ctgreybeard

I have a VistaC and I use it for both vehicle and caching use. I bought a RAM vacuum mount which puts it in just the right spot in the car. The light can sometimes be a problem when the reflections are bad but it is otherwise quite useable even for the small size. I turn on the compass when caching and find it invaluable. When travelling it reverts to the "movement" heading but if I'm on the road I don't really care what direction I am heading because I really need to follow the road I am on or people will complain! If I'm walking through the park then I need the electronic compass to tell me what hill I need to climb. Bill W

I have a VistaC and, as I understand it, the only way to get a bearing on the cache while standing still is to have the built-in electronic compass. That's why I asked (got it for a Christmas present) for this model. I don't use the altimeter at all except to answer the usually irrelevant question, How high are we? Bill W

I sure love to hate them! I'll definitely order several. I like micros because they (usually) don't involve ticks (I rate ticks below spiders and that says a lot!) but they do drive me nuts (both ticks and micros)! I did find one (GCTV56) that was most inventive but another in the same park (GCPYEH) that I couldn't find for the life of me drove me nuts. I bet the muggles were all wondering what that "old guy" was doing down by the creek for so long! So, I'd love to drop these into the micros that I do find! Can't wait for the sale to be announced. Bill W

Two Feb signal coins (well, one yesterday and one today .. I ordered them separately)

bazaar? No, because that doesn't mean what you think it means. bizarre? - perhaps. But I've got a Robert coin on order and I bet he won't let me plant a cache in his front yard. To each his own ... Bill W

I received mine today. It was mailed the 13th. It is quite a nice coin, I especially like the sparkles in the "snow." Bill W

You need to make sure that the icon set for the waypoints agrees with the "geocache" icon set in the GPSr. The default geocache icon is the closed treasure chest but in the Setup menu under Geocache you can change it to another icon. So, either the GPSr has been changed to look for a different icon or you don't have GSAK set to assign the treasure chest icon to the caches. HTH! Bill

Nice. Yeah, I'd buy at least a couple of them. Bill W

Me too. Nice coin, Robert! Bill W

Well, tomorrow morning we head off. Although the weather doesn't look like it will cooperate much I have gotten some good advice from some local folks. If anyone has a "must do" site then I would be pleased to hear of it. Bill W.

Whatever floats your boat! But I'd suggest a more generalized itinerary. I (and I suspect many, many others) have an unreleased TB of Nemo and another of Crush (the turtle) ... [my daughter worked on the movie so we are naturally drawn to it] but for both the TB's the goal is fairly simple. One of the things that I thought of as I wrote the goals was to allow the finder to interpret the goal themselves, to allow their own imagination to enter into the TB travels. One that I have released has my wife's goal to go to Key West. The first finder took it to Ithaca New York with a nice explanation, it was closer to water (Lake Eire) there. Now Ithica is NOT closer to Key West than I am but the finder was creative and my bug got to go someplace that I hadn't expected. I was very pleased even though I wouldn't have expected it to go that direction. But it was quickly picked up and is winging its way to central Florida. At least that the last I've heard ... who knows? ... To me the fun is watching how other people interpret your goals and interact with your bug. I think that giving people the room to have fun with it will make the whole experience a lot more fun. Of course you can set the goals/rules any way you like but remember that you need to ENGAGE the finder in your plan. You are not dealing with robots that will blindly follow your instructions. Make it fun for the finders and it is more likely that they will advance toward the goal. So I would say to write your TB goals with the thought that many people are going to pick it up and send it on its way, tickle their fancy, engage their imaginations! This is an interactive sport when we get involved with TB's, the finder and the owner and maybe even the kibbitzers who read the logs. We get to show some imagination here ... let's have fun! Whew! Didn't think I'd get that into it. The fun is the thing. Bill W

I've had days like that. Thanks for letting me know there are others! Now, what did I do with my hat?

As one who is fairly new to geocaching but bitten by the idea of travel bugs and geocoins I was very glad to read of the discussions regarding TB hotels. At first glance they seemed like a great idea until I read the nuances of the "rules" that some cache owners applied. I think that those, myself included, that want to send our charges on their fantastic journeys (voyeuristic as it may be!) then a distinction of "hotels" would be welcome. I certainly would welcome a list of hotels near me that have permissive policies. I certainly don't want MY bug or coin to get stuck some place! They are supposed to travel the world, not sit in some dank, dark ammo container! Bill W

I'm heading out this week with my first coin and that sounds like a great idea. I'll drop-and-pick at each cache I find. I think I'll chant "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. If the devil doesn't get you then the muggles must!" Bill W

After I had ordered my one January coin and it came I decided to order another, which I did. But the second came quite quickly. If you ordered January more than a couple of weeks ago then I think you need to be concerned. Bill W

Bump ... Any good suggestions for the "best" caches in the area? I think I'll be out on Thursday and maybe Saturday (Friday is the Strasburg Railroad according to the current plan ...) Bill W.

The most important difference between these two Select/Navigator is the size of the segments that you can load onto the GPSr. For my VistaC the Navigator segments were sometimes too big to fit in the smaller (24 Meg) memory and so Garmin was willing to swap my Nav for Select, thanks very much for that! These were both V7 software and, as I understand it, NAV V8 will have smaller segments than V7 does and that Select V8 will not exist. I don't know that but it's what I've heard. The thing with the smaller segments is that you can be much more selective on what detail you choose. If you have a lot of memory available then it really doesn't matter at all, but for my VistaC it's a very important consideration. So, if you have a lot of memory then go for Nav V7 and up but if you want to conserve memory then go to City Select V7. What happens beyond V7 is completely up to Garmin ... Bill W

Wow! My fave toy too and I didn't think of it for this purpose! Great idea! Bill W

I've been running it for a while now and it's working fine. I'd say Go For It. You can always back off if you need to. Bill W

There is a very good book that covers most Garmin receivers called "A Gps User Manual: Working With Garmin Receivers" by Dale Depriest Amazon link It is just a little out of date but not so far that you can't get a lot out of it. Bill W.

So far I have been quite honest, not that it has come up often. On one very cold and windy day the area security guard dropped by my car as I was getting in after a find. The parking for the park where the cache is is in an industrial park behind one of the warehouses. As this was a deserted Sunday afternoon she was curious as to what I was doing out on such a cold day. After I explained geocaching and showed her the GPS she was very impressed, I even gave her the URL so she could see my posting later that night. She said she had no idea that such a thing was going on in "her" park and seemed genuinely interested. I'm thinking of printing up a "business card" that I could print up to tell people what I am doing and point them to geocaching.com ... has anyone else done that? Any ideas I could steal borrow? Bill W

I think you are only going to see that for the logs that you enter. Other people only see those for their own logs and not on yours. It's very considerate of you to want to minimize the space you take but I really wouldn't worry about it. Bill W

I've been seeing #48 very low in the WSW from SW Connecticut for a couple of weeks at least. I'm really surprised it has as strong a signal as it does. Bill W

Sort of like a "preemptive replacement" .... I wonder ....

Do you have the Vista set to route by road only? Setup->Routing->Guidance Method? I have mine set to Prompted so I can choose Off Road for my cacheing. Bill