NetJunkie

I'll finally chime in. We got a Vista CX a couple of months ago. We have a couple road-use GPSs but this was our first handheld for geocaching. Sometimes the CX was very accurate but sometimes it would have a bad day. The interesting thing was that it seemed to really be off the entire day and fine another. It would jump...wander...and be well off the cache. According to the GPS I've been standing on top of a cache only to have my wife finally locate it >80ft away. I go stand physically at the cache and a few minutes later the GPS would jump over there and agree. I came to this forum for the exact problems mentioned in this thread. A couple of weeks ago I ordered a 60csx. We cache a lot in heavy trees so I thought maybe tree cover was the problem with the Vista CX. The 60csx is much better. It doesn't have bad days. It's not off by 80 feet. I get a signal sitting in the down stairs of my house so trees aren't an issue. This past weekend we each carried a GPS. I had my 60 and she is now carrying the Vista CX. We did 8 caches in the woods one day. This was with the new 2.60 firmware. For probably 6 of the 8 the CX was just fine. They didn't always match, but I don't expect them to. The CX wasn't far off. But 2 of the 8 it was off...it was erratic and jumping around. 80 feet this way, then 20 feet that way, then I'm on top of it...then it's over there. The 60csx was just more reliable. I also greatly prefer the 60 buttons and layout. Bottom line? In my opinion, buy the 60csx (or the one without compass). It's $100 more but well worth it. We're keeping the Vista as a secondary and to use while mountain biking but normally rely on the 60csx in the woods. The only problems I've had on the 60csx were once it lost signal in the woods in a spot we've been to 6 times. The Vista never beeped...but the 60 totally lost signal. I finally had to sit it down for a minute in a spot of lighter cover. It was fine the rest of the day and in the same spot as before. Weird..and only happens once. I hear the Vista CX beep every so often when my wife has it and it looses signal, never on the 60csx. I'm also running in to an issue with the compass. There is a thread on here talking about it. The compass needs to be calibrated a lot more than the Vista CX. When it's calibrated it's very accurate...but I usually have to do it once per day. I've only done the Vista CX twice since we've had it and it still matches the magnetic compass fine. I really like having the electronic compass as I can stand still and turn and line up to a cache. You can't do that with the GPS figuring up compass directions based on movement.

I just picked up a TB this weekend with the same idea. This is a TINY little USB thumb drive that holds 512MB. The idea is you add some pics and write your own log entry about yourself. Every so often someone will email the contents to the owner. The USB key on this one is really, really small. It's about the size of your thumb nail. USB works on about anything so now worries with a specific card format like SD.

Lesson learned. ALWAYS have flashlights. If there is any chance at all we'll be out after dark should something go wrong we have our good LED lights. They are $35 at Target and very small to carry in a pack and put out an amazing amount of light. Plus, being LED they run for a long, long time on battery. We've been very glad to have them when a trip ran long.

Did you enter the validation code from the email?

It took several days but I heard back today. No real help. They said holding it vertically for a while, such as in my pocket, can throw the compass off. But no answer as to why my Etrex Vista CX doesn't do it. They recommend I update the firmware even though I gave them the versions I have which are the latest.

Get a cheap PDA and go paperless. Then when you sync to your GPS you can also sync them to your PDA using something like cachemate. Then you have everything.

On waypoint averaging keep in mind a GPS can't do that automatically. Why? Because it doesn't know if you've stopped moving. When you tell the GPS you want to average that waypoint you are telling it "I'm not going to move.". This way the GPS knows that the coordinates it's coming up with relate to the same point and you aren't actually walking 10 feet this way and 15 feet that way then back over here.

FRS is good for groups, but you won't get much range on them. You might pick someone up if they are relatively close by. We use them when off-roading in single groups. For large groups like at Jeep Jamboree we have to use CB as FRS just doesn't have the range. That "7 miles" they quote is wide open flat terrain. Put some trees in the way and it cuts way, way down. Still, I love FRS. Cheap and simple without the headaches that CB has.

It's strong. I have them for my Etrex, 60csx, and C550. They hold great and don't have to rest on anything.

How about a rating system? You log a find and you also get to rate the cache in 1 to 5 stars. Then you could do a PQ and choose "3 or higher" like we do with difficulty and terrain. You don't even have to display the ratings, just an average like many resellers online do.

Correct.

Yes. I'm emailing Garmin about this right now. I have an Etrex Vista CX with some accuracy issues mentioned in a current thread so we also got a 60CSX to play with. The 60CSX is great...except I have to recalibrate the compass every so often. I haven't had to do that once in 2 months with the Vista CX. I've noticed it a lot after carrying the GPS in my pocket for a way. Get it back out and the compass is wacky.

I say go with the CSX. The compass is a big help. Look at it this way. You're caching. It's 50 feet away. Without the built-in compass you have to be moving for the GPS to generate a heading for the arrow. What happens if you're under cover and the GPS isn't real accurate? The arrow moves around. With the CSX it uses the built-in compass to generate that heading. It's also handy when you need to mark a direction and go. Need to mark a waypoint at 270 degrees 150 feet away? Easy and it'll walk you right to it. It's more trouble with a magnetic compass.

Get the 60CSX. We have both the Vista CX and the 60CSX. The Sirf chipset is much nicer and the button layout is SO much better to me. It just makes more sense and is easier/faster to use. I believe the 60 also has a faster CPU as it seems to redraw faster.

No worries. Like the person above said, go to a gun show. I also shoot and I probably have 30 ammo cans. Lots of places use them to hold ammo that they sell. Plus, you can go to a show and people sell empty surplus ammo cans for cheap.

I have an Etrex Vista CX for sale in the for sale group. I'll sell just the GPS and mounts (no topo maps) for $250. PM if interested. Plus, you can claim the $50 MIR from Garmin since I never did. Great GPS for a real good price.

We do simple paperless caching. When we run a PQ we have the site send the cache info in ebook format. My wife reads those on her Windows Mobile PDA. We don't use any cache tracking software, just the ebooks with the info we need. It's simple and works well.

I agree with most of the others. You're fighting a losing battle, but that doesn't mean you can't try. Our normal items are either small geocaching buttons or diecast Jeeps (we're Jeep nuts). The diecast Jeeps we leave are a lot nicer than 99% of what we see in a cache and they only cost us $1...when we can find them. I think part of the problem is that people are really trying to run up their find numbers and don't want to spend much per cache. I put the $1/cache point as our target. For larger caches I'll go more but most of what we see is well under $1. It's all about the hunt.

BTT. I had decided not to sell and I've since changed my mind. So...it's up for sale. The 60CSX is on the way so no backing out now.

We did one of your Iki caches and had planned to do more but, as usual, ran out of time. Thanks for those, btw. FYI, if you plan to do the Ko Olina North cache get there before 4pm. They hold luaus every night there at that lagoon. We actually ended up going to that luau while we were there and spent the first bit with the GPS looking for the cache. We got a few odd looks. We stayed at the Ko Olina resort. Very nice.

Any update on this? I really miss the full Google Maps tool. This caused me a lot of grief on our vacation in Hawaii last week. It really slowed down creating bookmarks.

If you're going to be on Oahu for any time you should try the "Peanut Butter Jar" series on the leeward side of the island. I think it was 5 caches (maybe 4) in really nice spots that most tourists will never see. We really enjoyed them. You'll love it. We just got back from Hawaii last week. On the big island go do all the virtual caches in Volcano National Park. They aren't hard finds, of course, but well worth it. A few of the things won't be on a normal tour (like Devil's Throat). I wish we had gotten time to do the cache on the green sand beach. We did do the black sand beach items.

OK...I got my Jeep in today. How do I register it? I don't see an activation code anywhere.

I have a like new Etrex Vista CX with the Mapsource Topo software, windshield mount, and bike mount. It's about a week old. I've decided to take a bit of a loss and move up to a 60CSX. My loss, your gain..as they say. $325 + shipping. I can do PayPal. EDIT: I can also send you the email receipt from the place I got it. Garmin is doing a $50 MIR on these and I didn't claim it.

How about accuracy when they are both locked? I haven't had an issue of losing signal, just fluctuating accuracy (which I guess could be due to losing a sat or two). We were looking for a micro cache yesterday in a thick area with tons of places to hide and the best I could do on averaging a waypoint was ~20' and even then I didn't trust it because it would jump from there to 70' over a few seconds.