rbrugman

It all depends how deep in the woods you are planning on going. I have both a 60C and 60CSx and they both work great in the woods. Under heavy tree cover (where the light is affected by so many leaves) the CSx does shine through, but the 60C is perfectly fine under most conditions.

I've posted on here once, but now I have another gps. My list now includes: Garmin Quest Garmin GPSMAP 60C Garmin GPSMAP 60Csx I love every one of them.

Can the 60CSx / 76CSx pick up 31 without a software update?

I don't use a flashlight. I have a Princeton Tech Apex headlamp. It was a bit on the expensive side ($65), but it is very bright and gets amazing battery life. I have rechargeable batteries for it, but I have to wait for the ones it came with to die first before I can use them.

Is it even necessary to lock more than one WAAS bird? I don't think my Garmin units even do it. My Quest only sees 35, but at 7ft accuracy (estimated) I don't really care it cant see 51.

I highly recommend the quest. Last Christmas I was considering the Quest, Quest2, as well as a couple Magellan units. I got the Quest, because I never travel more than a couple states away without taking my laptop and I read that the Quest2 wasn't as fast at calculating. I couldn't have picked a better GPS for the money. At under $350 shipped from Amazon it does an amazing job and is very accurate. I got the optional roof-mount antenna, and I am locked in at between 7-10 feet wherever I drive. I also have satellite radio, so it's a little odd having 13 birds looking at your vehicle at once. Imagine what the government may be doing ;-). Robert

I will confirm the Upper Peninsula is like this. I live in Marquette and in many cache areas, a compass is useless. It also doens't work when walking next to rail lines. There is actually an area of our downtown area where rail lines used to run that have since been burried and removed. There is a cache right along the line and if you rely on your magnetic compass, you're going for a trip! Robert

I think it would be even more useful if new caches could be sent to your phone via sms. That way, if you are already out doing something and have your gps you can get that FTF without having to get to your computer first.

I ended up moving it about 1200 feet down the trail. Hopefully its new home is not also the home of an animal. Robert

I live in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and can get EGNOS satellite 33 to lock, especially in my boat. I had it locked for a half hour on Thursday. It's funny how I can get an EGNOS satellite but I can't pick up anything other than WAAS 51. Robert Yes, I am sure it was 33 and not 35.

You have me convinced. I'll head back today with my cache repair kit and laptop and get the stage moved. There is an event cache about .25 miles from my cache tomorrow so I need to make sure everything is in working order. More work but better for those critters and maybe I can prevent them from eating a fellow cacher looking for the stage. Robert

I have a multi, and I am beginning to think that there is a raccoon visiting the same place as one of my stages (a hollow tree). The area inside the tree is very small, and when I placed it there during the day there was nothing there. Nothing there when I checked on it the first time either. The second (and now third) times though, the stage container has been pushed out of the tree, either by whoever looked for it last or by an animal. Any suggestions? I could move the cache or I could return with a mesh bag full of moth balls to keep the animals out. I don't actually think anything lives there, I just think something may go in every so often. I went back to check on it today in the dark and there were five raccoons standing around the tree but I dont think the area is big enough for any of those beasts. Thanks, Robert

I'd say it would be fine. You're only doing it to help. Actually, if the book isn't terribly expensive, why not buy a copy yourself to be used as a first finders prize or something? Just an idea. Robert

In/on my backpack I have: GPS (Garmin GPSMAP 60Csx) Map of area (currently unused but worth the weight of the paper just in case) Victorinox Swiss Army Knife that I purchaced in Austria because it was cheaper than Switzerland tongue.gif Military Surplus foldable shovel (sometimes) Princeton Tec Apex Headlamp Digital or desposible Camera Maglite non-LED flashlight 12-16 Energizer 2500 mah rechargable batteries Polarized sunglasses Silva Polaris compass (useless in some areas where I live due to large iron deposits) Cell phone Swag Extra ziplocks, logbooks, pencils, pens, sharpies Camo Duck Tape CITO bags Bug spray Small survival/first aid kit Motorola Talkabout radio I think that's about it. In the winter there are a few additional items: Snow shoes Polarized ski goggles Heat packs Extra socks & gloves If I'm on my bike in town I pack a lot lighter and usually just bring my camelbak, gps, compass, cell phone and a couple items for caches. Probably weighs about 20-40 pounds depending on if I have the shovel and snowshoes. Robert

Hint: No need to cross the muddy stream. HAHA! Can't say I've never been in the mud. I was crossing a log once and the bark seperated from the tree and I went in. Turns out the cache wasn't even across the swamp. My bad!

I found a silva compass in one. I didn't take it because I never have anything worth that much to trade for. So to answer the question, the answer is a compass even though I didn't actually take it.

I live in the US and I use meters on my gps. I don't trust the stanard units. Lets say your standing in a field. With standard units it may say 16 feet, but in metric it will say 3-4 meters. When hunting a cache I like to know about where I am instead of trying to pace it out and I find that I'm usually WITHIN a certain number of meters rather than an exact distance in feet away. If you took a tape measure to a cache site you'll find that knowing the number of feet is useless because it's almost always wrong. Robert

I had the same problem with my cache. I started off with really useful items like batteries, a first aid kit, poncohos, bug spray and other camping/hiking/caching type stuff. I also had some postcards in there for tourists. One geopirate came and took both packs of batteries, the bug spray and one other thing I can't recall. They put in a handfull of iron ore pellets (from the train tracks 1km away) and some mardi gras beads. The pellets made everything a mess and now my cache has nothing decent left in it. Oh well. I'll reload it sometime. Robert

I went down to the beach the other night and averaged until 500. I got the estimated accuracy down to 3.4 feet. That's the lowest I've ever seen my 60csx go.

I don't ignore micros, at least not when they are urban caches. If they are out in the woods, I have to evaluate whether they are worth finding or not, because sometimes they can be frustrating, especially if the coords are off a bit. Nanos on the other hand get ignored by me, although there are only a couple in my area. If I need a magnifying glass to write in the log, its just not worth it. I like ammo boxes

I had almost the exact same thing happen. I got pulled over when I was helping a friend move. I was driving up a hill with a loaded 18 foot trailer and a state trooper pulled me over and said I was doing 75 in a 55 mph zone. After arguing with him a for a while about how there is no way a fully loaded SUV pulling a fully loaded trailer could be doing 75 up a hill I asked him to see the radar. It only showed 65. That was a little better but still faster than I had been going. Then I popped my Quest out of the craddle and showed him that according to my Quest with the roofmount antenna and 8 foot accuracy, my max speed had only been 57, and that there was no way my GPS could be off by 18mph. I think it made him mad, but he just left after that. Go Garmin! Robert

Kind of along the same lines as walking sticks...what kind of gloves are recommended. I used to use my pair of Youngstown motocross gloves but I sliced them up on rocks. I was looking at the kevlar-reinforced Oakley Standard Issue gloves, but they are $50. Any recommendations? Thanks Robert P.S. Sorry for hijacking your thread

Nice use of GPS, but wouldn't it have been easier to stop and pick it up when it fell off?

I used webupdater to reinstall the software and also have tried a hard reset. Same problem (if it's even a problem). The GPS works great, it just doesn't lock any faster than my old 60C.

It finds the satellites quite fast, but they blink for about three minutes before they start going solid. It takes about five minutes (or the entire duration of my bike trip to work) to lock enough satellites to actually get a fix. When I first got the unit it worked like a charm. After updating the the latest software it seems to take forever, although the problem with no tracking any sats is fixed. Robert