StarDoc

The shading is intended to simulate the shadow cast by the sun shining on one side of a mountain and not the other. If the whole Island was shaded, there would be no contrast. Yes, I know that, but that's not what I was referring to. If you look at the map indicating what parts of the US are covered in the software on Garmin's info page http://www8.garmin.com/cartography/mapSource/topous.jsp the Big Island and Oahu have a crosshatch shading, not the solid blue of the rest of the states and Puerto Rico. Does that mean that those two islands have incomplete coverage or something? The main reason I'm asking is that I will be going back to the Big Island next winter and will most likely have this software by then. Actually, I'll buy it anyway for the improvements closer to home...

Anyone know why the islands of Oahu and Hawai'i are only partially shaded in Garmin's coverage map? Imprecise or limited data? I agree that it looks cool, and I will serious consider it, especially now that I have a Legend Cx...

Gander Mountian in Fargo has them also, usually around $8 or so. This is basically the same price as the previously mentioned Macs Hardware and Fleet Farm. The army surplus place probably has them too. I honestly don't know of any places in the Forks that might carry them (but then I live in Fargo). I just picked up one of the smaller ones for $4.00 at Fleet yesterday.

To my knowledge, 500 is the limit. It uses some sort of internal memory for waypoints, not the micro SD card slot. You can put maps, points of interest, and tracks on the card. The Garmin POI loader for the Legend Cx that Miragee is refering to has a bug in it (possibly the Legend's firmware?), so that any custom POI you load shows up on the map, but you can't click on it, and the name doesn't show up on the map. The info for the POI is only available when you search for it in the appropriate menu, meaning you need to know its name beforehand. Since this kind of defeats the purpose, it's useless for until it's fixed.

This topic leads into my question. I'm planning several Earthcaches where I live based on glacial features. One will be driving up US Highway 10 from Moorhead to the top of an ancient lakeshore, and recording the altitude change (thereby showing the depth of the old glacial lake). Who do I ask for permission for this? US Highway Department, county authorities, city road department, all of the above? I understand the required need for permission, especially in parks, forests, etc., but I think it's going a little overboard to list a contact on a public roadway. That's my $0.02 anyway.

Yes to all of the above. It's the bug. I can get the name and info by searching, but it doesn't display on the screen (which kind of defeats the purpose). Thanks for that info. I was starting to tear out what hair is left trying to figure out what I did wrong. And that website you listed in the next post is the page I got the icons from. In the zip file, there is a folder called Vista Series. I assumed that those were of the proper color depth...

What? "What have you dne with?" That's an incomplete sentence, with a wrongly spelled word at that. I'm not sure if your aware of this or not, but that's gonna cost you a case of beer. Just e-mail me through my profile. If you take longer than 2 days to reply, I'll send this case to collections, which will triple your fine. Me thinks you have had enough beer Me to brother. And then you can send that beer directly to me, since the correct version of the word "to" that should be used there is "too," as in "Me too, brother." I prefer ales, pale ales, or anything out of Montana or Oregon.

Yes, I understand that Ximage is for waypoint icons. These are two seperate problems, with Ximage AND POI Loader. I was able to get the custom POIs to show up with the little custom benchmark by renaming it "benchmark.bmp" to go with the "benchmark.gpx" file and putting it in the custom POI directory. It could be a color issue, but I don't think so. As I stated above, it shows up as a custom POI symbol, but ximage won't let me upload it as a custom waypoint symbol. Unless POI symbols and waypoint symbols use two different color schemes... The custom waypoint symbols I'm using were downloaded directly off the page that explains how to do this for the 60csx. Does the 60csx use a different color palette?

Depends on what you mean by "aren't showing up". If "aren't showing up" = "not displaying on my map", this may be because the default display of cPOI is pretty close. Gotta really zoom in before they show up. if "aren't showing up" = "not listed when I try to Find", make sure sure you are searching for cPOI and not waypoints. The point is displayed on the map, but no name. Moving the arrow cursor over the POI makes it think for a second (little hourglass appears), but nothing else happens. Clicking on the POI does nothing. This is regardless of zoom level, but at the same zoom level, other nearby stock POIs have names. Really, all I want is the name of the benchmark displayed. Details such as phone number etc. are not needed.

Two questions for the collective wisdom here. 1. I'm trying to upload benchmarks as custom POIs to my garmin Legend Cx. I've got them on board now, but their names and info aren't showing up. I created a .gpx file of my benchmark waypoint collection in Mapsource if that makes a difference. What am I doing wrong? 2. Then I tried uploading some custom waypoint images using xImage. Followed the directions carefully, read the previous threads about this, and read the tutorial linked in one of those threads. I keep getting an "Image is incompatible" error, even for the icons I grabbed off that page (I'm assuming those are of the proper color depth, etc.). At least one of those bitmaps works on my unit though, as I was able to attach it to my nameless custom POIs. Again, what did I do wrong? Like I mentioned, I've read all the previous threads I could find about this, and no luck. Thanks.

I like to browse the clearence racks at Wal-Mart and Target. Also done the bug wipe thing mentioned above (got the idea from here). I especially like the $1 bins right inside Target. I've found flashlights, batteries, first aid kits, bug bite kits, mini playing cards, carabiners, and other fun trinkets for only a buck. They tend to have seasonal items there, and at the end of the season they sell them for 3/$1. We also have a discount hardware store here, where they have various tools for a dollar or so. If I'm heading to an out-of-the-way cache (i.e. several mile hike), I'll leave a pair of lithium AA batteries or something similar.

I was there a year ago with a group of my students. Found my first cache ever on the Big Island. Hope to be back there next year... To add to the responses so far, check out South Point. There's a cache at South Point itself, plus take the hike to the Green Sand Beach, where I think there is still a cache. Well worth the trip. Wai'pio Valley has a cache and a great view, but it is kind of out of the way. I seem to remember there is a lava tube with a cache not far from Waimea. I also seem to remember several in the Kailua-Kona area. The virtuals in Volcanoes NP, as mentioned above, are fun, especially the one called Devil's Throat. Hilo has several caches, if you get to that side of the island (about a 2 hour drive from where you will be). I especially enjoyed Rainbow Falls. The north and east side of the isalnd are an entirely different world from the Kona side, with the lush rain forests and all. Laupahoehoe Park is a neat and sobering stop along the northern highway, as is Akaka Falls. Finally, there is a cache near the visitor's center at 9000' on Mauna Kea. The trip up there is also worth it. They set up telescopes there every evening, so stay and look at the stars. South Point and Mauna Kea are dependent on your rental car agreement though (if you are getting one). Several rental companies don't allow you to take their cars on the SP and Saddle Roads. Enjoy your trip there. I can't wait to get back. Disclaimer: Sorry if I misspelled anything.

I sent mine in the week after Thanksgiving, and had my rebate by the end of December.

When my daughter was two and I was still in grad school, I tried to explain to her what I was doing. "Ph.D. in physics" seemed a stretch, so I went for "star doctor" since I did my masters work in astronomy. That seemed to satisfy her, and the name sort of stuck. Since I didn't feel like typing the whole thing, I shortened it to StarDoc. Star-geezer, I like your picture. I'm also president of the local astronomy club.

Problem Solved! Sorry it took so long, but my week was especially hectic, so I didn't get a chance to play with it again until yesterday. The problem: my cheap radio transmitter I bought to listen to the iPod in the car. Tune the thing to 85.5 MHz (first default freq), turn it on, and watching the satellite display drop to zero. It must be putting out some nasty harmonics that reach all the way up to the GPS frequency. Changing the frequency of the transmitter makes the problem go away. This explains why the GPSr worked fine until I got to the car. Last weekend was the first time I'd used both the GPS and transmitter in the car at the same time. I was even getting good signal inside the middle of the main dining hall at the camp I was at last Saturday. Just not in the car. I don't know if anyone else has had this problem, but the transmitter looks just like the Belkin Tunecast II unit. Sorry, I don't have any manufacturer name, since I no longer have the packaging. Funny thing is, I'm running a ham radio in the car, and even transmitting on 50 watts, there is no GPSr interference (I have a trunk-lip mount antenna, so I don't do that very often anyway). At least it's an easy fix, and I don't have to call Garmin.

I thought of solar activity, but yeah, there was none, and I seriously doubt there was enough radiation from that CME to affect it. I used it without any problems during the last couple of solar storms. Ironically, yesterday I was at a Boy Scout camp teaching some Cubs about astronomy and actually observing the Sun. Not a single sunspot... I mainly used it from 7-9am CST, and again from 8:30-10:30pm CST. I had it on once or twice during the day but never noticed a problem then. I didn't even think to look for outages on the web. I ruled out local interference since it happened along a 100 mile stretch at random. I thought it was weird how it just suddenly cut out. A little alarming, since I've only had the unit for a couple of months. I'll definitely keep an eye on it. Thanks.

Yesterday while driving with my Legend Cx, I experienced several signal losses. The GPSr lost all the satellites simultaneously, then gave me the "Lost signal" message. The first time I was willing to wave it off as the local trees I was driving through, but it happened several more times during the morning, and again later in the evening. The later occurances happened in clear areas. It took several minutes each time to even see any satellites again, and another minute to lock again. The final time the signal never came back in the 30 minutes of driving I had left. Restarting the unit had no effect, nor did starting with a new location to get a new ephemeris. It would simply sit there and then randomly decide to lock on again. I'm just wondering if anyone else has experienced this (especially yesterday), or if I should be worried about the unit itself. I've been using GPS unit for several years, and I don't think I've ever had this problem before.

That's odd: Every map I try to look at for the area I'm interested in comes back as a 404 Page Not Found error from the Internet Archive (for the TIFF and TFW formats). Apparently, the state of ND has been archived!

Cross Ranch State Park north of Bismarck, ND, has GPSrs available for rental, plus three caches to find in the park, and about 10 or so within a few miles. The rangers are knowledgable about caching, and have been known to give hints and look up info on the Geocaching website if asked. We have the yearly North Dakota Star Party there, and last year someone set up a geocaching event in conjunction with it. Good times...

From the Eneloop site, bottom paragraph http://www.eneloop.info/215.html Thanks. I looked at a lot of webpages about the batteries, but not that particular one...

Does anyone know if you need a special charger for them? I have a large stock of standard NiMH batteries and associated chargers. I'd like to start switching over to the new hybrids, but I don't really want to invest in new chargers quite yet...

In northeast Montana, there is an entire string of them along the original course of the Missouri River that are now under Ft. Peck Reservior. They were placed back in the 1930s, before the dam was built. I'm not really sure how far down they are now...

My local Target in Fargo, ND has the Legend Cx now. The pack contains the GPSr, a case, and the cables, etc. They had several others there also, but I didn't really look at them during my last trip since I already own a Legend Cx. I've also seen at various times most of the eTrex series, the Geckos, and the little one that straps to your arm for runners.

I concur with Briansnat. I just upgraded from my old Legend to the Legend Cx (got a great price on it at Sportman's Warehouse). Better reception, bright screen, longer battery life, more memory. Also, you can load both the Topo and Metroguide maps and switch between them at will. The Venture Cx is the same as the Legend Cx without a few of the extras like the 64MB card, bike clip, and USB cable. I was going to get that model, but I got the Legend Cx for $150 after the rebate. I haven't succeeded in getting the Metroguide maps to autoroute yet though. I just measured it in Mapsource, and the entire Eastern USA Topo will be 658MB. The Eastern US in Metroguide is a about 800MB. Nicolo: I think I read on the Garmin site that the eTrex series only takes up to a 1 GB card. I may be wrong.

If GPSRs are illegal in Iraq, then why are there caches over them (some on military bases). Also, developing a sophisticated guidance system for a missile is no easy feat, GPS or not. Not to mention that almost all GPSr units available to the public have a software block in them that prevents their use for things like ICBM guidance systems. The Garmin units can go above 60,000' or travel at 500 mph, but not both at the same time. If it happens, they stop reporting position. The things you learn when you fly a GPSr to 100,000' on a scientific balloon...