bkrownd

I'll be on Pu'u Pili again tomorrow, though I'm not sure if we're going to get all the way to the "summit". Odd but potentially effective idea to plant ginger around the station. Ginger grows thickly and blocks obscuring brush from growing over the same area, but at the same time it builds thick mats of roots and rotting material that could eventually bury the station. We occasionally remove ginger from the pu'u to let the native understory return. Photos of Pu'u Pili from Kohala Mountain Road, if you're curious: http://www.pbase.com/image/77534188/original http://www.pbase.com/image/77534076/original

Of course, a copy of the proof-of-purchase or receipt isn't valid. After you've sent the originals in the first time you no longer have the valid documents to fulfill the rebate requirements. Glad I haven't been burned on one yet...but everyone is, eventually.

I'm curious about something. I've noticed that when I go to calibrate my altimeter it's usually very close to 110 feet too high. Yesterday for the first time I decided to check the GPS elevation as well, and...it was also about 110 feet too high. I need to try that again over the weekend, and see if I can find out how quickly it departs from the calibrated elevation. Has anyone noticed something similar with theirs?

That's the 24k national park set. I passed on it, because it's missing a significant portion of my local NP. As for the 100k maps, they don't have enough information to be useful for me. What I did instead was to create a lot of waypoints and tracks on my GPS, and from those I have a very good set of trails and landmarks to navigate from. Many of the topo maps they use are also out-of-date.

Most of them are not in any database I've seen on the internet.

Nice people rule.

You're fortunate. Hawaii is littered with little Xes and dotted triangles and squares, but I've found very few in the databases. :/ I'm finding plenty of other anonymous bolts, pins, pipes and stakes stuck all over the place in the lava, as well. I'm always trying to dig up the history of these things.

It shows you 80 meters away from your known location? Or are you talking about the odometer only? Please be specific.

Assuming you have reception, it shows you in a different place than you are now?

The topo maps that Garmin offers are quite low resolution, so don't expect much detailed information like trails.

Ooooooo...so THAT's what "Baseline" in Boulder is all about. I lived there a few years and never heard about it being the border between Kansas and Nebraska territories.

That's exactly what Garmin customer service said. 9 digits is correct, just add a box to the rebate form and the page in your user manual.

Here's a benchmark that I pass weekly, named "boulder". It's located at the head of my favorite hiking trail, Kulani Powerline Road. This weekend I decided to take some photos for fun. A picture of the benchmark. My altimeter wasn't calibrated - it's more like 5650 feet elevation: Here's the view from "boulder", looking South along Powerline Road. "Boulder" is at the base of the iron rebar driven into the lava at the left side of the image. The horizon is Mauna Loa's eastern rift zone, and in between are forest kipukas (islands) scattered across a sea of lava fields. It's a rich landscape for exploring, studying nature and watching wildlife. Here's the Google Maps link. You can zoom out and see the location, and get a much better sense of the mixture of forests and lava fields: "Boulder" location on Google Maps I'd also like to check whether benchmark "edge" still exists further down Powerline Road, at this tiny spot that was surrounded by the 1984 lava flow. It's less than 1000 feet off the trail, but the footing might still be too treacherous to cross that short distance safely: "Edge" location on Google Maps

I guess I don't understand what you mean... Didn't MapSource come with your 60CSx? Using MapSource, all waypoints, tracks, routes, etc that are currently loaded into MapSource are uploaded to the unit together when you "send" to the unit, and all waypoints, tracks, etc on the unit are downloaded to the computer when you "receive" from it.

Another way is on the map page hit the "enter" button while the cursor is over a blank area, and it'll ask you if you want to put a waypoint where the cursor is, then you can edit the coordinates to be anywhere you want.

I tried WAAS for a while, but it didn't seem to change accuracy considerably, and the rumor mill says it uses more battery, so I disabled it again. Dunno.

Tracks saved to the microSD card can be downloaded to the computer via the USB Mass Storage Device driver, and are only limited in size by the amount of available memory on the card. I haven't tried it yet, myself, but I was reading about it in the manual because I have a 2500 point track that I downloaded from a website, and I spent most of yesterday afternoon with MapSource editing it down to a smaller size and cutting it up into chunks that would load onto my 60CSx.

keep us informed when you get it

The 500 point limit for tracks is another annoyance. If you have a longer track, you have to either edit it down to 500 points or break it up into seperate 500 point tracks, eating into your limit of 20 saved tracks of any size. Longer tracks can be recorded to the microSD card, but the unit can't use tracks saved on the card. Crumbs.

One bizarre thing about MapSource is that you can delete or cut-and-paste points around within a track, but it doesn't let you edit the coordinates or other data of any of the track points.

Got my GPS SW version 2.90 faster than I'd expected, thanks! (now I just hope it works...)

It's possible the box you got had a different unit placed in it later. The UPC number is for the GPSmap 60CSx series in general, and isn't a serial number. They want the UPC to have physical evidence you bought the product. I also got the e-mail from Garmin today saying the 9 digit serial numbers will work with the rebate. Thanks people!

Color does help a bit when the map gets crowded with features. Shopping around you could probably get even the 60CSx in your price range with the rebate.

That isn't necessarily true. Many regular retailers sell through eBay. All you need is the receipt and UPC from your purchase so they know it's a new item. Buying from Bob's GPS City through eBay isn't any different than buying it at their own web site or their physical cash register. However, if it says "eBay" on the receipt they could potentially throw it - you'd need to clarify that with Bob before buying. BTW, another thing to checkj for in the store is whether the UPC is actually present. I saw a 60CSx on the shelf at Cabelas whose UPC had been cut off the box already. Anyone have any idea why the rebate coupon has a box for an 8-digit serial number, when my 60CSx has a 9-digit serial number? How many digits are other people's 60CSx serial numbers?

Has anybody tried to use the Garmin $50 rebate coupon for the 60CSx? It has boxes for an 8-digit serial number, but my unit seems to have a 9-digit serial number. Does anybody else have this problem?