whitetailfan

Hi there, Spring has sprung and geocaching is back on my brain. When I started the sport last year I had to sign up and I used my handle from a smoked foods forum as it was the only thing I could think of at the time. I now realized that I only seem to cache with my family (wife and two young boys), I'd like our family to have a better name for logbooks that reflects US and not ME. Is there a way to change it, or do I have to create a new profile, I'd like our history to stick with us. Thanks for the advice in advance. John

I have a 400 and love it. I have introduced many people to our sport and all of my wifes family are getting GPSr's for Christmas. Incidentally, one of them lives in Scotland. Does anyone know if Magellan makes a European base map model? Or do you just have to have a north america basemap and purchase add-on software for the other side of the pond. The other issue would be that they would have to buy a AA battery model because our charges would not work, or at least purchase a charging converter, which adds to the cost. thanks for the info.

I bought the 400 wilderness pack in Canada. We have different topo software. It is a must have up here because the basemap sucks north of USA. I used the basemap on holidays this summer once we were south of the border and it was WAY more detailed. I think it is a great package because they give you the software for dirt cheap as a package, but try to buy it after the fact and its $100 up here anyway. Regarding the computer issues there are two things I would add. One as mentioned already, the cord has to run down the back or it wont work. The other thing I missed in the small print before buying, is that you have to be running minimum of WinXP. I was running 98 and the software would not load. Might have something to do with not recognizing the GPS as another drive as well. Good luck

Decided to register my exp400 tonight while working with some of the software. The warning they issue about 'this is going to curse you for life and affect all things that my come up in the next 100 years' warning about getting the number right freaked me out. I have 13 large numbers on one line then 4 small numbers on the next line with "Canada" then 3 more numbers How much of this is the serial number Thales is looking for? TFTHelp

edelsite, Sorry I just assumed it would be the same power system as my 400. I have a wall plug that "Y's" with the USB connection for the unit. I can power up alone, or plug in power and do my uploads with the USB. Is your cord USB only where the USB is not only your upload function but your power supply as well? I know you can draw power from a mouse(PS2 conn or something like that), I did not know the USB supplied power also. Weird they would have multiple systems for GPSr's within the same family.

One alternative you have is to purchase a power inverter. We were looking for a 12v cig lighter cord for our portable DVD player a few years back and no one had them. A friendly store rep mentioned that for the same price you pick up a small inverter and use the standard plug. Well after stepping back and scratching our heads about "why didn't WE think of that" we got one. Same price as the cig adapter, and now I run the DVD, or charge my cell phone, and I plan to use it for my explorist in 2 weeks for our holiday road trip. It can run all your 12v needs, not just one product at a time.

I love the google map view of the caches. It lets me know which ones I want to target. For my first download it was easy. My postal code yields only 40+ caches in my surrounding area. I can easily scan the lists and check off the boxes after I look at the google map. However I have two issues if someone can help. 1) Is there a way to cut the search circle around a postal/zip code? I can't find the caches I want with hundreds of hits when I get to close to a major centre, say Calgary. I don't want to see all those results. 2) I am headed camping this weekend, and there is a nice group of about 9 caches right close to the campground. My problem is the when I find them on the google map from "map it" function. There is no way I can see to just grab those caches. I have to go back out to the main page and then search from a postal code which might be a long way from the caches. On top of that I run into the problems in topic #1. Can your search from a coordinate set rather than by postal/zip code or province? That would get me the near caches first on page 1 and I could ignore all the other hits. Thanks in advance.

To get started in geocaching, like most other technology purchases, I sought out the best stuff I could afford because things keep getting better everyday. So I did my research and bought a eXpl400 winderness pack for Canada. The accessories were cheap for an extra $30. While I have learned the bare minimum to geocache at home, there is tons of other stuff this thing can do, but holy cow, do they offer a college course on this thing? Manual 120 pages long. Mapsend topo CD included that I'm starting to try and learn and getting no where. Firmware upgrade disk that does not seem to support the explorist, just everything else. Getting way too stressed out trying to get this all under my belt because we want to use it in the vehicle on holidays is two weeks

If you are almost there, then by all means keep going. Otherwise I do not believe what you have said here is entirely true. I know of no such law that requires an organization or group to incorporate and in fact very few groups I know of are incorporated. The advice you received was not necessarily wrong, just perhaps incomplete. If you want to be a charitable society with that ability to provide tax receipts then yes I would agree with incorporation. Otherwise there is no reason to incorporate. I work for a big 5 bank as a business acct manager. I open accts for unincorporated societies all the time. There's no way every little minor sports organiz or 4H club is going to be incorporated. You should be able to do a name search at most vehicle licencsing agents. Obtaining a trade name and incorporating are totally different issues. Best of luck to you...how far does your group cover now? I just started and live in Lethbridge. Hope to hear from you.

Thanks for the feedback. I am probably going to just create a better user name since I only have 2 caches to re-log. whitetailfan is fun for me as it's my 3 year handle on another forum. I think that I will be doing most caching as a family unit, so I'd like to sign off with a better description.

Went caching for the first time this past weekend with my wife and two kids. We went 2/3 for for the day. Anyway, I told my wife we needed to sign the logbook and she asked me what to sign. I said sign it 'the surname family'. Is this OK? It never dawned on me (until I read some other emotional threads on a different topic) that this might not be right, or that cache owners might cross reference logs to the "found its" on their cache page. Should I have signed it with my geocaching handle?

Went out for our first caches on fathers day. Man I love this game. I love to take the kids on "treasure hunts". I found two caches in the morning, which I logged as found and made some comments. We went after a third one in the evening. Got to ground zero and stomped around in the thorns and bushes for half an hour. Circled, re-calculated, got poked some more. Looked hard, just cannot find the cache. What do I do now? Try again and log nothing Post a DNF and try again later Put it on my watch list and post nothing E-mail the owner Some combination of above If I post a DNF and go back later and find it, do I adjust my post or create a new one? It's easy to figure out etiquette if you find something, but I need direction for no finds. Thanks for the help

Perhaps I'm too new to understand the question, and therefore what the answer is used for. If you intersect three circles, where all circles overlap the other two, you are left with an area, not a point.

I agree. If you have an idea of where you want to go, you first have to search for caches and then google map it. Not google map and then have caches plotted overtop. I am going to the interior of BC this summer, and thought it would be fun to cache while on holidays. What I did was search some key words to find the nearest town. With those results, find any old address and steal the postal/zip code for use in the search feature in geochaching.com. Once you get the results of your cache search, do as above to get to the google map version so you can see them in meaningful fashion. I have about 3 to look for in Golden BC when we overnight our first leg of the trip, and 2 more once we reach the destination. I think we're going to pop down into the States for the return trip, so I'll search for some there when we pick the final route.

Been reading lots, but I just can't figure out a definition of the following: 1)Micro-Spew 2)Pocket Caches Thanks for helping the n00b. It's going to make reading other threads way more meaningful. I really am trying

I'm sure I'll figure this out this weekend when I download my first few caches - figured that would be a great way to spend Father's day with the boys. Are all caches a single set of coordinates? (not referring to mulit's) or are some several waypoints leading you on a route to get to the cache? ie can you post the parking lot then the path to the cache?

Why is near a school a no-no?

Yes I see those lines on my explorist 400 too. Thanks for posting this, it makes me feel better based on the responses. I don't have any resolution issues, just the lines on the right side at start-up.

That's fine, I guessed it was Topo USA, but my question is if the Topo program is not current for explorist, I assumed that the Topo Canada would be equivalent to the Topo USA. I have read descriptions of Topo3D and it looks like it includes Canada. I will give this one a shot, but I'm leary. The disk for TopoCan lists compatibility with Meridian and Sportrac but no reference to eXplorist. If the topo program is incompatible for USA it makes sense to me it would be incompatible for Canada. I will look at the website for the info you found showing it is current for Canada. Thank you for taking that step for me.

I was going to post a whole new subject, but this response looked close to my issue. I just bought the Exp400 wilderness pack for Canada It comes with Mapsend Topo Canada vers1.00 I have been following the bouncing ball for install, and there is a firmware upgrade. From what I can tell, the firmware is for Sportrac, Meridian, but no files for the explorist Therefore - why did they include it in my package - just as a 'required CD to include with all Mapsend CD's' or did they package the wrong software bundle??? The Topo program asks you to check the minimum software version on the GPSr so I did and the version is less that the 5.1 on the CD, but perhaps that's not applicable with the explorist??? Very confused

Chris, I'm brand new and don't even have my 400 really working yet or know how to use it. What I have read though, is that Streets and Maps wont work on the eXplorist. It requires Directroute. Different firmware, I think its on Magellans FAQ's.

I'm very new, dont even have my first cache yet First had to buy a GPSr and then found out I needed to updgrade my operating system because Magellan eXplorist requires M2000 or better to run the software, so I'm still working on it. Anyway, I just bought a 400. Few reasons was best unit in black and white, could not justify $$$ for color for the 500. Plus it was bundled in a Wilderness pack, and the deal was too good to pass over for me. My second choice would have been the 210. Its pretty much the same capabilities, but AA batt vs LithIon and the memory is all on board the 210 vs SD card on the 400. That said, it holds 22MB compared to like 6MB on board for the rest. Can't remember the cost difference, but if you could swing the 210, I would take it over the 200 and 300. Consider if you wanted to pay the shelf price for the 200. Is the 210 inside $30 because Magellan is giving a rebate till July. I used my rebate to justify upgrading, maybe you could too. 400-600 have a $50 rebate, 300 and down $30.

Magellan links still not working. Thanks for trying, I felt bad after I posted last night I checked the disk again and found the itty bitty print that says Win2000 or later. My bad.

My boy wants to play with the emoticons.

Help please Put explorist disk into drive...it revs up...nothing Open my computer, no data or files in the CD drive I'm running Win98se I read somewhere that the mapsend directroute requires XP minimum, could this be the reason? Help - GPSr sucks if I dont know how to use it...expensive black and white map right now.