea of "accurate" is relative in itself) but I would think that in open fields or suburban areas, GPS coordinates would be very good and easily verifiable by eyeballing a satellite photo.

I'm just curious what the etiquette is on cache coordinates. Specifically, how close is close enough? I don't see anything specified in the guidelines and I know that getting accurate reads can be subjective and difficult depending on the terrain. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that, ideally, we should strive to provide coordinates that, if your GPD says 0FT, you should be standing within the the GPS's margin of error to the cache. is this correct?

100' from trees, 200' it doesn't seem to matter. it if no trees around me for a 100' radius is narrow then my house may as well be in a hole because I've got several large trees in my yard, as do our neighbors to the east of us and the lot to the west is essentially undeveloped woods. Yes, it does mark my yard accurately. Even when I'm inside my house it's accurate to ~20 feet.

So this situation, taking a long time to get a location in the field is typical though? It's not a defective unit or I'm not using it incorrectly, that's just the way these GPS's behave?

would it speed thing up to reset the unit if I turn it on in the field? I understand that the reset would drop the last satellite coordinates and it would start fresh. It sounds like I should just turn it on at home before I leave but that's just a big waste of batteries.

Has anyone else had this experience? I'm hoping that someone can explain it... Out in the field, standing in an open meadow with nothing but Mother Nature's big blue sky above me and no trees within 100 feet of me, it can take as long as 10 minutes sometimes for my Explorist 310 to acquire a signal. Typically it's closer to 5 minutes. BUT when I'm at home, it gets a signal within a minute of booting EVERY time. Does that make any sense to anyone? I exchanged some emails with Magellan support and they're cross shipping me a new 310 after declaring that mine is having issues connecting to the satellites. I'm happy to take a new unit from them but I'm skeptical of their diagnosis because my dad bought an Explorist GC and he has had a very similar experience. Does this situation sound familiar to anyone out there? thanks CRB