GeekBoy.from.Illinois

I won't call it "experience" but I muddled through similar recently. My eXplorist 600 has been giving me location coordinates that didn't match my wife's 600, nor the cache we were visiting, so I decided to go all-out and reset the thing. I did the "clear all memory", then I ran the firmware update program (downloaded from Magellan web site, or on the firmware CD that came with my DirectRoute (I don't remember exactly which I used, but I seem to think it was from the web site). Then following the advice above, I did another "Clear all memory" and int appears to be acting more like I expect. My brain is getting fuzzy, but I thought you were in "Oz", and the Magellan support site only listed US and Europe, so I followed the links for the US eXplorist 400 and found this page that might help you: http://www.magellangps.com/support/softwar...plorist_400.asp I literally just came in from the back yard where I tested the two units side-by-side. After several minutes, both units had a WAAS "link" and were reporting very similar locations. I had both units in the palm of one hand, and after a couple minutes, they both matched in coordinates, and within a foot or two in elevation, but they also differed by a second in the clock. At the worst, they different by 0.002 minutes both North and West, as well as about 10 feet in elevation. After spending about 3-4 minutes, they matched North, differed by .001 minute West, and differed by around 5 feet in elevation with a 36 foot WAAS accuracy. I noticed that one unit had 8 satellites, and the other only had 7, but it had stronger signals on a couple of the birds it did link to. I hope this helps you.

Probably not. I'm not sure where I found it but it is linked as a "promo" if you search at "www.PriceGrabber.com", you'll find: Promo Buy a Magellan eXplorist 400, 500, 600, or XL GPS Unit and Get MapSend Topo 3D USA for only $9.99 more from Magellan. This implies that you get the Topo software directly from Magellan if you buy one of the units from an authorized reseller. They may use the software included on the DVD in the eXplorist box, and only charge you $10 activation charges, I don't know for sure...

I recommend that you check the current Magellan "special promos". IIRC, they have MapSend Topo3D for $10 if you buy one of their "qualifying GPSr units". Now, I have DirectRoute v2 I got with my eXplorist 600, and paid about $70 for it. It is great when it runs, but the app seems to think that my system doesn't have enough resources for it to load even though I have 1GB physical memory free, plus plenty of my 1.7GHz Pentium M processor, and drive space free. My wife bought the Topo3D software with her Magellan, and we both prefer it for most of our work. You can not do drive/street routing (automatically) with the Topo maps, but you do have the elevation markers on the screen, and those are handy when caching in an area with terrain for potential large vertical changes. Also be warned that if you don't get the latest version of the MapSend software that you choose, you will also need to keep the last disc of the install in the drive to run it. That is a major pain in the butt, but it does have a few other potential benefits...

I only have 2 FTF's, and they were both micros so there wasn't much room for any prizes in the cache. I did manage to get one before my wife, so I did get a few bragging rights (as a previous poster mentioned). IIRC, one of the Podcachers podcasts made mention that they got a $20 bill as an "FTF prize" in one cache.

My wife (ClickChik) and I are having fun caching. We started about 2 months ago and we only had one GPSr then. Early on, a new cache was released while we were at work, and she rushed there to try for the FTF (and I rushed home to let the "puppies" out to go pee). She got her first FTF that night. After working as a team for about 3 weeks (with her being the one primarily keeping the GPSr) we decided to get a second unit, and start a friendly competition between ourselves. She travels to dog competitions, and has logged several caches while traveling. Last weekend we managed to log an FTF together (my first and her second). Yesterday I was having a tough day at work, and when I got an email about a new cache relatively near to my office, so I thought I would give it a try on my way home. I managed to get the FTF, and to be honest, I had more fun writing the log than getting the FTF. If you want, you can see my log at http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...f0-7e5c8f15e819

My wife got one of the GJTB's mailed to her and we had hoped to place it in a puzzle cache near us, but we still haven't had the time to solve it ourselves. I seem to recall seeing something about not holding it for more than 2 weeks in the paperwork that was sent with it, and since we were nearing that limit, we chose to place it in a multi-stage near home. We dropped it in the cache on a Sunday afternoon, and she updated the log on Monday to show it dropped there. Someone went out at 10:00 that Monday night to get it. They don't stay in caches for very long...

The OP might also want to check into a Magellan eXplorist 210. The 210 model has 22MB memory for maps, etc. and it allows the download of waypoints from a PC. I saw them on-line for about $135 shipped (new) so you might be able to eBay one cheaper, or get a second hand one from someone who has decided that they want to upgrade. I am considering getting one as a "backup" for my main eXplorist 600 unit...

Speaking for the Topo 3D software, in my experience, the maps are normally smaller than the DirectRoute maps. I don't happen to have my maps handy, but I have loaded most of the Midwest onto my SD card in my 600, and the topo maps need about 600MB, while the DirectRoute maps need a little over 700MB.

As others have mentioned on this topic, I try to make my logs as appropriate as possible. There are times, like the day my wife and I found 7 caches while on a 350 mile drive, where I couldn't even remember all the caches we stopped at on the way, let alone which was which. Most of the memorable ones we referred to by the memorable features. I would normally log the finds on-line that night after getting home, but in this case we were going out of town, and I didn't get a chance to log them for several days, after getting back home. Some of those logs were difficult. Worse was remembering the names of the 3 DNF's we had encountered as well. If I'm lucky, I'll make it back to that area again next year to attempt the DNF's again, and to find a few more that we just didn't have time for. Lucky for me I was "religious" about updating the caches in Cachemate as soon as we got back to our van, otherwise I wouldn't have even remembered which cache I left the Jeep TB in (sorry, and old yellow one, not a new green one). We were at a weekend dog competition and we managed to get 7 finds (and one DNF) en-route there, 5 on Saturday evening after the competition, and 2 more finds (and the other 2 DNF's) on the way back home. I manually enter the logs on-line for each cache I visit, and I try not to use "cut-and-paste" logs, although many of the logs end-up looking like I have a "template" because I am enjoying the hunt with my wife more than the finding of the caches, not that I don't like finding the caches mind you.

Recently, while caching, my wife and I found a damp container. We removed a moldy wooden item that might have been causing the lid to no seal properly (yes, I was the one who had to carry it out <g>). We emailed the cache owner and let them know, and got back a reply thanking us for notifying them. We even got a reply back from them letting us know that they had "fixed" the condition of the cache. We had hoped to leave a "Rose Compass Geocoin" in that cache but we didn't due to its condition. We ended-up leaving the geocoin in a different cache that day though...

Yes, PodCachers are out there, so is "IcenRye" with his "video podcast", and I'm sure there are others, but the names escape me right now. In any case, even if there are others out there, one can always do their own podcast on the topic too. There are more that one radio station or more than one television station, so why not more than one podcast?

My wife is constantly misplacing things, and often I get a phone call from her asking me where her keys are (even though she got home and was about to leave again while I was at work). The scary part is that most of the time I can get her to the right place to find them. She hasn't lost her GPS [yet], but she has had it "bugger-up" on her. When that happened, she almost took mine while we had hers repaired, that is until I got hers working again several hours later that night...

I did find the information interesting, and I will check tonight to see if it did answer my question... It does concern me that my GPSr is less than a week old, and her is just 3 weeks old, and we are seeing such major variances between them already. Similarly, we are not sure how her unit got corrupted. We both had our units with us, and I dropped mine into my pocket, and she put hers in her purse as we went into a store. When we walked back out, both units were off, and we suspected that to be due to the "5 minute auto power off" feature, but when she tried to turn hers back on, it gave here a message about "initializing the NAND" and would not work. After re-formatting the flash and re-loading the base maps, her unit was back working again, and that was when we noticed the major time difference. *** Update: On my way home from work tonight, I decided to try a cache (ssphoto's 1117th) and since I "chose poorly", I was on the wrong side of the creek, and had to back-track about a quarter mile on the trail. This gave ClickChik a chance to meet me, and I compared the coordinates and times on the two units. They were now showing the same time (and coordinates). I guess that resetting the unit did fix my time variance. It also reset all of the other settings (and tracks, etc), and I had to manually enter mot it them again. Now to figure out if there is anything I can do to keep this from happening again in the future...

Let's see. My wife uses a SanDisk 512MB SD card in her Magellan eXplorist 600. I use a SanDisk Ultra II 2GB card in mine (eXplorist 600 also). My SD card originally was in my Palm Tungsten T5, but the new 2GB card I ordered when the GPSr was ordered was delayed a few days. I new "Extreme Performance (150x) 2GB SD card" in the Palm, and a second one of those in the digital camera.

I already know I'm losing my mind, but that still doesn't change the fact that this just doesn't sound right to me... Both my wife (ClickChik) and I have our our GPSr units (Magellan eXplorist 600), and we had to reset hers last night do to internal flash corruption. After getting hers back up and running I took them both out into our yard to compare the location accuracy when I discovered something else that took my entire attention. This unit sets its internal clock from the satellite data, and I'm not sure if there is an option for the user to change it. Now on to the twist. I put both units in the palm of my hand and started to look at the accuracy when I noticed that the two units different in their clocks by about 3.5 minutes. That didn't seem right to me. Now, does this seem right to you, or is it more likely that one (or both) of our units has bigger problems?

We had experienced this once with our eXplorist 600. In our case, the USB cable screw was not tightened and therefore the cable was not making a good contact (if at all). Someone else also referenced that if you connect the cable upside down, it won't work properly either. Their reference was that the cable should be attached such that the wire drops down over the batter when attached. Having said this, you should also make sure that you don't have any dirt or such on the back of the GPS [where the cable connect].