elkein

My largest custom map I made is about 100 square miles, that gives a resolution per pixel on the map of about 5 feet per map pixel. That's not going to provide razor sharp detail, when my Oregon is fully zoomed in (the 20 scale showing) the four map pixels are stretched into many on the screen resulting in pixelation. It is plenty good for IDing individual trees though. As anyone can tell you the Oregon is slow about rendering and moving such a large custom map. The program I used to create it was a paid program, Mapc2Mapc. Constructing the map is time consuming and tedious, but sometimes birdeye just doesn't provide what you want. Max tiles are 1024x1024 for the Oregon, use them all. I've heard other units may be limited to exactly 1000x1000, check for your individual details.

The energizer ultimate lithium are the only way to go for extended needs such as no access to more batteries for a week, they are light and much more powerful(Sams sells big packs of them, 12 for $20.) For day trips standard energizers are fine. For anything less than a day trip I use rechargeable Nimh, they are the heaviest of these batteries, the power capacity varies by the individual battery, so it's best to try and make pairs of them, they are rechargeable and superior to largely extinct "nicad." My 550t came with a set of Nimh and a charger. I finish batteries in my computer mice after they have expired in higher drain devices, they can often provide 20 more hours in that role. When all disposable have been expired it's back to Nimh for the mice too.

Nah they just weren't counting on that format... Kind of like putting a high color icon on an older unit probably results in no display or worse. Garmins seem to employ "auto ignore" for all bad data no matter what/where it is found.

More than a few people I have seen come through the forums have wiped out their base topo map. It does happen and is only an accidental delete or corruption away. Custom maps can be created with several utilities, for example: Take a park trail brochure, take a picture of the brochure or scan it. Set it up as an overlay in Google earth. Save the overlay in google earth as a .kmz file. Place the .kmz in the custom map folder and viola park brochure on the GPS. It can be much more sophisticated than that. The largest custom I made was ~100 square miles right at the Oregon's limit of 10240x10240 pixels. It actually doesn't handle custom maps of that size well and is very slow handling them. As has already been covered use descriptive names on normal mapsets install them right in the "Garmin" folder.

Here's a topo 100k map on top of birdeye, wilderness area. That's pretty dang usable in my opinion, but thehn I upgraded from a twelve year old non mapping unit.

Make sure you have the correct folder structure on your SD card too. I think the unit ignores anything outside of the base directory. This works, some variations may work too. Note that I keep my geocaches in a subdirectory so they don't get buried in waypoints or vice versa.

Can't help impossible expectations, no metter how much you might want it there is no device in the world that can hold good maps of everywhere on it, so Unless they are going to sell a zillion regional versions, it's best to load the maps you might want on it. For example I doubt elk migration routes as recorded by radio collars (an actual mapset installed on my garmin) does much good for Geocaching or road driving. Learn a bit before you prove your ignorance.

Sorry I just dunno, I looked at a couple gpsfiledepot maps and they did nothing for me. I may buy some 24k maps of areas of interest. I'll find out then if those are reasonably compatible with overlaying on aeriel photograqphy, that's months from now though...

Okay here we go This is a screenshot from my 550t, using it's built intopo maps, on top of birdeye, with an actual campsite I have.

I personally love the topo detail on top of birdseye. I'll post a pic later, once again I'm at work.

The only thing I'd add is the electronic compass on my Oregon 550t is flaky on my bike and in my car, from the "A" pillar and a brake cable respectively. When hiking/geocaching it's fine.

The idea of buying a Dakota, is for the interface, form, AND map data you can add. All by itself? well...

You'll keep working on all those bugs for me I'll be ready for one of those 650's in about six months it appears.

Gotta love unloved closeout's, I have gotten some incredible deals(not on GPS's) on unloved closeouts that no one noticed when they get marked down, down, and down...

At is most basic a GPS simply does the work to get a position outdoors. In other words, if it works, and is reasonably accurate at it's job, then it's never out of date. That said I dropped my 12 year old unit like a bad habit when I had an incentive to upgrade this year, simply so I didn't have to carry a backpack full of batteries for the old unit on a multi-week wilderness trip.

Caching notes are entered on the unit, not taken from gc.com notes. Notes added to the file on the unit are NOT viewable on the unit, and so adding them to the geocache_visits.txt file in advance will not help the OP in the field. The only way to view that file is to view the file itself with a PC. Yep noticed that when messing around last night, then the only way is manual XML editing the .gpx geocache file, not recommended...

Yes by the time I got to it last night it was version 4.8 I was a little concerned on reboot after the update it errored and said too many geocaches loade... but then it loaded anyhow. I have about 7000 geocaches in there, and have heard that other members have much more than that. Regardless subsequent reboots don't error out.

The notes saved from geocaching on a handheld colorado, dokata, oregon, ( not sure about the montanna ) are saved in a plain text file. I haven't tried to add information to that file, but I expect it's as easy as pasting it in, then it would be available for browsing on the unit when on. FYI I have only opened and glanced over the file, it's a really plain format something like [geo code/space/status/space/user entered note/linebreak] next cache. They are rolling out the v4.7 firmware which I haven't played with, I'm at work, it's likely to add some fields to that geocache data file, and it's likely to be the same format just more fields, again carefully pasting notes in there probably won't hurt a thing.

Did the big .IMG in huh?. I don't know if it's as simple as pasting another persons file in, haven't tried it(but it seems unlikely given they are copyrighted). For the 550t the .img 100k topo maps is nearly 3 gigs. Not for messing with, and I backed mine up of course. It would be nice if garmin included just a bit of more advanced reading in their manual that explained a few things for the more advanced user instead of using a discovery process online and in person.

I second that oregon will accept nearly any name on map files. I was a bit puzzled by instructions on the internet to use specific names, I guess that's for some older units.

I think the ol' 315 will talk to google earth with the standard serial cable, and some standard menu settings on the 315. Now as for getting that on a newer mac I don't have the inside info on setting up the com ports through a usb/serial adapter for mac etc.

Okay, a definite improvement on the paperless log, I'll see how it imports into geocaching.com after work, anything else in this firmware update?

The only thing Basecamp -really- does that can't be done with other software is birdseye. Basecamp is free, and not real hard on computers as some have implied. It taxes the hard drive the most when dealing with large multiple maps. If one has a high end raid drive setup, or good SSD it's mostly a non-issue on performance. Patience is a virtue when waiting for hard drives to catch up. There remains some flakiness on birdseye files, and waypioint averaging when importing waypoints into basecamp, but no export issues I have found.

Basecamp does -not- care where the map is installed on a computer in general, it does need some registry entries to find it/load it regardless of where a map is.

Here's a few from a 550t This covers evening, inside, sun contrast, and, lit landscape. Some things they got right on this camera, it's comparable to a recent generation smart phone camera. BTW I purchased the 550t because some dork in marketing priced it below the 450t, not because it has a camera.