aranjit

The smallest time unit you can set it to is 1 sec. 8 hours a day is 28800 seconds per day. That would give you 40,5 days of logging. I could think of doing it for the fun of it, but I don't know if any other function of the GPSr would suffer for having to write to the card constantly. ProsperoDK/René One more question/clarification, these units are generally advertised as have a 10k point track log. Is this limit avoided when saving to the external card then?

I was thinking of doing some fast hiking, but I guess I better slow it down so I don't go over 600km/day. It sounds tough, but I think I should be able to keep my average mileage below that. From the math it seems like even recording a track point every second, 8 hours a day for 21 days I should be ok. Could I use the high frequency logger just for the fun of it, or does it record more than 2 track points a second? Thanks

I was just looking online as I was reading this thread and found this page which brought up a lot of questions. I think from that page the 30s comes about because 5 frames (each 6s long) are repeatedly sent. The first 3 being the clock/ephemeris data. The page seems to show some fundamental limits on acquisition time which the sirfIII chips seemt to have gotten around, or perhaps I am misunderstanding whats going on. From my understanding a cold start could take 30s no matter what gpsr is being used. If so how can sirfIII gpsr's talk of 1s ttff? I assume this means they already have the almanac and ephemeris data? Can a gpsr determine its location from the almanac data alone and thus determine position without needing to wait for the ephemeris data? For the tree cover example, from my understanding, if you have the ephemeris and the almanac then you would just need to get the time from the satellite (frame 1) which would take 6s. Since this is only repeated every 30s, in theory you might need to wait 30s to get an accurate fix, is that right? Thanks for the great info!

For the track data, I assume this is set for the unit with the track frequency to be the default? I am planning on taking one on a 3 week trip and was thinking about switching the track log to distance and just using the 128mb card that comes with the unit. Does that seem reasonable?

Actually with the Garmin $100 rebate the 76csx is quite a bit cheaper than the 60csx

There is an aftermarket cable you can purchase that will let you connect your unit to your PC. Its about $35 and probably cheaper than getting another GPSr.

Some tests on what em radiation one gpsr emitted.

I have a 300, from what I've been told its got the same receiver (as all the Explorists I think) and a compass vs the 210. It does not have native PC connectivity, a geocaching manager in the unit or the extra memory (it has 16meg). You can get an aftermarket cable but since its not official you won't get any support for it, so its only good for geocaching if you are willing to solve your own problems if you have any with the cable or you manually enter points. When I go caching it generally takes me pretty close to the cache (20ft or less) and always has reception (even if its not great). I haven't had any issues with the unit freezing. When you say its freezing is it just the compass that doesn't move or the device becomes completely nonresponsive?

I think the idea is correct, though I don't know about the math. I think Embra had it correct. If you say a gps coord is a point and your gpsr has 10 ft accuracy, then you can be up to ten feet away and your gpsr will still show the same coordinate. So the most you can be off in terms of distance using the same gpsr is by being on the opposite side of the circle, 20ft. If a GPS coordinate is a 10ft circle and the gpsr can only place the center of the circle within 10ft, then using the same logic as above you could be off by 40ft using the same gpsr.

GPS Accuracy thread From that thread people considered <30 ft (~10m) to be good. How did you come up with the coords of your cache? Some suggest marking the cache, walking away and coming back from a different direction, and averaging the coordinates after doing this a few times. When you say people always say its off, it seems like you have one cache where one person said this occurred, have there been others? As the previous poster mentioned, it might be the difference between your gpsr and their gpsr.

You don't have to sync necessarily, you could just copy the files to an SD card and insert that into your PPC. From what I can tell this is the only way. Its probably best to post in the geocaching.com forum about it and hopefully some admin will take a look. Request that wap.geocaching.com have a dl link as well while you are at it From a more technical point of view, when you click the icon the page reloads itself (as most aspx pages do) and then the code doesn't recognize the PPC requested a download (not sure why this is) so the page just does a normal reload rather than displaying the loc/gpx format.

Are you downloading them from your PPC or PC? I can't dl from my PPC correctly (I get aspx files), I have to dl from my PC and copy the files over. Aspx files are like PHP files, they cotain code which will generate the needed HTML. For some reason the server is sending the HTML instead of the XML when you view from a PPC. I think its because they are expecting PDA owners to be hitting wap.geocaching.com even though it has no dl capabilities.

Is the receiver in the 210 the same as what is in the Magellan 300 or is it newer?

Ignore my last post, apparently I haven't been keeping up on NiMH chargers. Apparently your charger will work with any rechargeable. From Amazon: "Whether capturing Baby's first steps on film, or taking your portable CD player for a run, it's easy to be prepared when you own this 15-minute charger by Energizer. Ideal for digital cameras, portable audio devices, handheld games and other high-drain devices, this unit charges any 4 AA or 4 AAA NiMH batteries in only 15-minutes. Includes 4 AA batteries. Imported."

Its been sold

Have you checked eBay? It looks like an Etrex would go for at least $50 there if you are really lucky. For your price you would have to look at an older unit IMO.

Online ad shows Etrex Legend for $129, Forerunner 101 for $86

There is also an aftermarket cable you can use to connect explorist 100/200/300 to the computer explorist 100/200/300 cable

I got a 300 and have been pretty happy with it so far. I was wondering is the chipset in the 300 and the 210 the same? Basically I want to get the unit with the best reception. I would like to take it on a plane and make sure I don't lose signal while traveling. Also when people talk of 10 satellites, is this a best case condition? I have gotten 10 satellites in an open field, but generally only have 4-5 under tree cover.

When people discuss the new model Magellans, I assume they are talking of the 100/200/210/300 series? I have a 300 and was wondering how likely I would get reception on an airplane. In terms of Sirf Star III, does the x mean it has the chip set for sure? The new Garmin Venture Cx doesn't appear to use this chipset from what I can tell. Thanks

Yes, those batteries have circuitry which controls how fast they charge as opposed to the charger controlling this. This way they can charge faster without damaging the battery. If you put in regular NiMH batteries the charger will charge them at a normal speed. In terms of chargers, the best I have seen is the Lacrosse BC-900. It has discharge/charge cycles, battery conditioning (cycle 20 times), variable charging rate, charging circuitry for each battery and LCD's to test how much charge is in a battery.

Thats a pretty good deal Just keep in mind Radioshack will likely charge tax. If you feel its too much give me your best offer.

Thanks for the correction, I have seen reviews of the 500 where they show the compass screen, and wondered why the 500 wasn't advertised as having a compass. So I didn't quite catch the difference myself, I've updated my description.

I have a new unopened Explorist 500 I am selling. The box is unopened but I don't want store credit so I am selling it for $240 shipped. Paypal is preferred. Most likely you know the features of the product, but it is color, has a motion based compass (i.e. requires you to be moving), area/perimeter calculation, and a geocache manager built into the GPS. The box also comes with the introductory Mapsend DVD.

I just got a 500, but decided I wanted something with batteries since I am taking a long trip. I will sell it for $240 shipped. Its new, I haven't opened it, but I don't have the receipt and don't want store credit.