TeamCypherX

Turns out there was some overlap. Apparently I had metroguide north America on there too. I disabled that and my topo maps just showed up. Wish I would have know that earlier though when I was snowshoeing. I was 2 miles into the woods and came down with the flu. I had to hike the 2 miles back out in the power. Now that I have my maps back, I saw that at one point I was 65 feet from a service road that is plowed. If THAT doesn't make me feel like a loser I don't know what will ;-) Thanks! Robert

I'm finally out to solicit some advice. I have a GPSMAP 60CSx, and I want to put maps on it from a couple different Garmin programs. I want to have TOPO maps of my area, which I can upload from TOPO East. I also want to have European maps on it from Metroguide Europe v9 The only problem is that when I select the maps all at once, the TOPO maps get left out. I just can't seem to get them to show up. The european maps show up fine, but thats about it. Do I have to upload the maps from one program, and then go back and upload them from the other, or can I just select them all at once? It's kind of frustrating, but I need to have them all on my GPS for next week when I go on vacation in Europe. Thanks for the advice, Robert

I think I'm going to talk to a couple other cachers in the area and see about working with them and then taking the bugs over this winter. Great ideas though. I'll keep them in mind.

Hey Everyone, I'm going to be traveling in Germany, Austria and Poland over spring break and I was thinking about setting up a "bug drop" cache for people to drop things in that would like to visit Europe. I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions on how to go about it. How early should I put it out (I leave the end of February) and should I make my own cache or just collect bugs that are in others. Any input would be great. Thanks, Robert

I got bit by a small small Gartner snake here in Michigan and I had my cache removed by some angry raccoons. I didn't know I was putting things in their home until I went at night to check on it and saw many angry eyes looking at me as I stuck the cache back in the tree. If I ever encountered baby raccoons I'd be afraid mom would come and eat me for dinner! Mothers (in any mammal) are always P.O'd when you mess with their little ones. That said, you aren't going to get anywhere avoiding dark holes [while caching of course]

I had a press-thru case for my 60C and I hated it. When I upgraded to my 60Csx, I just got a screen protector and installed a clip on my backpack so I didn't have to hold it all the time. Works great for me!

That's the Zodiac killer's cipher. Not that hard once you look on the net and find the key to solving it. Point taken though. Should they not tell you that was what you were looking for you'd be SOL for sure!

I live in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, so there are probably 1,000 trees for every person living around here. I'm not one to be super-environmentally friendly ALL the time, but if I see some trash along the trail or things floating in the river I'll pull out a CITO bag. One of my caches got flamed for being in a high erosion area. The whole island it is on is a high erosion area and if you stick to the paths it's not a problem. The problem comes into play when you take the direct route straight up the slope instead of the trail around it. The deer in the area that run up and down the hill and the waves of Lake Superior (which are incredibly powerful year-round) are doing far more damage than the couple dozen geocachers that have found the caches in the area. As far as trampled grass, broken tree limbs and that kind of thing - what difference does it really make. I can see if the cache is on private property that you wouldn't want your entire yard torn up, your prized apple tree limbs busted and your sifted top soil packed down like concrete. The trees however can recover quite well. If you snap off a couple dead branches walking by (healthy ones bend, the dead ones break off) the tree directs the nutrients elsewhere. The moose in my area will ram an entire tree over to get it out of the way. I have yet to see a geocacher headbutting a tree until it falls over. As long as you try to tead lightly, I don't think the environmental impact will be a problem.

There are a few of those in my area. They aren't really even that "hard" but they are just small caches placed completely randomly in the woods. I'm all for puzzle caches or ones that require long walks or carrying heavy things for long distances IF they prove to be worth the time in the end. I have one cache that many would simply ignore, but it takes you past many really nice places as you work through the stages. I was actually searching for a cache last night (a micro). My GPS told me it was either in a pile of tree stumps and old concrete blocks that have been bulldozed into a huge heap, next to the pile in the chest-high raspberry bushes and plants with thorns the size of the micro itself OR behind the pile in a swamp. I gave it a quick once-over, looked around to confirm there was no scenic view or any real reason to be there, and took off to find another cache. That said, I am not a huge fan of Micros to begin with, although the urban micros I do enjoy. I flat out dislike nanos but I will give them 5 minutes of my time as long as they are not in the middle of the woods and do not require special tools. The reason I dislike them so much is that they are too small to even include a proper logbook. Maybe they will cache on someday when GPS is accurate down to the sub-meter, but until then they prove to be more of an annoyance in my area where tree cover is in places too heavy to get a good signal, even on my 60CSx.

I've been watched a few times, usually walking in or out of the woods when "normal" people would just walk along the path. Living in Upper Peninsula of MI, I'd assume they just thought I was looking for a tree to water. There was one time when I was trying to be a FTF in the middle of the night on Campus. Two public saftey officers pulled up, but instead of looking for me, they sat around the cachemobile looking at all the pretty lights and color screens inside. I guess they were jealous that their university-issused Crown Vic wasn't decked out with fancy electronics. I also had one experience when a person was hanging out along a trail nearly on top of a cache that I had pulled to refill and repair. I think they must have seen me put it back because I got a message a couple days later that it was severly damaged. My best story is when I ran into another cacher at a cache. He had a dog and was just pretending to take a hike with the dog. I was "talking" on my phone while taking pictures of trees with a conservation officer-type vest and pants on. I think we both just sat around the cache site for 15 minutes before I wandered close enough to get the garmin "arriving at location" beep and then he asked if I was geocaching. We got a good laugh out of that one.

I fell off my bike about two weeks back with my 60Csx attached to the handlebar mount I got for it. Luckily for me though the thing never came off. I got a small scuff on the antenna (more discolored than anything) and a bloody arm, leg and side but my GPS is fine. I've had a couple run-ins when I dropped it on the pavement and it did a slide but the screen protector took the beating in both cases. I'd try to send it back to garmin under warranty and see what they say. They have excellent customer service and can probably help you far better than anyone else.

Almost the same thing happened to me this weekend. We had our annual event on Saturday and Friday night I went and made sure my multi in the area was in good condition and full of swag. When I arrived Satuday, another cacher handed me a mangled ammo can (top snapped off, body smashed in with a boot, contents missing and thrown in woods). They walked with me to the next stage since I no longer had the coordinates to give them. Same thing - completely smashed. All and all I lost 4 ammo boxes :-( While I'd like to think it was just someone who didn't know what it was, I'm convinced someone had either foudn it in the past or was on a mission to ruin my cache. None of the other ones in the area were destroyed and a couple stages of mine were just NOT anywhere close to a trail. Some people just have no honor. Robert

No pictures from my adventure getting stuck trying to find Whitefish Falls Cache. I highly recommend not trying to seek a cache in a blizzard. I ended up getting my Tahoe buried in the snow and had to snowshoe about 40 minutes until I found someone with a truck to pull me out. Cell phone service in the UP can be quite unreliable at times Still haven't been back to find the cache either. Maybe I'll wait until this winter and try it again!

I know I'm overreacting and that there is constructive criticism in the posts, but I just dislike how someone can ignore the description of the cache and what it's trying to achieve and blast the location. For the "Academic Mall" example, the grouping of pines referenced WOULD make a better hiding spot, but they are not in as visible of a location as the spot I chose. You could hide in the trees all day and no one would notice you. Better hiding spot yes, but not what I was trying to achieve. I already have a much better, harder cache in a more difficult location out there and I wanted to make a quick one that can be done any time of the year by anyone. The second thing that bugs me is how someone whom I've never met in person will post about how I should take lessons from another cacher (and encrypt the entry so I can't "read" it to boot). Sounds very immature and disrespectful to me. The always have the choice of adding my caches to their ignore list.

I'm just taking a brief survey to see if anyone has ever had a problem with another cacher. I live in a small college town and up until recently everything has been going fine, but now that the students are starting to come back I am starting to have a problem. We have a new cacher in town that seems to love to go out of his way to criticise my three caches. He made a good point about the first one being in a high-erosion area (which it is, but everywhere is an erosion area on the shore of Lake Superior) but the second and third were almost to the point of being rude. The best example I have is one I placed smack dab in the middle of campus. I rated it as a 1/1 and said it will only be available at night when the students are not walking by. He found it and said that it was "too easy" and that he would have placed it elsewhere and would have made a better looking (micro) container. Anyone have any suggestions. For now I'm just going to ignore it and go about caching. Can't let one person ruin the game. Thanks, Robert

Interesting video. While I agree that the DAGR is a better suited GPS for the combat zone, with its accuracy unaffected by Selective Availibility and its resistance to electronic jamming, their availibility to the average airman/solider/sailor/marine is extremely limited. I would rather have a GPS that "may" be affected by electronic jamming then to have nothing at all. In addition, knowing that my commercial GPS is limited by SA I certainly would not use it to call in artillery on a position, especially where the risk of collateral damage exists. The video provided a couple good arguments - especially regarding the Rhino, but there were a few things against it. It kept saying that the DAGR was better, but only if it was up to date and had the right key, and only if you are lucky enough to have one. Sure, civilian GPSr's can be jammed, but the enemy is about as likely to have jamming equipment on hand as you are to have a fully keyed, up-to-date military GPSr to counter it. I wouldn't use my garmin to call in an airstrike, but if I had to mark a position or find my way out of the desert should I get lost, or call someone to come pick me up if I were shot down, I'd be happier than hell to have ANY kind of GPS.

I'd say a legend would be fine. They get great battery life and can run on AA's. Mapping would be nice but I don't believe Garmin has a Mapsource BFE edition, so it may/may not be useful to have mapping. The Legend also gets better battery life than the 60CSx and such and is lighter. It's also less expensive. Should it be run over by a Humvee or tank or something you're only out half the price of a 60Csx and it can be easily replaced. From what I'd gather you'd need a GPSr for on military duty would just be to mark places and a cheap legend would do that just fine. If you would like to go color with mapping, look into a Legend Cx. Best of both worlds. I love my 60Csx but I just don't think it's quite as military-friendly as the old reliable legend series.

GPS Satellites are like most other communications satellites. They have solar arrays (kind of like wings) that adjust to where the light is. I also imagine they carry an onboard battery should they be left in the dark for an extended period of time.

I don't think its a dead issue. It's just going to take them so long to get the financing done that it will be a good 10 years before it's actually a rival to GPS. By that time the market will decide which system it wants to work with. If Galileo can deliver what it promises, I think it will be a great rival. If it turns out to be like GLONAS (The Russian System), GPS will win.

I've been quite impressed with my 60CSx with the Sirf Star III. I don't think any of the features will be worth the upgrade for me. MAYBE the Galileo support, but I have a good 5 years to save up before that is up and running.

I've been using JetPhoto. It does the job. I didn't want to spend the money but the only programs that I found did a decent job were JetPhoto and RoboGEO and they both cost money. I shoot RAW+JPG on my Nikon so I just throw the jpg's into jetphoto and geocode them and then if I want better looking pictures I have a second copy to work with. At least I know where it was I took the shots.

Sold

[Edit]. The transaction on the other site fell through. $300 shipped for the Quest and Garmin roofmount antenna. The GPS is in excellent condition and is ready to get some use this summer!

How about $300 shipped. Someone has to have a use for a very nice Quest loaded with street maps!!!

What would Turkish hackers want to hack a Geocaching site for? And why Michigan out of all places. Someone must really be hating us Michigan folk for some reason.