JohnTee

Hi Check out this link for Cool Cache Containers and you'll have an idea of the WIDE variety of caches and micros you might run up against. Some cachers have a nasty bent when it comes to hiding caches. Cache On JohnTee

Garmin Missouri Has new & improved ARCH antenna for enhanced reception Heat and humidity resistance Earthquake resistant for those in the New Madrid area Built in depth finder calls out, "Mark Twain!" Will 'Show-Me' the cache When you find the cache the official state Bluebird 'of happiness' will appear Comes with Topographic Map of the Lewis and Clark trail through Missouri Tornado Advoidance (steers you away from trailer parks in bad weather) Complete POI's for the A-B Brewery and all outlet sell A-B Beer Cache On! JohnTee

Doh! What jholly said. Create different databases. JohnTee

If you know in advance what segments of your route you will be driving each day, break the route up into those segments. Otherwise, within GSAK, if you have caches from a route, you can filter from Point A (where you're starting that day) choose points of the compass (N, S, E, W, NW, NE, SW, SE) that include your route and distance you plan to drive that day. For example, you are traveling from New Orleans to Minneapolis-St. Paul. Today you're traveling from Memphis to St. Louis. Choose Memphis for a center, choose N, NW and NE, something like 250 miles in your filter. That should catch all the caches from your route between Memphis and St. Louis. Cache On! JohnTee

Now, that is sweet AZcachemeister. I'm off to search for MP3's . . . (hummed to, "I'm off to see the Wizard . . ." Cache On! JohnTee

I'm using "I still haven't found what I'm looking for" by U2. I'm looking for something to use with 'Tour Guide' to associate with geocaches when I get close to them. So far, all I've come up with has been, "Hey, Abbot!" If anyone has any suggestions for a segment from a TV Theme Song, or popular song, I'll find it, cut it down to a ringtone or short sound and e-mail it, or post it somewhere. Cache On! JohnTee

Thr Great Karnak predicts a DeLorme PN-20 or PN-40 . . . Cache On! JohnTee I'm using a megellan crossover, I can't find a datum setting. The Great Karnak . . . falls flat on his face! Dagnabit anyhow. The DeLorme's give four digits in decimal minutes. Cache On! JohnTee

Thr Great Karnak predicts a DeLorme PN-20 or PN-40 . . . Cache On! JohnTee

1. Have you tried hitting the menu button on the side after selecting 'Custom POI'? I believe it defaults to nearest POI's to your location. Choosing the menu button will allow you to choose a specific POI folder. SEARCH -> CUSTOM POI -> (defaults to 'Near Current Location) -> MENU -> SELECT DATABASE -> (list of FOLDER NAMES). CHANGE LOCATION would allow you to look at POI's in another location, say, another city from the one you are currently standing in. I haven't played with multiple files within a folder, rather have created a separate folder for each 'cluster' of POI's. I think this would speed up searches through POI files. I've got something under 10,000 caches on my MicroSD card and they occupy little space. I suspect dumping multiple files into a folder will cause it lump together ALL POI's within a folder . . . 2. I think the only limit to Custom POI files, oh,wait, databases. I suspect the answer is still the same and is limited by the size of your storage and your patience to scroll through multipler folders . . . 3. No answer for you on this on. Alphabetical WOULD be nice. I haven't figured out any method to that madness. It's not date created, name, distance or number of POI's . . . BTW, have you read the the 'Stupid POI Tricks' postings? I think that's the name of the thread. Cache On! JohnTee

To second other comments above, the difference is significant. I can directly compare my Garmin eTrex Legend with my Garmin eTrex Vista HCx. The Legend, sitting on the coffee table in my living room, might get a peek at a satellite or two, never enough to get a lock on position. Even sitting it in a window of the living room, I would probably not get a position. The Vista HCx, sitting next to my Legend on the coffee table, showed an EPE of about 25'. So, I had a pretty decent position fix, indoors. Cache On! JohnTee

BTW, a common general suggestion is to start out with lower difficulty level caches, say something like 1-2 or 2.5 to get a good feel for things. Starting out with micros, much less nanos, is the way of frustration! <grin> Cache On! JohnTee

Hi Susan, Welcome to the hobby, addiction, sport, affliction, curse of geocaching! One place to start would be checking out the forum topic Cool Cache Containers That will give you a BIG boost on ideas of what can be done in hiding geocaches, including micros and nanos. What you are describing sounds like a nano, which is smaller than a micro. Cache sizes run something like: Large - 5 gallon bucket Regular - ammo box Small - can of SPAM Micro - 35mm film cannister Nano - as small as an aspirin tablet Those sizes are generalities and you will find lots of crossovers. One wicked cacher around here hid a nano-micro hybrid. The CCC threads ought to give you a good place to start! Cache On! JohnTee

Hi SmokeEater85911, Don't know what, if anything, you've done with your Legend . . . but I'll add my two cents worth here too. As with others, I found something like my first 200 caches with a Garmin eTrex Legend. Is it perfect? No. Under dense tree canopy you can lose signal and have GZ bounce from place to place. Does it have detailed maps? No. You really can get by without them. Print out cache descriptions and maps. Get a copy of something like M$ Streets and Trips on a laptop, plug your Legend in and use your laptop as a moving map display. Spend $120-140 and install Garmin's Streets Map. Go on an adventure, live on the edge, flirt with danger and go without a map. Go find where Ibycus is offering free maps for Garmins. Can a handheld autoroute? Yes, and some will do it better than others. The original Legend will probably have slower processing than current production GPS units. If you really want something to drive with, get something to drive with. Buy a rebuilt StreetPilot or a new Nuvi from Amazon.com or Buy.com. You can use the "Send to GPS" button and send geocaches to either model through the USB cable. Use either model to navigate to the area of caches and use your handheld to hop out and find the caches. Have fun. Cache On! JohnTee

Currently: Garmin Nuvi 360 for the Honda Fit Garmin eTrex Vista HCx Garmin eTrex Legend Formerly: DeLorme PN-20 Lowrance iFinder Go 2 (my very first) Cache On! JohnTee

Recently downloaded and installed 1.4. First time I tried loading counties through MapSource for S. IL I got an 'unlock code' error on the GPS after installation. Went back, did the same thing again and it all loaded successfully. Well, the S. IL counties did. Didn't realize that would uninstall the S.E. MO counties I had previously installed. Can I take a page from the Stupid POI Tricks thread and rename a map, i.e. MOCounties..img and then load another? Got smart and started marking ALL the counties that I wanted and periodically saving the file as something like TxFerGPS.gdb. That takes a long while to do . . . when you're on an older laptop with detail set to 'Highest'. That refresh rate, dontchaknow?. Got smart and changed detail to 'Lowest' to choose my counties, periodically saving, changed detail to 'Highest' and sent to my GPS. So, is it possible to rename the gmapsupp.img file to something like 'semissouri.img' and load another to be renamed to something like, 'sillinois.img', etc.? Clicking counties with a 'refresh' after each county selected ran really slow under MapSoursce's 'Highest' resolution and went much faster under 'Lowest' resolution, with a final change to 'Highest' after I was done. I'm guessing that still sent the 'Highest' resolution files to my GPS. If I send while viewing 'Lowest' in MapSource, is it sending low resolution files, or sending the entire compiled file? Ibycus, thanks again for all your hard work. Even though I now have my Nuvi for driving navigation, I really like having maps on my handheld. My wallet REALLY likes the price! Cache On! JohnTee

Got it. I was doing as you mentioned: opening my POI folder in a window when I ran POI Loader. Had folders created as sub-directories and renamed/moved the file after each load. The new GSAK macro sounds promising as away to manage those things. Thanks! Cache On! JohnTee

Quite a work-around. That GSAK will just about do it all. Just out of curiosity, is there a reason you want it in GSAK, as opposed to just using the Garmin POI Loader to Load it directly to your Nuvi? I gone this route with the POI Loader, but had not considered trying to push them through GSAK. Cache On! JohnTee

Hi brendaisbored! Welcome to the game/addiction/sport/hobby/affliction! Any of those will probably do for you and each has it strong and weak points. Some of it depends on your needs and some lies in the elusive anticipation of what your needs will be on down the road. If, you are in need of maps, street and/or topo, the PN-20 would be a good way to go. You should be able to find it for around $300, after possible rebates, and it comes with maps. It WILL do auto-routing, like your Nuvi, but it does not do it anywhere near as good. Not a good reason to buy it. It also seems to slow down quite a bit when auto-routing. It does have some features that Garmin could learn from. I thought some of the menus were a little 'clunky'; one place where Garmin seems to have thought things through a little better. I think their processors seem to be faster, although, I have not tried a Garmin with Garmin maps and tried auto-routing. That could slow a Garmin down also. Garmin could also learn from DeLorme for coordinate entry/editing. You don't need maps to geocache or to make any GPS 'work'. That said, I did hook my Legend to my laptop and used M$ Streets and Trips to turn it into a moving map. It IS really nice to have maps available. Otherwise, you can always print out cache descriptions and the associated maps to get you in the general area of the cache. If you do find that you need maps on a Garmin unit, you can always download the free ones that ibycus is setting up. I just put them on my Vista and am very pleased. I got my Vista HCx from REI for $219, on sale. That was a pretty good price. They recently had it for something like $250, bundled with Topo maps. You don't really need the electronic compass or the barometer; on the other hand, toys are fun and "you can tell the men from the boys by the price of their toys!" . I don''t find the compass to work as good as a handheld, which if you have a serious need for (extended hikes in the woods, mapping, etc.) you should be carrying a good handheld model anyway. It's often inconvenient to get the local barometric pressure or accurate altitude to calibrate the barometer. I often just don't, or use the GPS altitude for calibration. As far as anticipating needs goes . . . having an SD/microSD card slot is very handy. I've got five or six thousand geocaches loaded on my Vista as POI's (I travel often and might have occasion to get stuck in another town, and oh, look, there's a geocache!). After owning a Lowrance iFinderGo2 (B&W), an eTrex Legend (B&W) a DeLorme PN-20 (color) and now the Vista (color), I really like a color unit and I'm really partial to Garmins. I've been satisfied with the battery life of my Vista and have recently started using Sanyo Eneloop rechargables in it, which seems to be going quite well. I recently got a Nuvi 360 and really enjoy using it for routing to get to the cache area, then hop out with my handheld. Of course, you have to watch how it routes you to a cache. I recently had it sending me down the closest street to the cache, which was on the west side of the cache AND on the far side of the creek you couldn't easily cross after you would have crossed somebody's backyard. Knowing the area, I chose a street to the east of the cache, and on the same side of the creek as the cache. I do like using either 'Send to GPS' to send caches to both my Garmin Vista and Nuvi, or using the Custom POI loader to load caches to both. So, after further muddying the waters . . . Cache On!

You may need to do a little Google research to figure out how to do it, but it should be possible. Here's a site that discusses installing Custom POI's on a TomTom . . . Pointing You In The Direction of Personal POI's The "-*.ov2 – the actual list of POI locations" *.ov2 files are probably CSV (Comma Separated Values) text files. Ah, here's a reference . . . Loading custom Poi files to a TomTom go 510 | POI Factory That tells you more about loading personal POI's AND tells you how to, "convert .csv files into .ov2 files, for uploading to your GO 510, using the BATCH CONVERT feature in POIEdit 2007". I'll let you look into POIEdit 2007 and the details! Cache On! JohnTee

BTW - I found a Nuvi 360 for $239 on amazon.com. The 360 had a several nice features that I liked. I would look for, at minimum, 'text-to-voice' or spoken directions and possible and SD card slot. They later had the 660 (widescreen model of the 360) for $289. You can also look on buy.com. Might also try including the word 'refurbished' along with 'garmin' and 'nuvi' or 'streetpilot'. Oh, yes, the StreetPilot series . . . came out before the Nuvi. You can get a lot of the same features as in the 2xx or 3xx series of Nuvi's for quite a bit less. Screen/face size is the same, they just have a baseball size bump out the back, instead of being flat like a PDA. Cache On! JohnTee

You will do well to get one of the Garmin's, StreetPilot or Nuvi. They can accept geocaches through the USB cable using the, "Send to GPS" button on page descriptions. You can also load a large number of geocaches as Custom POI's (Points of Interest) using Garmin's POI Loader. Cache On! JohnTee

Everybody plays the game the way they want. Some caches are very obvious for locations, such as in a city park. Some require you to take certain roads to get close to the cache.I've seen caches with little more that the set of coordinates and no description verbiage, to directions for where to park, and where the trail starts. Keep in mind that it's a family friendly sport. If you send people chasing all over a national forest trying to find the road that gets them closest to the cache, they may not appreciate your good work. I've done one like that in the Shawnee National Forest in S. Illinois. Using maps on my laptop, I spent the better part of the morning circling the edges of the national forest trying to find a road close to the cache. Ended up following one that looked like it went close to where I wanted, only to have it dead end in a farmyard. The farmer told me, "that road hasn't gone through to anywhere for as long as I've lived here." I ended up hiking a little ways, up and down some fairly rough territory from the east of the cache, only to find that there was another road just a little ways to the west. The owners intent was that cachers, 'explore Shawnee National Forest'. A little guidance, like use County Road xxx, would have been very nice. So, think about what it was you are wanting the cachers to get out of your cache: beautiful scenery, a clever cache, some history of the area, etc. and nudge them along in that direction. There really is no need to be 'mean' about it and make them work extra hard to get to your cache. <grin> Cache On! JohnTee

The SWAG item I like to leave in regular size caches is my "Signature Preform Micro 'Cache Ready To Go'". It's a soda bottle preform that contains a rolled up log, a note explaining what it is and a pencil. They look like this: Only this one is scuffed up in preparation for painting. The preform is an idea I borrowed from COD (Corps of Discovery) out of Central IL. People either take them to place as micros in their area, or use them for SWAG in other caches. You might also check out these forum threads: signature item to put into caches Signature items, what do you leave? signature swag Looking for a low budget signature item Just to name a few that came up in a search of the forums for "signature item" in the subject line. Cache On! JohnTee

Hi Shawn, Here are some of the folks way down in the SW part of S IL <grin> . . . Anna-Jonesboro - Tank22 Chester - Menardian Pomona - PomonaCachers Redbud - REDBUDHOOTIE No clubs down that area. Tank22 associates with the informal SEMOG (Southeast MO Geocachers). Cache On! JohnTee

Nice job knarfdotca, I've had my kids on the splash screen for a while. Just downloaded the last image you created and will try it sometime. Cache On! JohnTee