cummings66

One reason to do the multiple maps bit is so you can change the detail in one of them without a huge wait. Suppose for driving you had the entire US selected and you want to add one county in another state for geocaching on a vacation. Do you really want to spend the time to regenerate the entire US, then the one little topo map which by itself would take maybe 2 minutes from start to end? So, I have those reasons for separate maps. Modify one without modifying all of them, it's much faster.

The only saving grace to that is the found ones get marked as found. I wish there was some sort of manager for them, but I guess there's only so much space in the eeprom for the program to reside and the code might make it over the limit? It's doable if they'd just code it.

If I understand your complaint correctly you're saying that the GPS is inaccurate because it won't bring you back to the same spot each time? If so, that's a user perception issue. Suppose the reading you took was 10 off to the North, so you go back to it and now it's spot on so you're 10 feet south of your original spot. Or suppose it's now off 10 feet to the south and now you'll find you're off 20 feet because the first time it was 10 feet north of true. A GPS will not bring you to the same spot each time, it can get you close but that's about it. Also, don't assume because it says you're epe is 8 feet that this means you're accurate to 8 feet. It means the calculations that Garmin does should put you there a certain percentage of the time. To see how you're really doing you can look at the geometry of the sats when you take your readings and that will give you a clue as to how accurate it really is. All overhead, all to one side or another give different results regardless of what the EPE says.

You can minimize the impact of that by filtering using the exclude logs bit. Check the needs archived part and that gets rid of many of them. By doing that I've not had a repeat of the searching for an archived cache. I done that once in Arkansas. What a hassle and I put a lot of effort into it too.

If you have a current version of GSAK, you can "send to GPS" to a Colorado or Oregon and they will show as Geocaches. This feature was added a few months ago. That's what I did, but I think upon reflection that I had the Vista Cx as my GPS type and that's what went wrong. I know I had all waypoints though. But, I don't do it that way now. I do have the most recent version of GSAK and got to say geocaching without it would be so much more work. The Oregon 300 makes life easy, I love it.

I made a mistake the first day I had mine, I just used GSAK to transfer them to the GPS. Every single one of them was a waypoint, not what I wanted. Now I export the gpx file from GSAK and once I do that the hints, descriptions, child waypoints, everything is there. Just place the gpx file in the garmin directory of the unit and you'll have it all. But if you really want waypoints and none of the extra data then just send them to the gps.

What's wrong with hunting? I eat meat, it's got to come from somewhere. That said, you can get the topo's from the Internet and they're better quality than the Garmin ones. No need to wait.

The Oregon 300 can be had for under $300 as well. Dicks Sporting Goods has them in house for that, but not online.

How was it shipped? If he was stupid which it sounds like he may have used the postal service. Big no no and the post office has forms for fraud that can be filled out. If shipping was only a couple dollars I'd go for the deal just to get the money back quickly, but that's me.

Don't start out with Micro's, do normal caches first until you get the hang of it. I use a rule of thumb that says I will search a circle with a 50' diameter from where the gps says it's located. Remember, we don't know how old of one they had when they placed the cache, if it had a good lock or was just a quickie. The micro's I found the other day were all about 40' from where my gps said it was, and they were all by the same guy. So, be prepared to search a large area. However, a normal cache is much better for a search as they're big enough to see easily.

I didn't know Garmin sold it via download. However, my preferred method is DVD because those little SD Cards can't put the maps on the computer so you're stuck with what you got. You can't shrink or choose other areas in other words.

I would probably opt to pay the difference myself, but I have the Oregon 300 and like it quite a bit.

I had a tech from Gateway do that to a laptop I owned, said I needed new drivers. The thing came with Vista 64bit and they kept saying it was Vista 32 bit and kept trying to delete my 64 bit drivers and install 32 bit ones. Kept saying I know what I'm doing and I kept saying, you're trying to install the wrong drivers and that's why it won't load. In the end, it was worse than when then started so in frustration I did a clean reinstall of everything and promised myself to never call them again. No suggestions guaranteed to fix it, I just wanted to say i feel for you. Some techs aren't worth much IMO. It sounds like you have the right keys entered for both the mapsource software and the maps and gps, you might verify the gps id though just in case. Make sure it's not corrupted, you can see it from the utilities menu. You can retrieve your unlock code from the web as well, try a hard reset on the unit and then try to reload the maps.

I've been looking at ebay lately due to this, it's amazing how brazen some of those guys are. It's obvious they're selling pirated software, I mean, asking for your unit ID at checkout. Come on, you can smell that one a mile off. I saw several like that. Or, used software, like that will work. From what I can tell, I wouldn't touch any Garmin software on Ebay with a 10' pole. It's either more expensive than I can buy it for at my local Bass Pro shop or it's a scam.

To be honest, my Oregon 300 is easier to read in direct sunlight with no backlight than it is in the shade of the car's interior.

I went out yesterday and did 10 caches, found 9 of them and didn't try hard on the 10th because I was in shorts and the area was a forest of Poison Ivy. So... My Oregon did have the compass stick a couple times which as soon as I took a couple steps fixed itself. The compass action seemed a bit better than my Vista Cx in terms of how sensitive it was in movement. It also did something else odd, it lost lock and then would never reacquire lock. I turned it of and back on and it immediately relocked and never done that again. Still, the compass issue didn't bother me. I'm used to navigation like Orienteering and there you look at it once in a while to establish the line you're on and keep on trucking. That's how I use my GPS compass, establish a direction that I know is legit and look at the distance to it and then head that way. If it's bouncing around I'll triangulate with the compass as to where the cache is. One of my caches yesterday was like that, no matter where you stood the gps said it was 10 to 20 feet the other way, and the undergrowth was so large you'd need a machete to see anything there. So I triangulated what the compass said and it all kept pointing at one tree so that's where I went, and found it. I was happy with the performance, and at no time was it worse than my eTrex Vista Cx which my daughter used in concert with me.

I think the eTrex Vista H line might have what you're looking for then. Electronic compass, you will wonder how you lived without it on a GPS once you have it.

I took it to mean that he didn't see the lat/long in the logs from other users because he said that other caches he downloads won't show either. I think maybe the OP could clarify this point. IE is he trying to add the lat/long listed in the logs as a waypoint to navigate to? Or is it just not there at all?

Yep, it was but they were also back ordered. So I took that into consideration and got it locally. If you can wait the Dell way is cheaper, enough to buy a memory card with the difference. At any rate, there's no need to pay full retail for it.

That's not to say the Delorme unit isn't good, I've played with it in the store and it seems fine there. I prefer Garmins myself and the Oregon is pretty nice except backlight is almost a necessity in contrast to my other Garmin GPS's. Maps are cheaper with Delorme, unless you use the free maps you can get now, but they don't have routing last time I looked. So I bought City Navigator for usage. I downloaded the free topo stuff, it's more detailed than the Garmin software, but I have noticed that it's contour lines don't follow the edges of a lake like Garmins do. I'm going to walk a lake and compare the two and see what's up there. For Geocaching if you don't do routing to get there the free maps are very nice and as accurate as what I've seen out of Garmin. If they could do routing there would never be a need to buy a map again. But I'm serious, check a local Dicks if you got them, mine was $100 cheaper than gpsnow for example. I compared the prices online while in the store just to see what was going on.

How are you uploading the entry to your Oregon? My default settings in GSAK only send 5 log entries so it will not have it right now. But when I send all the log entries I see the new coordinates in the log. So, I download it in GPX format and send it to GSAK, then from there to the GPS.

I don't know if it's a typo or not, but I just bought an Oregon 300 from Dicks Sporting Goods in Columbia MO for somewhere around $275 I think, it's early and the grey cells aren't working right after the long night. Still, much cheaper than anywhere I've seen. When I got to the counter to buy it, it rang up as $399 and I said, that's not the price the tag out there says and he walks over, looks, comes back and says let me adjust the price because it says it's cheaper. If it's a misprint, it's only at the store because online it says it's $399. So, check the physical store. Of the two you mentioned, I like this one best.

I installed the beta, it was a very easy and fast upgrade compared to my eTrex Vista Cx. Took it out and after the fireworks display went out and found a micro. I'll play with it more later, but I think I'm in love with it so far. I'm used to having my iPaq and Gps with me, I think I'm going to get used to one device. So far so good.

I just picked up an Oregon 300 from Dicks Sporting Goods today, not sure why but they had it for $265 and I couldn't pass it up. Now I'm wondering, is the beta without a doubt better than the version it comes with, or are the improvements that nice?

When I lost my key I was able to retrieve it via he web. Then once when I lost it because my GPS died and they replaced it under warranty they sent me a new key. The only issue was that they said they'd include it with the GPS when I got it back but they forgot which meant a phone call and hold time. To be honest, it wasn't that long of a hold. Technical support will work it out for you so that you have the key you need, and like many companies it's during the hours I have to work which means a cell phone is very useful. IMO, be honest when dealing with them and you'll get good support. I've never really had a problem with their method of copy protection, just wish it could be shorter than the amount of numbers they use. I'm always searching for typo's when I key it in.