Night Stalker

This is nothing new and has been discussed in the past. There is a way to get around this, but it involves linking to something that then links to your site. Groundspeak has been cracking down on anythings that looks like it is commercial in the past year or so, so don't feel like the lone ranger here.

Maybe what he needs is a handheld unit that can navigate like a car unit. I use a Garmin 60CSX. This unit does not speak to you when giving driving directions. It will beep and at the point you glance at the unit to see what it wants you to do. It will give a 2nd audio signal when it is time to perform the move. I prefer this to the voice unit myself. He would have to buy the auto navigation software which runs about $115 (City Navigator). One added bonus is that the 60CSX holds satellite signal very well amongst tall buildings. Something that not all GPS units are able to do.

I believe that if you search you will find that you are not the first to have this problem. Unfortunately I don't remember seeing a solution other than reloading the firmware.

I use EasyGPS to copy the GPX files into my 60CX. I copy the same files into my Ipaq 3955 and read them with GPX view. All of this only takes a few minutes. I am sure that it is easier to do all this with one unit like the Oregon, but since I already have these units I don't see any reason to spend the additional money.

Please check team LRS response. If you are not navigating toward a waypoint then it will only act as a compass. Try putting in a waypoint and do a go to. I think you will find it will work correctly. You should also have the options you are looking for at that point. It seems to me that you also have the option of the speed you want it to transition from one view to the other.

Why not a handheld GPS that navigates. I use my 60CSX for geocaching and navigating. True it does not talk to me, but I set it up to give different beeps when it was close and when it was time to make my moves. It has worked very well. I have rented a number of cars with Magellan's "Always Lost", and much prefer the beeps to the voice commands it gives.

Once you get your updates take it outside, turn it on and leave it on for about 30 minutes under a clear sky. The first time it really needs some time to get its position, especially if you have WAAS turned on. Some users think that WAAS takes more power and runs down the batteries faster, but I have not fund this to be the case with my GPS. Go caching the first few times with an experienced cacher. Life is a lot easier if someone is there to show you the ropes and what to look for when caching.

I use easygps to load my caches. It doesn't do anything special. You can't modify your GPX files. All it does is load the files into your GPS. It is called EASY gps because it is just that.

I was one of those that just didn't get it. Renegade Knight had to drag me into the hobby kicking and screaming. Somewhere along the line things changed. Now I have over 1400 finds. My advice is to take them along on a few and maybe they will get the bug also. Watch out though. They will want their own GPS.

Assuming that you are using City Navigator, you can search for an instersection. If you know your street intersects with another street then you can put in both and it will take you to the intersection. You can't just search for a street because some streets travel for miles and miles and it won't know where on this street you really want to go. You can put in an address and it will take you there, but that is because you have chosen a point.

A lot of geocachers prefer the smaller unit, but personally I like the 60CSX. I use mine for auto routing as well as geocaching and find the larger unit a good fit for me.

I have National Geographics Topo for Idaho, but that means you have to print out the area you want to hike in. It also costs $100 per state so it can get a bit expensive.

If the Vista HCX is like my 60CX, you can set the distance at which different types of things are viewed. For instance I have my street names set to view at 500'. When geocaching I have my GPS set to 800' so I don't see to much clutter.

We call him a cache maggot, and have a very active one in our area. He has been destroying, moving, and actually exchanging caches in our area for several years. We have tried everything we can think of, but the best advice is to ignore him. He may not go away entirely, but he doesn't have as much fun if he is ingored.

I have cache in the Portland area with my older 60CS and found it very challenging to say the least. There are areas where the tree canopy is so thick that I could not get a decent signal. I can't imagine how difficult this would be using your cell phone.

Your expectations may be unrealistic. There are times when I set a waypoint and can return within a couple of feet. There are other times when doing so I won't get any closer that 10 to 20 feet. There are a lot of variables that can effect your accuracy. Position of the satelites you have locked onto. how close you are to something that can cause signel relfection, like rock hillside or a building. How you hold the GPS. Everything will effect your GPS. I am told that if we want to spend $10,000 or so we can have really accurate GPS's, but I don't think that is in my budget.

You can add all the map segments you want from all the maps as long as you don't exceed the size of your memory card. In order to swap between maps you need to be on the map page. Click Menu/ setup map. You need to scroll across the top to Map Setup-Information. Click on menu. From this menu you can hide whichever maps you do not want to see. City Navigator will always be on top so this is the one I need to hide when I see my topo maps. I don't know which has priority between you 24k maps and the topo maps. If you only have segment selected to that do not overlap you will not need to hide any maps.

We have a travelbug hotel in our area that is by appointment only. The cache will literally not be there for you to find unless you advise when you will be hunting it. This is because we have a cache maggot in our area the specializes in stealing caches at every opportunity. Many time he is the FTF on a cache. This was the only way the cache hider could guarantee the safety of the travelbugs.

I found a cache a few years ago that was a mystery cache. There were clues to the mystery in the cache description. To be sure you had solved the mystery correctly you had to find the cache. The answer was inside the lid of the ammo box. There were mystery novels in the cache. In order to make a trade you had to trade mysteries only. This did not pervent anyone finding the cache from logging just trading. I thought this was an awesome idea.

Finding out where to park can consume more time then the actual hunt for a cache. Even with turn by turn directions I sometimes have problems, like the time my GPS told me to park in a cemetary at a location within 30' of the cache. The problem was that was 30 horizontal feet. When I looked over the edge I found that the cache was a good 100 ft below. I probably should be better organized and use nation Geographics topo to plan ahead, but whats the fun in that. A lot of the time caching is a spur of the moment thing these days. I just circle until I figure out what looks like a likely spot. Sometimes I'm right more often not. Sure increases the difficutly level sometimes.

We did a library cache that was a multi. The first stop was a micro cache outside the museum with the dewey decimal location of the book and the author. 2nd stage was the book and log. Worked pretty well.

I know nothing about the Oregon or the Colorado other then what I have read on the threads. When you bring up a list of caches to find is this list ordered according to distance from your current location like the 60CSX?

I have city navigator and topo on my GPS. Neither of these pieces of software are necessary, they just make the hunt easier. City Navigator because it will auto route you close to the cache location. This can save gas and time in an area that you are not familiar with. Topo because it lets me know which side of the creek I should be hiking up, and in some cases if there is a 4X4 road that will get me closer.

I remember being stopped while doing some night caching in the forest during an event. All was cool once we explained to the officer what we were doing. He explained that he thought we were a bunch of college kids getting ready to have a kegger. I could see his point after looking at about 30 of us running around in the middle of the night with flashlights, but I am sure that after a second look he noticed that we were all to old and had to many miles on us for that. Not that we couldn't put down a few, but I'm pretty sure that college was way behind all of us.

Having a unit that floats is not always a good thing. I dropped my 60 into a river in Chicago last year. If it had floated like the 76 I could have waived goodbye to it as it floated into the Great Lakes. As it was I was able to spot it at the bottom of the river still working and retrieved it.