Super-T

Thanks peoples, After being assured that I'd not lose the tracklog, I chose the "Reset to defaults" which solved the connection problem, and once connected I upgraded from 2.5 to 2.6 and was quite relieved to find all maps still installed, the current tracklog intact, and basically very few things to have to reset back to normal. Hopefully with 2.6 the problem won't recur, and I get the benefits of the upgrade as well. Thanks for the help and suggestions.

When I try to connect my Garmin to the computer, it goes through it's normal startup, but then the picture of the computer appears, but only on the bottom half of the screen, and the top is all blank, then it slowly fades to the unit turning off. It has good batteries. It has been tried in every form of connection setting, "Garmin Serial", "Garmin Spanner", etc etc The computer has been rebooted. We have tried different USB ports. We are using the correct Garmin Cable. The only thing untried so far is to "reset to factory defaults" but I do not want to lose the tracklog on the unit, so need to try everything else first. Has anyone had any such issues, or found a solution ? Thanks

Glad to have helped. And my apologies for calling it html when it isn't, as I said, there are many out there more familiar with these things than I am, this is just the results of all the research that I had to do to find the answers to these things for myself.

We had to do a cache out on a local island here in Canberra, and without room for everyone in the boat, my wife decided to stay on shore. As she waited she noticed something out in the reeds, and wandered over to have a look, and there was a wrapped and prepared bouquet of flowers complete with ribbon etc. She thought about taking them rather than leaving them discarded in the reeds, but thank goodness she didn't, because not long afterwards a guy and his girlfriend paddled up in one of the hire pedal boats, and he reached in and grabbed the flowers, and proposed to his girlfriend right there on the spot. Would have been real embarrasing if he'd had to ask my wife for his flowers back before he could propose. Sooo sweet. They pedalled past us as we boated back to shore, and I wondered why the girl looked so ecstaticly happy. The penny dropped when the wife recounted the story as we got to shore.

When I log a cache, I'm usually telling a bit of a story, and regularly refer to other caches in the log, such as the one I did before, or the cache I'm headed off to next. When I do this I always make the name of the cache into a hyperlink to that cache. After several messages from others asking how I do that, and answering the question each time, it was suggested that I should come in here and tell people here how to do it. So here's how: In a different tab or window go to the cache you want to link to. Copy the url from the address bar. Go to your log where you want to leave the link. At the point where you want the hyperlink, put the following [url=[/code] then without leaving a space, paste in the url of the cache you wish to link to (the one you just copied) and then without leaving a space close the brackets with a right square bracket [code] ] So you should end up with something like this: [url=http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?LUID=c93dc08f-5850-4e45-9c68-45d07dcd86d0] Now put the words that you want to use as the link - usually the name of the cache. Then end it with [/url] So the final result would look like this: [url=http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?LUID=c93dc08f-5850-4e45-9c68-45d07dcd86d0] Words to use as link [/url] Which would look like this --> Words to use as link <-- within your log. See, it's dead easy. So to summarise .... [url= then without leaving a space put the url you are linking to, then immediately after the url put a closing square bracket ] Then put the words that you want to use as the link, then end with [/url] It's really easy. Oh, and other things that you might want to use such as bold and underlined can also be done: You can make words bold font by putting [b] in front and [/b] after the word/s that you want in bold. You can make words underlined font by putting [u] in front and [/u] after the word/s that you want underlined. You can make words italics font by putting [i] in front and [/i] after the word/s that you want in italics. Well, my apologies to the half of you that not only already know this info, but are more familiar with it than I am. But to the rest of you, I hope these very basic bits of html code can help you do some more things with your logs.

I know this is a pretty stupid topic, but believe it or not, I've had very limited successes with choice of pens for carrying around caching. The caching bag gets left in the sun on the dashboard and gets seriously cooked, or being a bum-bag it hangs out in the cold while hiking to those winter caches, and I've had brand new pens fail me just when it's really counted - like no pen in the cache itself - or wet log paper, or odd paper used for the log that won't easily take to being written on, and one that seemed to be a bit oily and could only be engraved on with the pen's nib to prove I'd been there. Searching the various pens at my local newsagent, I came across Uniball Powertank pens. They aren't overly expensive, and most importantly, they are pressurised and so they can write at any angle - including upside down, and they claim they can even write on wet paper - for those caches that have leaked. I'm assuming that being pressurised they'd work ok in the cold, but not sure how they'll handle a summer dashboard cooking, but so far I think they have just become my new favourite type of pen to keep in my caching bag. I'm also interested if anyone knows of any really small pens suitable for small containers, I've made a number myself by cutting down a standard biro, but I have seen some awesome little pens in caches before, and would love to know if anyone has a source for such. Thanks

Well, on being informed by people more familiar with the area, the whole idea has been scrapped. It's no longer used by the clothing challenged, but by single males wanting to get together. So not the sort of place I'd send anyone. Thanks for all the suggestions though.

I don't know for certain as I haven't scouted the terrain, but my understanding is that there are rules stating you cannot go past the change rooms clothed, so it would be most unlikely if it's signposted as such, that clothed people would go there whilst there are unclothed people around. My belief is not that clothed people will go do the cache, but that they will go do the cache clothed OUTSIDE of the hours that unclothed people would be there. If they DO choose this option, then the unclothed would not even be aware they'd been there. I don't know that anyone would feel comfortable going in there clothed whilst everyone else isn't, and if the rules are as I suspect, then they'd likely be politely asked to leave long before they got much of a chance to look for the cache. But as I said, I actually haven't scouted the terrain, because, well, frankly to do so would require me to also go at night, or to go scout it out without clothing, and no-one deserves to be subjected to the sight of me without clothing.

I want to place a cache that can't be done at night, and have thought about a container that uses an electronic tap timer like those used for home irrigation systems, to operate a lock that prevents the cache being opened except for during the day on weekends or something like that. The problem is that I know nothing about electronics, so would have to get this made by someone who does. But am wondering what would be involved in such a system. It would have to be able to be opened by me to replace batteries etc, so maybe a key override, or an override operated by a magnet placed in the right place or something, but unlocks only during daylight on weekends? Is such a thing remotely possible ? Anyone into electronics got ideas on how such a thing could be made ? Thanks in advance.

Hmmmm.... Bit of thinking about how to prevent night raiders doing the cache clothed, and I think I have a solution, but need to work out just how much money I want to throw at the idea. A timer like those used on irrigation systems to turn taps on and off over a 7 day cycle, could be used inside a container to electronically lock and unlock the container so that it can't be done except during the day on a weekend - peak period for having to do the cache the way intended. Of course, having no skills with electronics, I'd have to get this container built for me by someone, and also have to be able to open it manually somehow for battery replacements (or some solar cell system to run it/recharge it). Maybe the container is a whole new topic in and of itself. Hmmm... thinking thinking thinking....

Yep, that's it in a nutshell, best quality birthday suits required (mine is badly in need of ironing). Night trips would be a case of getting past the lovers in the carpark I suspect. And in keeping with the whole idea of the cache, I'd probably have to try to design an "anti-night-hunt" hide for it, to make it hard for people to do at night. Of course, the next biggest issue in the whole discussion, is that wandering around - amongst many people wearing the least they can - whilst you are holding something that looks like a mobile phone out in front of you, may not be a great idea since many mobile phones have cameras, and the people around you may misinterpret just what that device is being used to do.

Here in Canberra, we have a river area where one portion way off to the right is non-clothed bathing, and the rest is for normal bathing. Having just done an awesome cache on the far side of this river, which required us to set off from the normal area by inflatable boat, and hike up the mountain opposite, it got me thinking about that "other" area. I am not into that sort of thing, but it got me wondering whether I should place a cache in there. Knowing the way most cachers here in Canberra seem to delight in bypassing all attempts to "herd" them in a particular direction, I'm sure the vast majority will just simply come down here at night fully clothed, or find some other way to get to the cache without having to follow the rules about what you need to be wearing once you pass the change rooms, but it's worth a thought. Does such a cache fit within the "rules" of geocaching ? It's public land at a public river, so shouldn't be any issue, and the cache description would be pretty clear and precise about just where the cache is located and the location is heavily sign marked, so there'd be no unpleasant surprises for anyone. I'm not sure I even want to go to that length to place a cache, but it raises the question, "What would you be prepared to do for this sport ?" "Would you stip off to find a cache ?" and should I go place a cache there at all ?

I have several overlay maps besides just the City Navigator maps, One called Shonky Maps, one called Contours Australia, and one called Tracks4Australia. These all work fine within the base memory, but to fit them all in means having to restrict how much of Australia I actually load into the unit. I recently installed a brand new micro SD card with 2 gig on it, and thought that this would allow me to install the whole of Australia for all those maps, as they total just slightly more than 1gig. But upon bootup up the Oregon only gets as far as "loading maps" and then just slowly fades to off. It does this in all modes, including when connected to the computer to try to remove the maps. Fortunately I was able to recover the unit just by removing the sd card, and it's back to working just fine. I know the sd card is ok, because it works fine in my PDA. So far it isn't an issue because with a country that is something like 2,485 miles wide, and requires several days of travel with fuel at the equivalent of $6.05 per gallon, to cross it, I don't really have a need to load all of Australia because I can't afford to go visit very much of it. But it would be nice if the unit could actually use the sd card it is supposedly equipped to take. So just how do you get the unit to use the sd card ? There doesn't appear to be anything about it in the manual, it doesn't have any settings to select to use the sd card, so in the end I just used Mapsource to copy the maps to the card inside the unit which came up as drive G. Any help would be great. Thanks

Ah, you see you took the shot at 5:52pm, when we all know they only leak after midnight

You'll love it for geocaching, just spend the $13 extra dollars and buy a zagg invisishield or some sort of sturdy case for it to protect the screen a bit. For paperless caching, it's a dream compared to a PDA with Cachemate, and a seperate GPS unit which was how I used to have to do it. The more I get to know it, the more I like it. Last night I found you can arrange the items on the main menu so that your most commonly used ones all appear on the front page of the menu, that has taken a few steps out of moving from compass to map and back. You can also put the pointer into the data fields on the map, and that way can use the map page alone for more of the cache hunt. And with profiles, it means that you can set the geocaching profile up that way, and not have it set up with a pointer when in a profile that doesn't need a pointer. Would love to turn back time and not scratch mine, or find a way to remove them or minimise them, but will definitely be buying an invisishield one way or the other, as it protects the screen and the entire device.

My Vista seemed to be pretty tough. It's screen had very very few marks on it after several years of hard caching. In fact it didn't even mark the screen when it fell off the roof of the car at 70km/h (I'd put it up on the roof while it got satellite lock, and forgot about it). I would assume the CO would have a screen at least as tough as the Vista. Solid plastic has to be more resistant than the softness of a touch screen, which I can only assume have allowed the broken tips of the dry old branch to dig in and push a scratch across the screen, which the hard screen of a CO (or the Vista) would have allowed the branches to just slide across leaving little damage. Either way, I'll be having to do something about it, as there's obviously no way it can continue to be used now until it gets some serious reinforcing. I just regret that I didn't make that a priority, as I really did believe their assesment of it's toughness as the plastic SEEMS tough when you look at it and feel it, but of course any soft surface is going to be at more risk, and I should have gone with my instinct on it and protected it straight away.

Well, so far I love it, and it seems accurate enough, but I should NEVER have listened to the so called "experts" that sell them, and gone with my gut instinct. My instinct told me that it would not be tough enough for geocaching, and so I asked the store about the Colorado instead, and got told that the OR was every bit as tough as the CO. WRONG, very very wrong. I've done just 4 caches, and had it just 3 days, and already while scouting around a likely tree, have had a branch put three deep long scratches on the screen just while it was hanging on my belt on the supplied carabiner. This unit should NOT be used for anything but drive-by caches. If you do some of the harder ones, I can't say I can recommend the unit. Very disappointed.

The change to the Oregon was huge due to their first touchscreen version. I can't see there being a reason to now jump to something else for a while.

Well, rightly or wrongly, I bit the bullet and ordered it. Bit peeved that the maps I purchased for the Vista, aren't allowed to be registered to this unit, even though I'm the one user, and they will be on only one unit. By the time I bought all the options, it could have been VERY expensive. As it was, the original $539 Aus, sure blew out fast. Was well over $800 by the time I finished adding what I considered just basic items (windscreen mount, power cable, and maps). For future toys I'd consider the hard carry case since I've broken a vista by falling on it when out caching, but my budget ran out Will keep you informed of my experiences with it, but am looking forward to it arriving. Might have to take a few days off just to go and play.

Wow, thanks for the great replies. Unfortunately, I don't know of a local shop that sells the Oregon here in Canberra, and with my horrid shifts, I'd be hard pressed getting to go look anyway, so have had to base a lot of my decision making on the net. The place I am looking at buying from is in Queensland, and I'm in Canberra, so for those not in Australia, let's just say, I can't exactly duck into the shop to have a look at it. I think I'll place my order in the morning. Screen brightness may prove to be an issue, but I manage with my PDA ok, I just often have to remove the sunnies and angle it a little, and if that's the case with the OR, then so be it. Paperless isn't necessary as I have the PDA, but it is definitely a PLUS as handling TWO items while hiking to the cache, and reading BOTH in bright sunlight, while not falling over a log or cliff, is always a tad challenging. So to be able to do both on the one unit, whilst not crucial, is certainly going to be a bonus. I appreciate all the useful and helpful real life information. You've very much helped me to make my decision. Funny how the moment you no longer have a GPS unit, you suddenly start getting hundreds of "the ump has published ..... " messages in your email. Were you all so worried that I'd get the FTF that you put off publishing all your caches until I had no way to go get them Well, look out, cause I have some serious catching up (or is that caching up) to do once the OR arrives here in the mail.

Have read through here and seen a number of issues, some minor and some rather less so, with the Oregon. I am looking at buying the 300 (because here in Aus, the 400 has marine maps and the 300 has land maps, and I don't need marine). I have to replace my Vista which has gone missing, and am looking at the Oregon, but don't wish to play Guinea Pig to find the problems and wait for them to be solved. Minor things I can live with, but things I've read here such as massive swings in reported position, and inability to accurately determine if you are moving or not, concern me enough to want to be sure it's the right thing to buy. I personally think that the Colorado looks like it would be much tougher and more robust. It also appears to have better reception which is good for me living in mountainous heavily forested areas, and considering the only problem I ever had with the Garmin was when I fell off my mountain bike and landed on it, maybe tough would be good. The vista even fell off a car roof at 70km/h onto the tarmac, and still kept going strong, so I know Garmin units are pretty robust little things, but..... I've also had my fair share of touch screen PDA's, and am less than thrilled at the thought of going camping, hiking, and caching, with a touch screen anything. But since that won't be it's only use, and probably less than 1/3rd of the reasons I'm buying one, there are so many other factors to consider, that make me lean towards the Oregon as my next unit. I do a lot of caching, but will also want to do the occasional road navigation when interstate or in unfamiliar territory. I do a lot of 4wding, and will want to be able to explore a track I've never been up, and know that I can find my way back down it if I have to. Probably it's most common use will be the caching, and paperless isn't vital to me, as I own and use an iMate with Cachemate on it. It would take out a number of steps and the handling of two items to do the job, but it's not sufficient to make me choose the Oregon just on that feature. The wikipedia article on these units raises some fairly reasonable frustrations. The threads here have raised some more. But then the general feeling I get from ALL the threads and info I've been able to round up, is that it's generally a great GPS unit. I believe we are now up to firmware upgrade 2.5 or greater, and so am wondering with that many upgrades, has the Oregon become reliable enough to be the replacement for the Vista I once had ? Specific answers as to why or why not would be great. And thank you in advance for taking the time to help, as I can't easily spend $540 Australian, so need to make this the right choice first time.

Thanks for that link. I came here to ask people their opinions on the Oregon as I'm on the verge of buying one, having apparently lost my Vista. I'm pretty impressed with that link. It has a wealth of information I found very useful.

Cachemate will get more than enough info from the gpx file, in fact it gets more info from it than mobipocket did. Not only does it get more info from the gpx file than Mobipocket did, it also lets you filter that info on the fly. In other words, you can get it to show you all the closest caches, all caches of a particular type, all the caches of a particular difficulty, particular terrain, particular container, etc etc etc. It's like having every cache page with you printed out, but able to be sorted instantly into any order you want. Believe me, I was peeved at losing mobipocket, but I'm a new found convert to cachemate. It blows mobipocket away. In fairness Mobipocket was designed for reading books, not for caching. It managed to handle caching in a sort of a way, but it can't hold a candle to software built just for caching alone. Though after having cachemate do it's own read of a new gpx file today ON THE DEVICE ITSELF, it would appear I may need to use a method that does the reading of the gpx file on the computer, and sends cachemate the info like many here have recommended, because whilst it did handle the conversion within the unit itself, importing 499 caches from the gpx file, on a small PDA itself, took several minutes. I think it could be quicker if done on the computer and sent to the PDA. Otherwise it's awesome, and can handle it if need be, you just have to have a few spare minutes to wait.

Cachemate runs on my iMate JasJam, and that is definitely running WM5 as I've just checked the about screen to make absolutely sure. Not sure why it wouldn't be running on your smartphone, though many websites I've downloaded stuff for the iMate from, list smartphones as a seperate OS, are you sure it's actually using WM5 ? And quite frankly, to those knockers, I wanted a solution that was cheap, and almost as easy as the mobipocket system, instead I got one that was cheap, just as easy as mobipocket, and a HELL of a lot BETTER than mobipocket ever was!!!! Yeah I was peeved too, but if you can move on past that and go try cachemate, you will find it blows mobipocket out of the water, and hell, if I can afford the $10 or $11 Australian that the $8.00 fee converted to, then almost anyone can afford it, cause I'm sure as hell not wealthy in any way make shape or form. For me it's as easy as sending the gpx file from the PQ over to my phone, and opening it right there on the phone with cachemate. That is definitely as easy as mobipocket was, and nothing like some of the complex solutions posted up here. Searching through for a specific cache, decrypting hint, etc etc are all a million times easier. I just wish I'd found cachemate ages ago, and now am THANKING geocaching.com for forcing me to go try it out.

I'm using Mobile 5.0 on an iMate JasJam PDA/Phone (was using mobipocket on an iMate JAMin but upgraded recently)