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Garmin Etrex Legend Cx


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Could the fact that I had my GPSr set to Magnetic North instead of True North have been the problem in this case???

 

Your post got me thinking, I found a bug with projection about three months ago that effects both my legendC and my 60cx. The bug is depending on which way you have your gpsr set(true or magentic north) you will get different numbers when projecting(probably 50ft difference or more). I emailed garmin and they confirmed this bug and said they would submit it to the higher ups to get fixed.

I also figured out that the magnetic setting was the one that was off, so I'm wondering if maybe this could also effect the unit when not projecting, causing 50ft errors in possition some people have while others don't?

 

Sad thing is even if they ever fix this projection bug I bet the now discontinued legendC will never get a another firmware update.

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I'm going to jump in here too. I upgraded to 2.60 a few days ago, and today was my first chance "in the field". My results appear to be much more accurate. I am begining to "trust" my GPS again.

We're headed out on a long weekend "4X4 Trip" in our Jeep. We're placing our trust in the GPS to get us home again. I have never doubted that it could do that, but I'm hoping to bump into a few caches while in the woods.

I guess we'll see how it goes.

 

-DakotaCache

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I'm going to jump in here too. I upgraded to 2.60 a few days ago, and today was my first chance "in the field". My results appear to be much more accurate. I am begining to "trust" my GPS again.

We're headed out on a long weekend "4X4 Trip" in our Jeep. We're placing our trust in the GPS to get us home again. I have never doubted that it could do that, but I'm hoping to bump into a few caches while in the woods.

I guess we'll see how it goes.

 

-DakotaCache

 

Anybody else had good experience with 2.60 firmware?

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Ok Wifiabc...

 

I had another outing with my Legend CX, 2.60 upgrade and I was impressed. Searched and found 7 caches, one of wich was a multi with 4 stages. The GPSr brought me within the 3m range on all waypoints except two. Of the two that gave me a bit more difficulty, one was on the side of a hill and these always gave me a hard time even with my original legend. The second I was probably searching within 6 metres of the cache. There was a fair amount of tree cover and the cachers that logged before me made the same remarks. I Honestly can say like DakotaCache that I now trust my legend CX again. Too bad I already ordered a 60CX...

Edited by Coach88
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I've got the Legend CX also with upgrades to 2.6. I've had it about a month and it seems to be giving pretty good readings. I made a waypoint in my front yard and it consistantly gets me back to the point everytime. I did have one time that it said 200ft in the wrong direction, I cut it off and turned it back on and I was right on the money. I hunted a cache the other day and took me right to it, said I was 3 feet from it and I was standing right beside it. So I'm having pretty good luck with mine so far knock on wood.

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Bedward bought me a Legend C when we started this craziness. It's great, extremely accurate, but I wouldn't let him play with it. He recently bought himself a Legend CX. It's not accurate. Usually points in the right direction, but distance is not great when we get close. Recently, mine was, correctly, showing the cache 5 feet away, while his showed 80 feet away. What do you think? Is there some way to reset it, or should he send it back, or what? Thanks

 

I posted something about a Cx last week, and got a response with a similar problem. My wife & I just got our Cx a few weeks ago, and it does not seem as consistent as our Legend black & white. Sometimes the Cx is dead on, but sometimes (seemingly more often than was our older Legend) it has fits of inaccuracy.

 

We haven't had it long enough yet to be sure, but if I keep having troubles I'll call Garmin and ask what to do. Please post back with any updates you have ,and I'll do the same.

 

Thanks,

Jammer

 

IU have found that with my VISTA CX I need to re-calibrate the compas and altimiter every time I change the batterys. Also check the format that you are using ( I was told to use WGS as it is an international standard)

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:laughing:

I have had some of the same issues. I own a blue legend and recently purchased a legend cx also. Took them both with me today to find a couple of caches near work. The first one was not found with either because a farm tractor had plowed up a field and probably buried the cache but the cx was showing the cache about 40' to the east of where the blue legend showed it. Went to the second cache and the cx had me 40' to the east again and the blue legend was dead on. I was frustrated and made sure that both were set to the same datum, etc, and the cx was selected to offroad. I came home and started to look up problems with the cx and was dissapointed to find that so many are having issues with the cx. I enjoy caching and the blue legend is always right on. I downloaded the 2.60 update and will try a couple of new waypoints tommorrow. Will post my findings. I can tell you that there is about a 50' difference in the elevation readings between the two units at my home. The E & W readings are closer than they were this morning although they didn't show far off when I got the bad readings with the cx. Another interesting problem that I noticed was that on one sceen the cx showed me as being 27' from the cache while another showed it being 380'. Why would the two screens have such a big difference? Wish I would have read this forum before buying the cx, would have bought the 60 or 70 model.

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I too was having problems with my Veture Cx. I posted previously. I upgraded to 2.6. In the meantime I also bought a etrex yellow off ebay, just to compare. I set a cache up using both units. Took about 10-15 minutes for both to stabilize to the same readings. Waas on the Venture was enabled. True North on both. 7 ft accuracy on the Venture. 13 ft on the etrex. Waited for the FTF. The finders stated that the cords were perfect and they were three ft from the cache. I have to say I believe the upgrade to 2.6 fixed the problem.

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We went out today with both gps units, Legend and the new Legend CX, and the CX was actually closer to the cache this time. I also upgraded to the 2.60 firmware and it seems to ahve worked with my unit. Everything was coming up 40' off to the East before the upgrade install.

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Just a thought from someone who isnt a expert or owns this model Garmin but owns several others...

 

Maybe the sats helped contribute to this issue? I was working on getting my V's WAAS 'fixed' by doing its update & saw that some new sats are being added/moved & things should settle down in Sept of '06.

Page I saw it on is gpsinformation.org/dale/dgps.htm

 

Its down under #2 of 'Loading the Almanac' section.

 

Glad to hear issues seem to be looking either way, I'm gonna not spend so much right now & get a eTrex Legend as thats what I want, for now, heh.

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Unit: Etrex Legend CX

Software: 2.60

 

Since I upgraded to the 2.60 software my GPS is more accurate. When on the compass page, when the Dist to next equals Accuracy in the data fields, I find myself within arms length of the cache. We did a 4 part cache and found all 4 with no problem, GCW6TH was the cache we found.

 

It is more fun caching when you are not discouraged with your equipment.

:o

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I updated my eTrex Legend Cx a while ago (30 days maybe) and had been having good success. Well today I went caching and we were off by 60 feet to the east on every cache.

It would appear my problem has re-surfaced. I haven't proven this with another GPSr yet, but when caching we'd get to ground zero, then head East about 50~60 feet and BINGO! The good news is it's consistent!

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I noticed an odd thing after accidently erasing all my waypoints while on a caching trip <_<

With only 23 waypoints in my Legend Cx, it worked just fine. Why? Came home and dl the whole shootin' match as before, and wham.. it was off again.

But the 2.60 firmware upgrade has totally taken care of the problem so I'm a happy cacher once again! <_<

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I founfd this post after I just bought my Venture CX. I went out yesterday to try my first couple caches and I was upset at how far away I was. I thought maybe it was me being new to this. I was 100 + ft away?

I just loaded the new 2.60 firmware, I hope this helps or I'm going to be disapointed.

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Man oh Man,

 

I just bought a Legend Cx, it's in the mail on it's way to me. My brother got me excited about geocaching and I wanted to buy a good color GPS that would also work for sailing. And this got great reviews on other sites. Then I read this thread. I do hope that 2.6 helps fix the problem.

 

It seems like laughingcat may have stumbled on something with the waypoint overload. This may explain why these units work for a while and then start to fail. Did anyone else try to clear their waypoints to see if the accuracy went up? it could be a memory issue.

 

Anyway, thanks to all for the posts, Please keep posting your findings as to the 2.6 update and the waypoint solution Laughingcat may have found. :)

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Anyway, thanks to all for the posts, Please keep posting your findings as to the 2.6 update and the waypoint solution Laughingcat may have found. :)

 

From what I can tell, 2.60 solved the accuracy problems. Prior to 2.60, I wouldn't use the GPS for geocaching; I'd stick with my 5 year old Legend.

 

After loading 2.60, I made some comparisions between the Cx and older Legend over several days, and both units were always within 5 feet of each other.

 

Then last week went on a caching trip into IL and trusted my Cx and located about 55 caches with no problem. There were 5 or 6 I couldn't find, so I got my old Legend but it led me to exactly the same location, so it was a "user error" locating the caches not a GPS problem. I had about 400 caches loaded, so I don't think there is a problem with the number of waypoints.

 

Rich

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From what I can tell, 2.60 solved the accuracy problems. Prior to 2.60, I wouldn't use the GPS for geocaching; I'd stick with my 5 year old Legend.

 

After loading 2.60, I made some comparisions between the Cx and older Legend over several days, and both units were always within 5 feet of each other.

 

Then last week went on a caching trip into IL and trusted my Cx and located about 55 caches with no problem. There were 5 or 6 I couldn't find, so I got my old Legend but it led me to exactly the same location, so it was a "user error" locating the caches not a GPS problem. I had about 400 caches loaded, so I don't think there is a problem with the number of waypoints.

 

Rich

 

Rich, Thanks, that make me feel better knowing some good tests were done.

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From what I can tell, 2.60 solved the accuracy problems.

Not doubting your experience, but I notice that Garmin doesn't mention anything about improved accuracy on its update page. They do mention ...

 

Changes made from version 2.50 to 2.60:

* Fixed problem of shutdown when viewing map Topo Great Britain v2.

* Improved drawing of lines for MPC maps.

* Reduced variation in battery gauge indicator.

* Fixed display scrolling issues when searching for roads.

I just got my Venture cx (same receiver as Legend cx and Vista cx), and I did the upgrade tonight, so I don't have enough experience pre- or post-upgrade to evaluate the difference.

 

-ArtMan-

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One of the units we have is the Vista Cx with a 1gb card. That is nice!

Since we got it a couple of months ago, we have not been satisfied with the accuracy and have resorted to using the Cx for maps and the blue Legend to find the cache. The blue unit would take us to it every time and the Vista Cx was constantly off by 30-40 feet.

Calls to engineering have not helped and was always told that it was a matter of which satellites the unit is locked onto. We never bought into that one...

A couple of days ago, I flashed the unit with version 2.60, not knowing this could be a fix to the design error until reading this thread tonight. I just figured it needed to be kept current.

Going out for a cache today, the Cx took me so close to the cache that at GZ, I was about standing on top of it!

Although this was just one test, it sure worked well. This weekend will give the GPS a good workout and we will know something more by Sunday night. Preliminary thoughts on this and reading what people have reported since the 2.60 flash makes me think they just happened to include a fix in 2.60 and never admitted it.

Time will tell and we are looking forward to better results.

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;) MY $0.02!

 

Vista CX- I have been very disappointed with the performance/accuracy. Always reading 35'-45' off. Mostly to the east. Upgraded to 2.60 and called customer service. They checked over my settings, had me do a soft resest. (hold in the upper left zoom button, then power the unit on. Let set in the open for 30 min.)

 

After 7 finds and all of them within 5', I am a happy camper once again. Would recommend this unit to anyone if it continues the way it has over the last 7 finds.

 

Dr. P

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After hours of research I was minutes (e-bay) away from buying the Legend CX when a friend send this link. Here I thought I was confused before... now I am ready to give up. Geocaching seemed like a great excuse to go on a motorcycle ride but picking the right equipment is testing my limits. For a first timer, is the Legend C good enough for me? It sounds like it is working better.

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After hours of research I was minutes (e-bay) away from buying the Legend CX when a friend send this link. Here I thought I was confused before... now I am ready to give up. Geocaching seemed like a great excuse to go on a motorcycle ride but picking the right equipment is testing my limits. For a first timer, is the Legend C good enough for me? It sounds like it is working better.

 

I currently have the Legend CX, after upgrading from the Legend C. The Legend C is a great GPS, and if you are not concerned about the amount of maps you can load, then yes, the Legend C is plenty of GPS for you.

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After hours of research I was minutes (e-bay) away from buying the Legend CX when a friend send this link. Here I thought I was confused before... now I am ready to give up. Geocaching seemed like a great excuse to go on a motorcycle ride but picking the right equipment is testing my limits. For a first timer, is the Legend C good enough for me? It sounds like it is working better.

Thanks, a Legend C it is.

Wish me luck:)

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I was also having problems with my 1 month old Legend Cx when I discovered this forum. One very frustrating day I was off 30, 88, 74 and 28 feet :( . After loading the 2.6 update my unit has been working great. Yesterday it was always under 20 feet and usually under 10 feet from the cache :laughing:

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OK, Just got my Legend Cx, first thing I did was update to 2.6. put it outside for an hour to let it find all the birds. looks good even fount the new WAAS 51. it says I'm +/- 7 ft. Now I will go out and test it this weekend. Thanks for everyones help on this forum, I'm glad I found it. and thanks to Carolalma for starting it.

 

The LCx looks and feels like a nice unit from what I've played with it so far. I post my findings.

 

Update I now have the new WAAS 48 bird as well.

Edited by TheMaxxMann
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Got out today, first cache, I was only about 4 feet from the GZ.

 

The second cache I did not find, but There was no doubt that I was in the right area by the logs on the website, it was marked as a very difficult find and I'm a noob.

 

The third cache I did not find either but by the decription of the location I am sure I was right there but ther was recent construction so I need to verify the cache is still alive.

 

Unit works great and I couldn't be happier with it.

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I came across this thread as I was having "accuracy" issues with my Garmin Venture Cx and searching for answers. I bought this for my wife and stupidly I bought a different version than her daughter's (magellan explorist 500 le). Well as you can imagine they did not match. The daughter's was usually right on and the Garmin 200 feet off. I tried what I saw in the thread but with which most people had no luck. What I did was go to a very clear area and found the location again and let it stay for 30 minutes. For me this was perfect. I went out on my own the next day and walked straight to a cache near my home. In any rate I bought her a Magellan and kept the Garmin. The CX has worked great and found every thing we looked for. The Explorist is due in next week and now she is not sure which one she wants. The Garmin has awesome battery life. We were looking for a pond on Mohawk Mountain (CT) finally found it. I loaded my tracks to Google Earth from the Cx when I got home to see how I got there :D Have faith the Garmin Cx works BUT I have no doubt any GPS may have defect problems. Cheers

Edited by CTPapa
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The firmware upgrade to 2.6 fixed my ~40ft accuracy (to the west, always) issues. Now, after the firmware upgrade, I'm noticing that "unknown" caches (and not traditionals, virtuals, or multis) will be sent to my GPSr with wrong corrected coordinates (via GSAK, MacGPSPro, GPSBabel+). That is, I'll hand correct them in the software, but they'll end up with something just off from those corrected coords when they get in the GPSr (and they aren't the posted coords, either). I don't remember this happening prior to upgrading, but then again, I haven't been doing puzzles in the last couple of years, either.

 

Anyone else?

Edited by BuckyD
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Hello Bucky...is your gps set to the same coordinate system as the software you are using to send them....for example, degrees, minutes, decimal minutes or degrees, minutes, seconds...if so, they could be the same location indicated with differend digits.

 

Thanks for the suggestion -- that seemed to fix the problem in MacGPSpro (a recent software upgrade apparently reset it to the Taiwan datum rather than WGS84) -- the weird thing is that only the unknown type of cache was affected in a PQ -- the others were sent to the GPSr intact. I couldn't figure out how to check the settings for GPSBabel+, but that's for a different forum, I guess.

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Thank you for all the great advice. i recently picked up a used Legend CX and had logged my home coordinates. then I read this thread and did a reboot and let it sit in a window over night, this morning i went to the same place and checked the coordinates. They were off by about 36 yards. Will check to see if it gets me closer to a known cache.

 

MN Hunter

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Did a reset on legend cx. Got better accuracy out in the open but check it today at a known cache in the trees and it still read that I was 40 feet too far NW. I am thinking about trading it in for something a little more accurate. I am thinking of one of the GPSMAP units, Any suggestions/advice on which one to get will be greatly appreciatd

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Did a reset on legend cx. Got better accuracy out in the open but check it today at a known cache in the trees and it still read that I was 40 feet too far NW. I am thinking about trading it in for something a little more accurate. I am thinking of one of the GPSMAP units, Any suggestions/advice on which one to get will be greatly appreciatd

 

Sounds like something is wrong with the firmware or some setting, not the unit itself - Any thought of sending it in? Hate to see you spend the $ on a new gpsr if you are just missing a firmware upgrade or a tweaking. Or even a warranty service - unless you just want a new one

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Hello all,

 

I read this discussion with great interest, since I also tried a Venture Cx recently and had similar issues. This one, being new, had the 2.60 firmware already. What I saw a lot of were wild jumps in position. In one case, I was driving around a corner in a suburban neighborhood, and it momentarily jumped 0.7 miles then right back!

 

Of course, my max speed was way off too. I contacted Garmin and they told me to do a master reset (same as many here have been told). They said data from one of the satellites could be "corrupted". I asked, "Wouldn't the unit update the data with new data, especially if it were old satellite data?" The response was, "Not if it is corrupted." Not that helpful... But I did the reset anyway, and it did not help. I still got the jumps.

 

One jump also occurred when I was driving on a country road. The track stopped for a short bit then resumed with a large spike.

 

I have an older GPS II+ that I am replacing (it does not pick up signal anymore), and I also have a GPS III Pilot. These have quad antennas, and I never saw this jumping around behavior. Note that I have also seen jumps on the GPSMAP 60, which has a quad. I understand that if the signal is not great it will not be able to keep a good track, but the jumps are really annoying, and it seems to me the unit could recognize that there is a very errant jump...

 

I've seen a number of posts here that state they think 2.60 has fixed their Legend/Venture Cx. But I also saw a lot of posts that seemed to indicate there were still inaccuracies. What is the feeling these days?

 

Thanks, LavaJoe

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I've downloaded 2.60 but am still having problems. My old Legend still works better than the Cx. I'm not totally familiar w/ the Cx so need some advice.

 

I've seen several references to HARD RESET and SOFT RESET. Perhaps I need to do this?? Will someone with knowledge in this area please explain how to do this? Then what should I expect to do after the reset?

 

Thanks very much,

star-geezer

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I was having the same problem.Make sure you have ver 2.60 you can check this by having the unit off,then press and hold the center joystick and turn it back on.at the top it should say 2.60.if it doesnt give garmin a call.make sure you have your usb and by your pc next to you.their service is a+++++

 

waas enabled

gs84

off road

this thing is so accurate i almost trip on caches.it even shows elevation difference between floors IN MY HOUSE.Im located 35mi west of chicago.

 

Good luck!

Banderlog

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I have an older GPS II+ that I am replacing (it does not pick up signal anymore), and I also have a GPS III Pilot. These have quad antennas, and I never saw this jumping around behavior.

 

Update: I managed to fix my GPS II+. I took it apart and found the the center coaxial cable conductor was broken (probably due to rotating the antenna back and forth over time). I resoldered it, and it works like a charm! It's cool to have this "classic" GPS unit working again. The graphics on the GPS II+ are pretty primitive compared to the modern units!

 

The interesting thing is I found that upon first acquisition of signal, the even the GPS II+ showed a small spike. So, perhaps it is normal for Garmin units to spike as they are getting the initial fix locked.

 

-LavaJoe

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Bedward bought me a Legend C when we started this craziness. It's great, extremely accurate, but I wouldn't let him play with it. He recently bought himself a Legend CX. It's not accurate. Usually points in the right direction, but distance is not great when we get close. Recently, mine was, correctly, showing the cache 5 feet away, while his showed 80 feet away. What do you think? Is there some way to reset it, or should he send it back, or what? Thanks

 

I have given my son in law my old black & white Legend, and it extremely accurate. Better than my C or Cx

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