jabber1

Thanks for the suggestions. I know we don't have to deal with the license here in Canada which is nice. I doubt the US would monitor the use of a 2W radio but then again one never knows...big brother might be out there...George are you listening? Cheers

Given that many GPS users likely also use the portable two way radio's to communicate whilst in the field I figure this would be a good place for this question. I'm looking for feedback on the GMRS/FRS two way radio's. I'm hoping to find a top performer as far as range and quality. Motorola seem okay and I know that name but how about them and others...any opinions/observations would be great! Thanks!

I'm using a 1 gig Sandisk card in my Exp C without a problem...

Rebates are a complete crock! If they are going to give you a deal then why not give it up front? They are counting on the fact that people will buy based on the rebate but won't send it in...then there is added and more insulting level where some rebates get misprocessed or are sent back unnecessarily for some tiny deficiency again in the hopes that people will loose interest and won't carrying through with resubmission even though you took the step to get the info in. Should we be putting up with this cr@p and doing these BS submissions just to get a sale price? The more people that buy based on this BS the longer we will have to deal with it. Its time we send the companies a message...Give us the sale up front d@mn it and forget the games and marketing manipulations! I will not buy anything based on a rebate its just not worth the headache when there are sales out there that are legit. Rant over

If your trail is all over the place make sure you have track smoothing set to "on". I had a trail plot go all over the place while out on a hike. I then went back and read the manual and it said always leave track smoothing on, specially when going slow like with walking.

When you use the autoroute feature on Garmins do you have the ability to go in and change the route in select areas after its been generated. Perhaps to account for road closures, roads with less stops or congestion or other factors that are likely not part of the softwares calculations. How intuitive is it in actually picking the best route right off the bat? Just curious as to how automatic I could expect a feature like that to be. thanks

I'm expecting Lowrance will come out with autorouting shortly. Not that I expect people to count on that or anything but I am curious about something myself. For those in the know...what would be required to be updated if they came out with autorouting...would it just be a simple firmware update? Would you have to buy a new mapping package and a firmware update? Can you imagine the market share Lowrance would capture if they added that one feature that is make it or break it for many. Other than that feature Lowrance Expedition C kicks butt on anything else in the handheld market and at 50% less price. Expedition C = biggest and highest resolution screen available. At least equal reception to anything else, voice/audio capable, about equal size to Garmin 76 & 60's. I guess the other thing they could add would be the direct USB connectivity but I would also assume that won't be long either. Having to use the cardreader for maps is a mute point IMO. With a one gig card you can fit such a big area with full detail that unless your travelling cross country every weekend the cardreader will hardly ever come out nor will the 5 card issue rear its head.

If your close to the memory limit why not just dump a track or two onto the memory card and delete the file from the GPS units memory. With a good sized memory card there really is no limit from what I know of things...please correct me if I'm wrong.

I picked mine up for $214 at http://buyeretail.com but I see that source is up to $227...still pretty good. $240 seems to be the standard on the low end. I have the Expedition C and its great. The screen is awesome. Still have to pick up the laptop connection but I may wait a bit to see if lowrance comes out with with a USB connection. I would assume that'll be coming soon.

I have the Expedition C and I'm using a 1 gig card in mine without a problem. I suspect this could be a security issue. Are you using the Lowrance card reader and are you using a clean card to start with or one thats held non GPS related files. I started with a totally clean card making sure to use the lowrance card reader (I assume you know about this but just wanted to make sure seeing you don't mention it specifically in your note). I didn't have to format my card seperately so I'm a little leary that that may be your problem. I just registered it through the LEI cardreader and Mapcreate and I was good to go. I was under the impression that the mapcreate program formats the card in the way it wants it...for copyright reasons. Perhaps I'm way off though FYI I'm using a SanDisk brand SD card.

Except there is nothing described in sect. 2...I suspected an external was needed I'm just trying to cover all my bases.

Has any ihunt or Expedition owners been successful in playing back voice notes from the GPS without headphones. I briefly tried to play back a note that I made on my Expedition but it didn't play. The manual isn't really clear at all past making the voice note...nothing on playback. I'm not sure if I need to have the headphones to hear any notes or perhaps I may have made or to tried to play the note back incorrectly. There is a speaker built in for giving off the beeps etc so I figured it should be able to at least do a low quality playback without headphones. Thanks in advance, J