JetSkier

I don't know the answer to that one ... sorry. I know you can put BlueNav maps on an SD card for Marine mode, but I'm not sure if DR on an SD card will be read by either Vehicle Nav mode or Outdoor mode. JetSkier

The Magellan CrossoverGPS comes with detailed maps of the US, Canada, Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. You can street nav anywhere across the country with voice prompts. Of course that's in Vehicle Nav mode. In Outdoor mode, it has the detailed maps but doesn't route in that mode. Hope this helps. JetSkier

I had a little Hiccup with mine yesterday. It wouldn't turn on! I tried pressing the reset button, pressing the reset button while holding the power button, etc. Finally, I pressed and held the power button for about 20 seconds and it started booting up. It came up with the Magellan text across the screen and a progress bar that said "Loading". It took about 15 seconds to finish booting up and it's been working fine ever since. I was afraid I was going to have to call Magellan Tech Support and send it back ... after reading other peoples nightmarish encounters with Magellan Tech Support, I was sweating it!

I have two Meridians and the new CrossoverGPS. The one time that I had to send my Meridian back for warrenty, it went off without a hitch. I've heard of horror stories with CS, but when things go well, people don't usually write about it. I did have a different experience with CS on my CrossoverGPS. No problems with the unit, I just wanted to suggest a firmware feature. When I used the form online, I first got a response that said to call CS to fix my problem ... I didn't have a problem, I had a suggestion. When they finally "read" the form and figured out it was a suggestion, they told me to call CS to request the new features. When I called CS, they told me to fill out the online form to request new features ... the old run-around! Anyway, I know others with SportTraks and eXplorists and no problems with the units. JetSkier

The battery life on the Magellan CrossoverGPS is rated at 8 hours. I cached with mine for 5 hours and still had 3 of 5 battery bars left. That would indicate closer to 10 hours of use. The maps in the CrossoverGPS are internal so you can't take them out and use them elsewhere. Here's a Topic that I wrote on the Crossover's performance while caching ... JetSkier

I was skeptical at first about the battery life of this device, because most companies inflate their battery performance numbers. However, the first time I tried to test the battery life, I made it to 8 hours and it still had juice to go. I didn't end up testing it's limit, but 8 hours is pretty good for a device like this, so I was happy I was also skeptical about the battery life because my Meridian doesn't get nearly what the specs say it should get. I was pleasanlty surprised when I still had 3 bars left after 5 hours of continuous use!

I just got the Magellan CrossoverGPS. It has it's downfalls, but overall I was able to successfully cache with it. Here's a link to a Topic that I wrote on the downfalls and workarounds. I purchased mine from an ebay store for $300. JetSkier

Who ever heard of a one-armed Monkee?

Took my new Magellan Crossover geocaching last night and, overall, it worked out great! The vehicle navigation is excellent (but then again I think it’s excellent on the Garmin Nuvii and the Magellan Maestro). The outdoor mode is a little more difficult. If you’re a hardcore Garmin user, you’ll hate this unit but if you’re a hardcore Magellan user, you’ll love it! If you’re in between, here are my list of downfalls and workarounds (for outdoor mode using firmware 2.14) … Downfall: When routing to a cache, the unit will stop routing when you get somewhere between 100’ and 10’ of the cache and give you a message that you are “near your destination”. Most of the time it was letting me get within 10’ before it did this. Only a couple of times did it do it at 100’. Workaround: There are two workarounds here (besides re-entering the go-to) 1) exit the compass screen into the map screen and “tap” the current location. This will bring up the waypoint. On this screen it will give you the distance to the waypoint. If another item came up with the waypoint (such as a street), arrow down to the other POI, move closer to the cache and then arrow back up to the waypoint to get a new distance. 2) exit to the map screen, “tap” the current location and then select the waypoint. Note the decimal numbers for the lat and long. Enter the compass screen and work yourself north-south and east-west to get the lat long numbers close. In Florida, 0.001 is about 6’. Downfall: The unit will only list waypoints in alphabetical order, not nearest to your current location. Workaround: 1) Use the trip planner to enter your waypoints in the order that you want to find them. That way you have a list in the unit of the order. Don’t use the “Guide Me” mode here because once you get close to the waypoint, it will automatically switch to the next one in the list with no notification. 2) Goto the map screen and select the next waypoint by “tapping” it. Downfall: The windshield mount is a two hands job to line up the holes with the tab and snap it into place without breaking the mount. Workaround: Use two hands! Downfall: GPSBabel creates a UPT file with the GC number as the name and the Description as the description. The unit only lists waypoints by their name. Workaround: Manually load the UPT file and swap the two fields. You have to add the ending line of “$PMGNCMD,END*3D” anyways otherwise the UPT file won’t load. The documentation says the battery will last for 8 hours. I cached for 5 hours and the battery indicator said I still had 3 of 5 bars. Does this mean I’ll get 10-12 hours? I’ll test that next time.

Take a look at this ebay store. I just got a Magellan Crossover GPS that retails for around $500 for only $299 including shipping. It has detailed maps of the entire USA so you can street route anywhere. It also has an outdoor mode for geocaching. It has a few downfalls, though. It won't let you search your waypoints by nearest in Outdoor mode, it will in street route mode. It also stops your goto (again in outdoor mode) when you get within 100' of the waypoint. You can start the goto again, but it's kind of kludgy. Hopefully they'll have a firmware upgrade to address these issues. Hope this helps.

Biladon, The .rgn files will always be small. They only store the bounding box coordinates of the region that you selected. To upload to the SD card, you have to run the "Upload to GPS..." menu option (located on the Regions pulldown). Tell that to store on the hard drive. The file you want will have the extension .img and be named the same name as your region. It will be located in "C:\Program Files\Magellan\MapSend Streets and Destinations USA\EXPORT\IMAGES\". That's the file that you want to upload to your SD card. JetSkier

I started Messenger today and it said an update was available. I installed the update and now all of my Mapsend products work fine! Prolem resolved. JetSkier

This is the only one I could find a while back when I was looking Meridian Case.

Brian, I don't have my Meridian with me, but I believe the setting is the proximity alarm. I usually have mine set to 250ft and I get a pretty good "heads up" on when my turn is coming. Magellan needs to give us more control over how long it beeps! I generally start a direct route and then hit the "goto" button, scroll down and turn the beeper off! Also, can you email me with the procedure you used to skip the CD check? I would appreciate that. Thanks, JetSkier a.k.a. Joe

I haven't run any of my Mapsend products in a couple of weeks and when I tried to run them yesterday, none of them ran. They displayed the splash screen and then locked up. I have DirectRoute, S&D and Topo. I was trying to remember what I've installed since I last ran it and it turns out the culprit is MSN Messenger 7.0. If I quit Messenger, all of the Mapsend products run fine. I alerted Magellan, but haven't heard back yet. Just an FYI ... JetSkier

I haven't done any research of this theory, but I've noticed it on a few occasions ... the GPS satellites are in the same position in the sky every 12 hours, therefore, if you take a reading at 1pm, the reading seems to be more accurate at 1pm or 1am each day. If you compare them to readings at the same location at 7pm or 7am, you'll see an error of up to 50-60'. That's the nature of the beast. As I said, I haven't done any scientific research on this theory, but it sounds logical to me. JetSkier

I let my Magellen average for at least 1 minute. If I've got a low EPE, usually 10-14', I let the coordinates stand. If I can't get a low EPE, I post a note on the page saying what the EPE was when I averaged. I don't take multiple coordinatess and average them because when someone is hunting the cache, they simply walk to ground zero and search. They don't go in and out several times to try to average their coordinates. Besides, how much more accuracy do you get by averaging several readings? 6-12'? Another 2c worth. JetSkier

That's ok Road Rabbit ... I live 45 minutes from the port. I've probably already done those caches!

I just got back from a 7-day cruise and I thought I’d post the coordinates of the ports-of-call. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to cache on this trip! Ship Name: Carnival Glory Destination: Western Carribean Port Canaveral - N28°24.649' W80°37.900' This was the starting point for the cruise. Costa Maya Mexico - N18°43.858' W87°41.287' Costa Maya has a tourist village at the end of the dock that has a huge swimming pool. It is free to use. There is also a sandy beach area with lounge chairs and hammocks. There is also another pool that is set up to play volley ball in. Belize City, Belize – Belize does not have a dock, so the ships anchor about 5 miles off the coast and you have to take a tender into the city. We anchored at N17°26.296' W88°07.853' and the tender dock was at N17°29.602' W88°11.061' In Belize, we did the Rainforest Exploration/Cave Tubing excursion. I highly recommend this one! The tubing location is at N17°12.488' W88°39.010'. We were told that Carnival is building a dock and tourist village within the next two years. The dock would be located at around N17°29.265' W88°14.196'. Cozumel, Mexico - N20°28.691' W86°58.679' There are actually three docks in Cozumel. This was the southernmost dock. The other two are within a mile to the north. The Disney Ship docks at the northernmost dock. At this dock or the northernmost dock (the other one is a 5 minute walk from this one), you can rent a car and explore the island. We went to Playa Sol Beach, which is one of the most popular beaches. Progreso, Mexico - N21°20.502' W89°40.485' Progreso has one of the longest docks. It’s about 3-5 miles long. As you get off the ship, there is a small tourist/shopping village right there. We didn’t venture into the city, we only shopped and got back on the ship. If anyone else has coordinates of other Cruise Ship ports, please post them here.

It says Tadpole until you reach either 10 or 20 posts and then it changes to Geocacher. If you are a member, you can set it to whatever you want. JetSkier

You are indeed stuck with only 4 regions, however, you can up the size of those regions from 16K to 32K. Find the "mapsend.ini" file in the "Program Files\Magellan\Mapsend ..." folder and change the line that says Conv_Memory_Size=16384 to Conv_Memory_Size=32768. JetSkier

Go to "Print Preview" and on the toolbar select "Options". Turn on Waypoints/Routes. JetSkier

I have a MeriColor and use it on my dash with DirectRoute. I haven't had any trouble seeing the screen while driving other than my nearsightedness. I have to tilt my head back and look at the screen from UNDER my glasses so that it's not out of focus! Other than that, I haven't had any trouble with seeing it. Also, with my polarized prescription sunglasses, I don't have any problems reading the map screen.

Next time you think you're on cigarette power, go to the satellite screen to make sure you are. The battery meter should be replaced with "External Power". If you see the battery meter, then you are on battery power. I had this problem with my Meridian Marine. It turned out to be a bad soldered joint that prevented external power. Mine was covered under warranty. JetSkier

rc_racer, I don't have quite the power you have. Mine is the Kawasaki 900 STS. It's a 3 seater with 890cc. I can get it up to around 55 mph ... according to the speedometer on the Ski. I haven't tested the max speed on the GPS. I'll have to get out there and try that! Have fun with the JetSki and don't forget to ride safely! JetSkier