theslowskys

I use cachemate and it gives you everything in the cache description listing pretty much but... I do not see a field in the description or in the regular geocaching listings descriptions on www.geogache.com for "hide and seek a cache" that tells you the cache size. If you do a search with "hide and seek a cache" and get a bunch of caches listed, it shows on the "list" page it's relative size under the (D/T) Difficulty and terain information with a little graphic. the further to the right it is the bigger it is. It also shows it on http://www.geocaching.com/seek/gmnearest.aspx But if you look at the description which tells you everything about the cache it does not list the size as a field. At least I can not find it. Where is it? Sometimes the owner lists it out in the description text but not normally. Am I missing something? I think that the size is an important field to log. I like to go for the medium to larger ones and not the micros as I am just getting started and the icros are much harder to find. I use the pocket queries so I would like it to be a well known field that gets captured when you download a couple hundred of the caches. Is there a way to find the size in the description? Why isn't it part of the Difficulty/Terain/ Size rating would be nice to have in there just like it is on the list page. I know you can do your inital search by cache saize in the pocket queries but what about when you did not do that and you want to find it later. Maybe you said give me the small medium and large but not micro. How do you tell later what size it is? Is there a way to get that?

I used up 595 MB of my 1 GB card today just loading NA V8 and Topo V7 for Washington, Oregon, CA, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, part of southern New Mexico, most of Texas and Louisiana. It took a long time to calculate and index (35 minutes or so) and then about 60 minutes do transfer all of it. That was through the USB port. So I decided to just buy a couple more 1 GB cards. Then I can have them loaded with about 1/3 of the US each should I ever need more than what is in the one I typically use around here. Make sure you get the TRANS FLASH SCAN DISK as some of the other one that are NOT labled TRANS FLASH do not work with loks of data and go bad according to some other posts.

I had similar issues with NA V8 install today. It timed out doing the unlock and said "Retry max limit reached for servlet helper [OK]" So it did not appear to unlock it. So I tried to go back and did it again and then it said: "You have entered a coupon code that has already been consumed. Please check....." Well that sucked. So I went back in with the unlock manager that is in the software during the install, the same one that it failed with and did the "Add code option" but then selected "View my codes" and it said I had them. Then went back to the menu with "Add Code" and Then I did the "backup my codes" to disk and set up a file for them Then I did "restore all my codes" and it seemed to work. [Those names may be a bit differnet but that was the function of them.] So then I tried the software Mapsource and it worked and let me use the NorthAmerican CD and see stuff just fine. If you decide to uninstall (as required by your license) and then install NA V8 on a different computer or laptop you can install the software and then use the restore my codes option to make it work on the new computer when the unlock manager comes up. It will restore them from the web. Remember you are only allowed one computer at a time by your NA V8 license.

I used the POI loader to load some POIs to the SD card. How can I delete them??? The POI loader only loads them, does not change or delete them. There does not seem to be a way to manage the POIs on the SD card. Along the same lines the currently active track can be loaded/stored to the SD card. What can you do with it after that? There is not a way to display it on the screen after it is stored. There is not way to coopy other tracks to the SD card. How do you get it copied from the SD card to the Mapsource software? How can you load other tracks from the Mapsource software into the SD card? You can't as far as I can tell.

I would like my 60csx a lot more if it did not wander so much when I stand still. Also it really neads some SD card management. I think the SD card should be able to hold the tracks It should be able to hold waypoints and routes too. It needs to have the ability to store waypoints and tracks in the SD card and to pull waypoints and tracks from the SD card at will. Same with routes. Currently the SD card stores maps only by default. And if you run beta software you can store your active track in the SD card. You can not do anything with it at that point. THere is no way to bring it back in or reference it. I am not even sure how to read it from the garmin software once it is stored on the SD card? You can use a an optional POI loader to load POI in the SD card. But there is no way to delete the same POI from the SD card. Once they are there I guess you are stuck with them as the Garmin POI Loader will not delete them or remove them it just loads them. THe Garmin Mapsource software does not use POIs so it will not read them from the card of delete them either or write them out there. There just seems to be a real lack of thought on the part of Garmin when it comes to the SD card. I am using a 1 GB SD card and there is lots of room but what can I do with it? Just store maps (and POIs that I can not delete). I am hoping they decide to let you copy tracks and waypoints and routes in and out of the SD to the 60csx or just be able to use the tracks (display them) on the 60csx at will from the SD card. I would like to be able to store tracks on the SD for trails and load them to make them active while on a trail in the woods so I know where I am going on the trail. right now you can only load 20 tracks. Very limiting. especially when you have 1GB or less free memory just waiting to be used for something other than Map data. THe Topo maps do not include trails in local California Parks. So I like to make trails using tracks. But you can only have 20! So things it needs real bad: Flexible SD card management, copy in and out of it to make it possible to store additional tracks, waypoints, poi, Maps on the SD and be able to copy them into active memory and use them or just reference them on the SD card. Right now it just stores maps and the undeletable POIs from the POI loader. More accurate, less wandering COMPASS when you get within 100 feet of a cache. Would be nice if the NIHM bateries were able to be Charged IN the unit. It is a real pain to have to remove the carrying case, remove the back take the batteries out, charge them and put it all back together again. It should be rechargeable in the unit like a CELL phone, with the option of quick replacement of a battery while on a long hike. Also it would have been nice if the SD card was plugable, be able to incert and remove easily. Currrently you have to remove the cover, remove the batteries, flip it up and slide it out. I hate that it is under the batterys. I get 8 to 10 hours of use not the 20 advertized. In Summary It is an OK unit. I am disapointed in the accuracy when not standing in a clear field. In the woods it is good for hiking but not for finding a geocache. It needs SD management software in the unit. It could use a slightly bigger screen. Hoping that some of this can be/will be fixed in software. (noit the screen size though).

Thank you Searching_ut I will have to try it in a better location as well and see what it does. I was watching it here a a bit more after that test and a couple times it rang an alarm that satillite reception was poor and then it really went out of bounds. But the above test did not loose satillites but like you said they I sat not getting some of them. I live on the side of a hill so stuff to the EAST is hard to get. We also live in the redwoods so there is a lot of clutter. Thanks again.

Here is an example of how the Garmin 60csx "walks" when it is standing still. This image is from a 30 minute stand still, It was sitting upright on my desk. http://home.comcast.net/~svwilbur/wandering_271.bmp Here are the Satellite http://home.comcast.net/~svwilbur/3d_sat_kindof.bmp Is this normal ? I expected it to stay in a location and move maybe 10 to 15 feet or so not hundreds of feet. Or am I reading it incorectly?

Just a couple alternatives if you are interested. I bought a 60csx. It came with a 64MB SD card. I purchased a 1GB SD card of ebay so i put the 64GB in my old unused Palm M130! I became a Premium member at www.geocaching.com for $30 That gives you the ability for pocket quieries. http://www.geocaching.com/pocket/ You can generate a query and suck down 500 caches with all the descriptions , hint and secify 4 logs or more and it puts it into a GPX or LOC file. I use GPX. Then you can load GPX into Mapsource and see all your caches and download to your unit from there. But it does not get all the detail in the logs and descriptions and stuff as mapsource cuts it out. For the desctiptions and logs and hints and all the rest of the listing I use the Palm M130. I bought for $8 the tool Cachemate http://www.smittyware.com/palm/cachemate/ It has a sample free version too that limits the caches in your DB file to 10 but if you load it you will see what it does. I like it. It tracks your finds and gives you all the data that is in the postings on www.geochcing.com. If you decide to get the full version it is just a key you add to the trail version and it then can generate and see the whole database. To get the data into the palm you just have to run the windows PC tool from Cachemate that comes with Cachemate called Convert. It sucks in your GPX file you got from the pocket query and spits it out into your Palms input queue so that when you do your next HOTSYNC it gets loaded into the Palm. Then start your Palm and double click on Cachemate program that you loaded earlier and it senses the new update, scans it and you can start looking at the caches. It is all indexed and sortable and works great. This all seemed to be relatively easy for me and well worth the $8 and the $30. It just worked. No manual entering of data or hard tools to switch between to force stuff to work. Cachemate lets you search by nearest cache to your current waypoint, name or waypoint and the like. Pretty intuitive. I Loaded over 1200 caches in my 12 mile radious with all the data along with all my other applications and games on the 64MB card and still have 45 MB free in it. Now I just need time to go hunt for caches! I do not work for Cachemate I just liked the product.

I asked GPScity about my City Navigator v8 order from May 21 which at the time said it was expected on May 31 or June 1. Then on June 7th it said they expected it by June 12th. Now the webpage says Product Availability DUE 23 JUN. http://www.gpscity.com/item-garmin-mapsour...-v8/cnusav8.htm But the email from GPScity that I got yesterday when I asked about my back order said: ------------ Thank you for your email. This CD in your order has not yet been released to us from Garmin yet as it is a brand new version of their City Navigator. We are expecting this to arrive hopefully in about a week. Best Regards, GPSCITY.COM, YOUR GLOBAL GPS HEADQUARTERS! PHONE: 702.990.5600 / FAX: 702.990.5603 Website: http://www.gpscity.com (JBT) ------------- So about a week would be 15th to 23rd? I think we will get it when they get it and they have no idea really. Also there may be a backlog of orders at GPScity. So if you order now it might not ship till Jully or so if they get some this month as they may have orders for 1000 or so by now and may be getting less than that. Who knows. I would have bought a V7 one but the Garmin website says that they do NOT do upgrade of your software unless you have not used the lock codes yet and only then if you purchased it after the next release was released. http://www.garmin.com/unlock/update.jsp Am I entitled to a free update? If you purchased a locked MapSource product ON or AFTER the release date of an update, you are entitled to an unlock on the newer version of that product for free. Please see details. http://www.garmin.com/support/faqs/faq.jsp...ography〈=en in there it say's: FREE UPDATES: If you ORIGINALLY & NEWLY unlocked a NEW locked MapSource CD-ROM/DVD-ROM product ON or AFTER the release date of an update for that same product, you are eligible to unlock on that specific update what you unlocked on the original for no charge. In other words, you can update to the latest data for free! You must order a free Update Disk for that particular MapSource product. Do that on the Garmin website, starting at: MapSource Updates ----- So to me that says since the V8 is not yet released and does not have a posted release date. If you order v7 or install it / unlock it before the official v8 release date (like now) and the release date ends up being July 15th then you have to buy it again to get V8. Or buy the update which is like $75 if you were updating to v7. We do not know what it is for v8 as it is not posted and not released. From the same web page: ----- CHARGED UPDATES: Your update options are determined by what you have previously unlocked and when. If you are a returning customer who previously purchased a MapSource CD-ROM/DVD-ROM product you may purchase an update if one is available to you. Your update options are determined based on what you've previously unlocked. A new unlock code must be purchased to access the updated data. ----- So I would be VERY CAREFUL about buying V7 and using it and thinking that you can get a free upgrade when v8 comes out since that is **NOT** what Garmin has posted on their website. You better get it in writting from Garmin or be prepared to pay $75+ for the v8 update. Cheers.

New Zealand, Thanks a bunch for the detailed reply. The issue with the POI Loader is most other applications including the GARMON mapsource waypoint manager does not even support the POI loader. At least from what I can tell, you just point the POI loader at a GPX file and it sucks stuff in. I pointed it at a directory that had a few files in it and 10 minutes later it said it imported 11,000+ POI. I wiss I new what they were from! How can I list them or delete them now? How do you do maintenance on them? MapSource should be able to view them on the map and let you manipulate them but I do not see that ability anywhere. Totally confused what to do with this utility. Well I did do some more testing with the 60csx the other day. I tried turning WAAS of and auto calibration off and went over a lot of the ground in a car and on foot that I did on a previous outing. THe track that it generated was pretty bad. Much worse than with WAAS and it also seemed to loose satilites of something as parts of the track were kind of inverted on some corners. So for me it definately needs the WAAS to be any good at all. Today I went to a park that had some open area and lots of trees still and it got inconsistent guidance as to where a cache was. First it said 90 feet north then 23 feet west then 120 feet north west then 6 feet from where I was and all of those were within 10 feet of one spot. Kind of hard to tell were to go with that. Also the pointer compass was off when I started so I had to recalibrate it by going in circles 2 times. I feel like such a ditz when I have to do that in public! Then I went to an open field with 9 satilites at full bar. It took me to within 5 to 6 feet of the scalled Benchmark every time. I could move 1 foot off and it would go from 0 to 1 or 2 feet. Very accurate. But I had to walk a little bit some of the time or it would start to wander a bit. It does not like to just stand still and stay with a constant reading. It will just slowly drift off. THen if you walk 5 or 10 feet and come back around it is OK for 5 to 10 seconds or so. I then tried to make a waypoint and walk away and return by following the pointer and watching the feet away reduce to 0. That worked OK but would never come back to the exact same spot. Even if I averaged it for 40 samples it was not perfect. But it would come within 6 feet of it pretty much each time. Just a different 6 foot location each time. But not bad. But like aI said it was an open field with no trees for hundreds of yards in each direction and it had 9 to 10 full bars. So I would expect it do be good there. I have also had 2 times were the map page just froze on the last location. So by this I mean I got to a waypoint and then did waypoint goto a different one. And put it on the map page. THen I drive to the new location 4 miiles away and look at it and it is still at the old location! If I flip the screen with PAGE and QUIT so it goes back to map again, it then shows the correct location. I do not get why it does that. It did not say that it lost satilite signal or anything. It just froze. Well maybe some new firmware updates will help if they ever post anymore. Thanks everyone. Please post if you find out a way to make the 60csx work better.

Intermountain Angler, I see most all of the same problems that TracknQ is complaining about with my Garmin 60csx. I do not see how people can use this to pin point geocaches. It wanders all over the place. I am on 2.70 firmware. You stand still, near where you think a cache might be and it walks away from you up to 100 feet or so with 5 satellites at almost full bars. But I have no clue what I am doing. It is only the 3rd day with a GPSr, total newbie very little experience using this technology. On day one with mine in a wide open field I could get where it "zeroed in" on a scaled benchmark and it was 6 feet west of where I was standing. Then I let it average for 100 measurements and it said the benchmark should be 67 feet north west of it. This was with older software not 2.70 This was also with WAAS enabled. Maybe I need to try turning it off? I need to retest it with 2.70 an see how it does against the benchmark with and without WAAS. It really bugs me that I have a 1GB card to hold stuff and all it can hold is maps and not waypoints or tracks or routes. I thought you would be able to at least store them on the card. Beibg limited to 20 tracks and 50 routes is hard. Even 1000 waypoints is easy to overshoot if you load it with geocaches. I have over 1000 in my 12 mile radius. But lets forget about those limitations for right now. I need to learn how to use this to find things. So I was wondering. What is your secret? Do you hold yours upright (as someone else said you should) or do you hold it level? The compas finder says you have to "hold level" or it does not work at all. But do you hold it up and just read the distance from the waypoint or some other technique? Do you walk in circles around the area to home in, or pace a square grid or just line up and go to it from 100 feet out? How fast or slow do you walk when trying to find something? How should you use a GPSr to find a geocache? Currently I have had better luck just printing out a map of the satelite photo or topo with the geocache location on it from ExpertGPS. That seems as accurate or better than using the GPSr. I would guess some of my issues, other than not knowing what I should expect, is that I live in the woods with 200 foot redwood trees so clear skys are a rarity. I am usually under tree cover when I hike or go cache hunting. But even then it still shows pretty good satellite reception where it has 4 or so and says it is a 3D signal. So what are some "best practices" for using a Garmin 60csx? Thanks in advance for your help. I want to learn how to use this. I read through the manuals and lots of foruim complaints about it but I am still hoping to learn to use it.

I see you are trying to figure out the altitude changes. I am not so worried about it since right now I just want to get the directional movement to slow down. It seems to walk around a bunch when I and stopped. I am new to this GPSr stuff. Only had it 3 days. I bought a 60csx hoping the up to 3 meter accuracy would mean I would get close to that. When I geocache and look for a cache I get within 20 to 70 feet of it. THat is about all it can do with 5 satellites or more locked in. If a stay in one spot it will say the cache is moving from 20 to 120 feet away and back. Even in a very open field when I get 8 or so locked in, It will still walk away on me up to 100 feet or so. If I leave it sitting in my house it will only have 3 satellites and it jumps from 20 feet away to 210 feet away. usually in a somewhat north to south path. Also I have to reset my altitude to 729 every day for my house. It jumps around. On the main satellites screen I just now noticed that it says LOCATION +- 39, 43, 89 feet. # readings within 10 seconds. If I leave it still on the table it seems to settle in at 29 to 44 feet + or -. Is this normal? I was hopping to get within 10 or 20 feet not an 80 foot circle. The constant "walking" of this is driving me nuts. I am running the 2.70 version of the software. Also the pointer to the waypoint on the COMPAS page just jumps all over when you get within 20 feet or so, I guess since it walks so much. I thought the 2.70 was suppose to cut the walking down? Any help anyone? AM I just expecting too much from it?