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What Laurie said... But I'm partial to the Garmin Venture since it's less than $200, has WAAS built in, great screen resolution, and gets decent (anyone here made up any "Got Birds?" T-Shirts?) signal unless you're in dense tree cover. I'm not sure about NY since I haven't been there for three decades, but tree-troubles come second to me over pocket size. Choberiba

font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote: Originally posted by bunkerdave:This is just my 2 cents, but if you can find one that has the maps, I think you will find it very worth it. I think the Map330 can be had for $200 now, and I would bet you can get it cheaper than that if you look around. I'm with bunkerdave. Right now, etronics.com has the magellan 330x for $199. (Actually $249 with a $50 dollar Magellan rebate.) This is a great deal! The 330x includes the MapSend Streets CD-ROM, A PC/Data Cable with DC Power adapter, and a Vehicle Mounting Bracket! There is no Garmin receiver right now that can give you similar features and accessories for anywhere near that price. I love my Magellan 330 and I think you'd find it's a great receiver for Geocaching. Best of Luck, brokenwing ------------------ http://www.cordianet.com/geocaching

This is just my 2 cents, but if you can find one that has the maps, I think you will find it very worth it. I think the Map330 can be had for $200 now, and I would bet you can get it cheaper than that if you look around. Good Luck! "I'm not suffering from insanity...I'm enjoying it!"

I have heard there were some of these out, but this is the first one I have actually seen. Interesting it is only $200. I would have expected closer to $400. If it has all the same functions as the GPS3 it is probably a decent GPS. Wonder how the phone is?

I have heard there were some of these out, but this is the first one I have actually seen. Interesting it is only $200. I would have expected closer to $400. If it has all the same functions as the GPS3 it is probably a decent GPS. Wonder how the phone is?

I add my vote for the adoption facility. For all the obvious reasons ... If it takes Jeremy a while to code this functionality, then in the mean time we should have an adoption forum, like right here ... Since the South African situation is still small, I can't really comment, but I would love it if cachers close to some of my caches would look after them ... as I've hidden close to 20 in a 200 x 500 km area and only get a chance every 6 - 12 months to check up ... btw so far so good ... ------------------ Peter Scholtz www.biometrics.co.za

compare with the gps 76 which you can get fot under 200 with cable. I am a beginner myself so don't know which is best. Look and compare.

I am new to this so here is my fist dumb question! My wife wants to buy me a GPS,Birthday,Christmas,Etc.Etc. I have been looking at the 330 for a while and now the Meridians are out? I want to use a Magallan So I need to make a choice. I also don't want to take to much advantage of the situation. Prices what they are now. 330 at $199.+/- Meridians $200.-$275.+/-. Are the meridians the way to go. I would lke a compass & Alt. The 330 has these features I think. What about display size are the close enough to make no difference? Are the Meridians with the extra money?Are the features that much better. Where is the real value? This unit will need to last awhile I'm not a person who trades up very often. Thanks<><

Ask Jeremy, but I doubt it. Seems that he has a lot of GREAT ideas for the bugs, but very little time for implementation. To hear more about the searchability, check out this thread. For now, you can do a search for caches in the area, and there's a travel bug icon next to the caches in which they're hiding. Do a zip code search and expand the radius to 200 miles and you'll probably find some bugs in the area.

Geoffrey: The Vista is an awful lot of GPS for $350, but you can get the Etrex Venture for $200, it has no mapping, just points of interest. So, for the price of a Meridian GPS, you can have no upgrade path for detail maps, and you get the inferior patch antenna. Yeah, I guess that about sums it up. quote:The Etrex series are very easy to hold, but the Magellan Meridian GPS units must have the strap attached so it does not get out of your hands and hit the ground. What I mean, is that the Meridians are a bit wide like the eMap or GPS Map76. The Etrex series have a neck strap, so they won't hit the ground. Um, what planet are you from, and do you travel on a beam of light, too? The Meridians are the easiest GPS receivers for me to hold. The grip is solid, and I don't foresee ever needing a strap, but if I wanted one, hey, what's it to you? (The Merdians don't come with one out-of-box like the 330, so apparently even Thales knows how easy it is to have a firm grip on one.) As for your strap comments, though, what are you talking about? One minute you're saying that the Meridians must have a strap so they don't hit the ground (and saying it like a bad thing) and the next you're saying that the eTrex series has a strap and that's a good thing. Dude, make up your mind, already. quote:There are no GPS units yet that are expressly designed for Geocaching in the woods. When you are walking toward a cache among the trees, the GPS is switching satellites constantly. Trees will block satellites at random, messing with your ability to zero in on a cache, and this is why you should not use WAAS in the woods. WAAS function needs 4 or more GPS Satellites and a WAAS satelite at all times, so WAAS will ruin your position reading when among the trees. I hate to break it to you, man, but you're just plain wrong about WAAS. WAAS doesn't need 4 or more satellites any more than any 3D position+time fix needs four satellites. WAAS also doesn't need uninterrupted signals: as long as you have enough WAAS reception to keep your corrections updated, you're fine. Now, I've heard that with the eTrexes and their admittedly inferior reception (and if that point isn't a given, you've been living under a rock), when the unit is using WAAS, it will preferentially use the satellites for which it has corrections, and since it has a harder time receiving in general, that could end up giving you a limited subset of the constellation, thus yielding a worse geometric degree of precision (i.e. using satellites closer together simply because it only has WAAS for those). This is much less an issue when you use a receiver with a good (quadrifilar) antenna A patch antenna's reception characteristic decreases toward the horizon, and the WAAS satellites, being in geostationary orbits, are relatively near the horizon (in most North America, at least). Put these together and what have you got? Patch antennas will likely (I say that because I have not scientifically tested) yield much poorer WAAS reception overall, which means you can much more easily get into the position of using a poor set of satellites due to only receiving a partial corrections list. To sum it all up: eTrexes are small, but their reception is a very solid minus when it comes to geocaching Meridians are actually more comfortable for some of us, and we haven't had them jumping out of our hands or flying toward rocks at the first inkling Your knowledge of WAAS is incomplete and in need of a refresher course; you should at least include qualifiers when talking about it (like "I think..." or "If I understand this..."), and then people can clarify without telling you that you're wrong My pain medicine (hydrocodone) is wearing off, so I'm somewhat more belligerent that normal; please forgive me, okay?

Geoffrey: The Vista is an awful lot of GPS for $350, but you can get the Etrex Venture for $200, it has no mapping, just points of interest. So, for the price of a Meridian GPS, you can have no upgrade path for detail maps, and you get the inferior patch antenna. Yeah, I guess that about sums it up. quote:The Etrex series are very easy to hold, but the Magellan Meridian GPS units must have the strap attached so it does not get out of your hands and hit the ground. What I mean, is that the Meridians are a bit wide like the eMap or GPS Map76. The Etrex series have a neck strap, so they won't hit the ground. Um, what planet are you from, and do you travel on a beam of light, too? The Meridians are the easiest GPS receivers for me to hold. The grip is solid, and I don't foresee ever needing a strap, but if I wanted one, hey, what's it to you? (The Merdians don't come with one out-of-box like the 330, so apparently even Thales knows how easy it is to have a firm grip on one.) As for your strap comments, though, what are you talking about? One minute you're saying that the Meridians must have a strap so they don't hit the ground (and saying it like a bad thing) and the next you're saying that the eTrex series has a strap and that's a good thing. Dude, make up your mind, already. quote:There are no GPS units yet that are expressly designed for Geocaching in the woods. When you are walking toward a cache among the trees, the GPS is switching satellites constantly. Trees will block satellites at random, messing with your ability to zero in on a cache, and this is why you should not use WAAS in the woods. WAAS function needs 4 or more GPS Satellites and a WAAS satelite at all times, so WAAS will ruin your position reading when among the trees. I hate to break it to you, man, but you're just plain wrong about WAAS. WAAS doesn't need 4 or more satellites any more than any 3D position+time fix needs four satellites. WAAS also doesn't need uninterrupted signals: as long as you have enough WAAS reception to keep your corrections updated, you're fine. Now, I've heard that with the eTrexes and their admittedly inferior reception (and if that point isn't a given, you've been living under a rock), when the unit is using WAAS, it will preferentially use the satellites for which it has corrections, and since it has a harder time receiving in general, that could end up giving you a limited subset of the constellation, thus yielding a worse geometric degree of precision (i.e. using satellites closer together simply because it only has WAAS for those). This is much less an issue when you use a receiver with a good (quadrifilar) antenna A patch antenna's reception characteristic decreases toward the horizon, and the WAAS satellites, being in geostationary orbits, are relatively near the horizon (in most North America, at least). Put these together and what have you got? Patch antennas will likely (I say that because I have not scientifically tested) yield much poorer WAAS reception overall, which means you can much more easily get into the position of using a poor set of satellites due to only receiving a partial corrections list. To sum it all up: eTrexes are small, but their reception is a very solid minus when it comes to geocaching Meridians are actually more comfortable for some of us, and we haven't had them jumping out of our hands or flying toward rocks at the first inkling Your knowledge of WAAS is incomplete and in need of a refresher course; you should at least include qualifiers when talking about it (like "I think..." or "If I understand this..."), and then people can clarify without telling you that you're wrong My pain medicine (hydrocodone) is wearing off, so I'm somewhat more belligerent that normal; please forgive me, okay?

The Etrex Series have a patch antenna that is smaller than a normal one. It has a harder time receiving a good signal, but you can turn off the battery saver function, and that will help you keep a better lock on the satellites. I used my Garmin 3plus yesterday, and it was useless out in the woods, but found later that it was in battery saver mode. Also if you are geocaching, you should turn off WAAS also. The Vista is an awful lot of GPS for $350, but you can get the Etrex Venture for $200, it has no mapping, just points of interest. The Etrex series are very easy to hold, and they have a neck strap, so they won't hit the ground. With it's small size, it is less likely to pop out of your hand when bushwacking through the woods. There are no GPS units yet that are expressly designed for Geocaching in the woods. When you are walking toward a cache among the trees, the GPS is switching satellites constantly. Trees will block satellites at random, messing with your ability to zero in on a cache, and this is why you should not use WAAS in the woods. WAAS function needs 4 or more GPS Satellites and a WAAS satelite at all times, so WAAS will ruin your position reading when among the trees. ------------------ http://members.aol.com/geoffr524/myhomepage/howto.html [This message has been edited by Geoffrey (edited 01 November 2001).]

Oooh, I just noticed the "no mapping" thing. (I just got some nice medicine to hold me over until the root canal, but it hasn't kicked in yet. .) You can grab a Magellan Meridian GPS (the one with only a 2MB basemap instead of the 16MB Gold/Platinum basemap) for just a hair over $200. The great thing about that is that if you ever decide you want detailed street maps, you just have to pick up an SD card and the software and you have a receiver with as much map memory as you could ever care for. So, the best of both worlds is a Magellan Meridian GPS (which I've seen for $207.72).

Hey fellow cachers.. The last I heard from Moun10bike, he was doing some coordinating with Jeremy on access to the main database. MTbike was pretty much doing it "by hand" and with the explosion of cache hiders and finders it was getting difficult. I know from my exposure to Jeremy over the last 10 months (including a few months as a cache "approver")that he has never been a fan of posting the number of caches found or placed by individuals, so don't know if the MTBike stats will be that specific again. People in different regions sort of keep track of both though so there is always some kind of indicator. California, Utah, New York and some other states all seem to have people who have found 100+. Currently I'm at 39H/98F and will get 99 and 100 sometime in the next week or so. There are several cachers in the Sacramento, CA area who are over 140 finds. One southern CA team of two has over 200 finds (240 I think). Happy caching (and statistic keeping) ! Ron

I have to give credit (and my respect) to bunkerdave and dhobby of Utah who have 200+ caches under their belts. I have a long way to go for those stats, but at my current interest and enjoyment of the sport I expect to cache (catch) them soon. [This message has been edited by Ranz (edited 31 October 2001).]

Don't have a mac, but running 98 SE on my PC, I downloaded Mapsource Roads & Recreation for the whole state of New York, about 10 mb., into my Vista, in 21 minutes. Like PneumaticDeath, transfers at 115,200. ------------------ Gary "Gimpy" Strong Rochester,NY

I think pins would be a great idea. An "official pin" with letter commemerating milestone finds (100,200,etc) would not only be an incentive for newbies to keep getting out there and geocaching, but it would also be a way of saying thanks to the cachers that actually made it to that number (obviously if you reach 100 you've dedicated a lot of time, money, and energy to the sport and have probably introduced many other individuals to it as well, thus helping it to grow). Doing something like this wouldn't be that expensive either. So you can reward cachers, inspire and motivate newbies, bring a deeper sense of community, all for pennies. Then again I'm getting a PhD in psychology so those things are all important to me and since I'm travelling the country in search of grad schools I'll probably have the opportunity to hit 100 by the end of December so both those may make me a bit biased. That being said it would be sweet to go to the mailbox one day and have find a pin (specially minted coins would be even better but that would get expensive ).

I think pins would be a great idea. An "official pin" with letter commemerating milestone finds (100,200,etc) would not only be an incentive for newbies to keep getting out there and geocaching, but it would also be a way of saying thanks to the cachers that actually made it to that number (obviously if you reach 100 you've dedicated a lot of time, money, and energy to the sport and have probably introduced many other individuals to it as well, thus helping it to grow). Doing something like this wouldn't be that expensive either. So you can reward cachers, inspire and motivate newbies, bring a deeper sense of community, all for pennies. Then again I'm getting a PhD in psychology so those things are all important to me and since I'm travelling the country in search of grad schools I'll probably have the opportunity to hit 100 by the end of December so both those may make me a bit biased. That being said it would be sweet to go to the mailbox one day and have find a pin (specially minted coins would be even better but that would get expensive ).

Amen. I have certainly had to readjust things in my own cache-life to keep my wife happy. It took me two and a half months to reach 100, on July 8th. It took me four to reach 200 after that. By and large, my cache hunting after the first 100 took place on my way home from work, and on an occasional weekend when I would hunt a dozen or so. I am fortunate, though, that my fellow Utahns are so prolific in hiding caches that it has never been necessary for me to take time off work to hunt caches. There are so many nearby, and the mountains are literally in my backyard. I still have to sit back and wonder what I did right to get it so good. Jeremy's point really hits home. Thanks for making it.

Amen. I have certainly had to readjust things in my own cache-life to keep my wife happy. It took me two and a half months to reach 100, on July 8th. It took me four to reach 200 after that. By and large, my cache hunting after the first 100 took place on my way home from work, and on an occasional weekend when I would hunt a dozen or so. I am fortunate, though, that my fellow Utahns are so prolific in hiding caches that it has never been necessary for me to take time off work to hunt caches. There are so many nearby, and the mountains are literally in my backyard. I still have to sit back and wonder what I did right to get it so good. Jeremy's point really hits home. Thanks for making it.

Hey Glenn... Thanks for the plug. Actually some of the Sacramento, CA cachers seemed to blow right past this event without too much mention...a few of those folks are in the 130 plus category. In some parts of the country the 100 mark would be a bigger deal I think because the caches might be further apart. I guess any big city in any state would be a real cache heaven though. As for me, I AM thinking about which cache I would like to be my 100th and when I find it and post it, I'll reveal why. Of course then I would think the next milestone would be #200. I also am coming up on my 50th cache placed,(I think I have hidden 36) and I will take some pride in that when it happens. Long ago (FEB of 2001) I tried to inspire people who found my caches to place some of their own so I would have some to find ! This worked to a certain extent, and MikieP of Sacramento, CA told me at the first SAC picnic that he took my theory to heart...that I appreciated as much as his caches. Happy caching.....Ron [This message has been edited by Ron Streeter (edited 28 October 2001).]

quote:Originally posted by ajayre:On another note - and excuse my ignorance - but do paper maps come in the different datums? Do I have to look out for maps with the WGS84 datum? USGS maps are based on the NAD27 datum. So if you are going to manually plot a waypoint on a paper map from the Geocache website(Which uses WGS84) Then you simply need to go into your set-up menu on your GPS and change to NAD27. Then you can use this converted coordinate to overlay your waypoint on the map. There are clear plastic map grid converters that you can buy to set on top of the map that makes this easier to do. I actually use my GPS to convert the WGS84 coordinates to UTM and use the UTM grid on the map because it is a little easier to plot. But the results are the same. One of the reasons I mention this, is that Topozone does not convert to WGS84 when you download their maps from the cache pages and there is an error where the target symbol is placed. The target symbol diplayed is actually about 200 feet WNW of the true coordinates. I am not sure if most people know this.

Dhobby and myself (BunkerDave) are currently at 199 caches logged, and are planning on bagging #200 this weekend. I have tentatively selected "Amos' Rest" to be the 200th cache for both of us. We would like to invite any and all who would like to share this momentous find (for us) to join us in this hike. It is about 3 miles to the cache. Obviously, this is all weather permitting. If the weather is poor, we may have to select a different cache. If you would like to join, e-mail me at dwallent34@yahoo.com Be sure to give your address so I can contact you. If there is interest, the hike will take place Saturday morning, or if not, we could do the trek on Friday. Hope to hear from/see you all soon! Don't delay! BunkerDave

Hachi Machi! That is just sick and wrong! 200 finds! That is just so wrong, I just wish I could have done it. Congrats to both of you guys! Dan

The reason we've not been out geocaching is mainly because we have been looking at the COWS. Haven't you noticed the any of them? You only have until November 7th to check them out. We've "logged" about 200 of the more than 300. My favorite so far is the French Moodle. We even met the artist. She was hanging out in the area. Don't worry we will be back.