New Geocache Hunter Here

[+trezurratt]

New Geocache Hunter here, living in the Chicago burbs. Been a Jeeper, hiker, shed hunter and treasure hunter for years now. Can't believe I have never heard of Geocaching before now. Have a GARMIN GPSMAP 60CSX on order and plan on eventually purchase City Navigator North America or MicroSD/on transflash w/it, Trip and waypoint manager, Us Topo 24K east and central, along with some accessories. Am I on the right track so far? I also will be eventually investing in a PDA of sorts, maybe an IQ3600 "I think that is what it is called". Need some feedback on an ideal PDA if there is one other than the one I mentioned. Also wanted to share some pics with everyone. Am not a premium member yet. Once I get situated with my GPS I Intend on joining. Do you need to be a premium member to post pics in your gallery? I have done alot of reading on the hobby/sport. If I am missing anything let me know. I'm like a kid in a candy store, this sounds like some good times ahead. So hello to all you Geocachers and I hope to do some chatting online or in the field with some of you from time to time.

[Pinon]

Welcome....you will love it....have fun.

[+Chaos Team]

Your off to a great start

[+Munin]

One note is that the US Topo 24K maps specifically cover national parks, national forests, and (some, small number) of state parks. These maps provide no topo coverage outside of those areas - i.e., they're not 1:24K topos for the entire east/central/west US.

 

For wider topo coverage, Garmin offers their Topo US maps. They're only 1:100K, but they at least provide that lower-res coverage for the entire U.S., not just for selected parks. Between geocaching and your other outdoor activities, you might get more use out of the Topo US maps rather than the US Topo 24K maps (unless you spend a lot of time in national parks/forests).

 

On Garmin's "On The Trail" page you'll find links to both Topo US and US Topo 24K, along with a handy-dandy MapSource Map Viewer where you can select each product and see the coverage provided.

 

A 60CSx upgraded with a 1GB microSD card loaded with City Nav North America and Topo US (and possibly enhanced with US Topo 24K) maps is a wonderful piece of gear.

 

Also consider getting a 12V (cigarette lighter) cord to cut down on battery use while you're driving. The Garmin beanbag mount (such as you might find in their Automotive Navigation Kit) works okay in a TJ provided you're on paved or well-graded dirt roads, but tends to go dancing around (and off ) the dash once you hit even moderate washboarding - RAM makes a wide variety of alternative mounts that might be more suitable for offroading.

 

PDA questions I'll have to punt over to someone else - personally I use a Zaurus C3000, but that's far from being mainstream.

 

You don't need to be a premium member to upload pictures, however the gallery section of your profile isn't quite a general-purpose gallery like Flickr/etc - instead it's populated by pictures that you upload when you log a cache or move a travel bug, so the gallery contents tend to be mostly geocaching-related experiences.

[+Miragee]

Wecome to the addiction! You got a great GPSr.

 

To make the best of it, you really should consider becoming a Premium Member because then you will be able to create Pocket Queries which give you 500 caches per file sent to your email InBox.

 

There is helpful software available to download the cache data to your GPSr.

 

I use GSAK (Geocaching Swiss Army Knife) to manage the data and send the waypoints to my GPSr. I have an older monochrome Palm M500 on which I installed Cachemate for "paperless" caching. The data for it is Exported from GSAK.

 

You cannot directly upload pictures to your Gallery, but you can upload pictures to be associated with the caches you find. If I am going to post a picture to the Forums, sometimes I use this link. Pictures put there do not show up in your Gallery.

[+trezurratt]

Munin,

Thanks for the heads up on the Topo maps. I would much rather have the Mapsource Topo US maps Than the 24K series. I have another question? The Mapsource Topo US maps CD is the entire U.S. and needs to be uploaded to your unit, which in turn needs a MicroSD card. Here is my problem? If I purchase the preproggramed MicroSD card with my region, Topo Western Great lakes. Is that card packed full of memory by holding that software or is it also like an expandable memory card? It doesn't say in the description. I'm not looking to bury myself W/ bills, I just want to do it right and get the most out of the unit. I wonder how many people actually go out with a SD card or 2 or 3?

Again, you have been a great help!! I also appreciate the links, they will be helpful in preparing myself for this new hobby and new way to hit the forest preserves.

 

Regards

Trez

[+trezurratt]

Wecome to the addiction! You got a great GPSr.

 

Hello!! Nice big group and addicted to Geocaching too I see. Thanks for all the hints, tricks and links! I tried to upload a picture, and I did. Just not sure where it is? I plan on becoming a member real soon and the GSAK page sounds like what I plan to use to help make life easier with all the caching. Good Luck out there and let me know what you think of the upload if you happen to run across it. Thanks again!!

 

To make the best of it, you really should consider becoming a Premium Member because then you will be able to create Pocket Queries which give you 500 caches per file sent to your email InBox.

 

There is helpful software available to download the cache data to your GPSr.

 

I use GSAK (Geocaching Swiss Army Knife) to manage the data and send the waypoints to my GPSr. I have an older monochrome Palm M500 on which I installed Cachemate for "paperless" caching. The data for it is Exported from GSAK.

 

You cannot directly upload pictures to your Gallery, but you can upload pictures to be associated with the caches you find. If I am going to post a picture to the Forums, sometimes I use this link. Pictures put there do not show up in your Gallery.

[+trezurratt]

THE FIRST RESPONSE I SENT TO MYSELF SO HERE GOES....

 

Munin,

Thanks for the heads up on the Topo maps. I would much rather have the Mapsource Topo US maps Than the 24K series. I have another question? The Mapsource Topo US maps CD is the entire U.S. and needs to be uploaded to your unit, which in turn needs a MicroSD card. Here is my problem? If I purchase the preproggramed MicroSD card with my region, Topo Western Great lakes. Is that card packed full of memory by holding that software or is it also like an expandable memory card? It doesn't say in the description. I'm not looking to bury myself W/ bills, I just want to do it right and get the most out of the unit. I wonder how many people actually go out with a SD card or 2 or 3?

Again, you have been a great help!! I also appreciate the links, they will be helpful in preparing myself for this new hobby and new way to hit the forest preserves.

 

Regards

Trez

 

One note is that the US Topo 24K maps specifically cover national parks, national forests, and (some, small number) of state parks. These maps provide no topo coverage outside of those areas - i.e., they're not 1:24K topos for the entire east/central/west US.

 

For wider topo coverage, Garmin offers their Topo US maps. They're only 1:100K, but they at least provide that lower-res coverage for the entire U.S., not just for selected parks. Between geocaching and your other outdoor activities, you might get more use out of the Topo US maps rather than the US Topo 24K maps (unless you spend a lot of time in national parks/forests).

 

On Garmin's "On The Trail" page you'll find links to both Topo US and US Topo 24K, along with a handy-dandy MapSource Map Viewer where you can select each product and see the coverage provided.

 

A 60CSx upgraded with a 1GB microSD card loaded with City Nav North America and Topo US (and possibly enhanced with US Topo 24K) maps is a wonderful piece of gear.

 

Also consider getting a 12V (cigarette lighter) cord to cut down on battery use while you're driving. The Garmin beanbag mount (such as you might find in their Automotive Navigation Kit) works okay in a TJ provided you're on paved or well-graded dirt roads, but tends to go dancing around (and off ) the dash once you hit even moderate washboarding - RAM makes a wide variety of alternative mounts that might be more suitable for offroading.

 

PDA questions I'll have to punt over to someone else - personally I use a Zaurus C3000, but that's far from being mainstream.

 

You don't need to be a premium member to upload pictures, however the gallery section of your profile isn't quite a general-purpose gallery like Flickr/etc - instead it's populated by pictures that you upload when you log a cache or move a travel bug, so the gallery contents tend to be mostly geocaching-related experiences.

[+Jhwk]

Well, welcome to your face.

When you are having a bad cache day, it's still better than your best day at work

 

Have fun

[+Munin]

Thanks for the heads up on the Topo maps. I would much rather have the Mapsource Topo US maps Than the 24K series. I have another question? The Mapsource Topo US maps CD is the entire U.S. and needs to be uploaded to your unit, which in turn needs a MicroSD card. Here is my problem? If I purchase the preproggramed MicroSD card with my region, Topo Western Great lakes. Is that card packed full of memory by holding that software or is it also like an expandable memory card? It doesn't say in the description. I'm not looking to bury myself W/ bills, I just want to do it right and get the most out of the unit. I wonder how many people actually go out with a SD card or 2 or 3?

Whether or not the preprogrammed microSD cards are writeable is a question that's been posed by others several times in the forums, but I haven't seen an answer yet - apparently none of us here in the forums have invested in the preprogrammed cards. The closest I've found to vaguely authoritative info was the Garmin Blue Chart User's Guide, which cautions on page 4:

 

"Do not use preprogrammed BlueChart cards for saving MapSource maps. The preprogrammed data will be lost. Remove any BlueChart cards in your Garmin unit before transferring MapSource maps to the unit to avoid losing the preprogrammed data. If you overwrite the preprogrammed data on a BlueChart card, Garmin will not replace or recover the lost data."

To me this sounds like the BlueChart preprogrammed cards are writeable, so I'd expect the others (City Nav and Topo cards) are the same. However it also sounds like there's no way to merge in additional maps, like adding MapSource City Nav maps to a preprogrammed Topo US card or vice versa - if you transfer MapSource maps to the card, you blow away the original maps in an unfortunately permanent manner.

 

Some thoughts that come to mind...

 

A single preprogrammed Topo US card, like the Western Great Lakes you mentioned, goes for $76.95 at TheGPSStore.com. The full version of Topo US can be had for $89.95 at GPSNow.com. So one way of looking at this is that you can get 50 states of topo coverage for $13 more than the 7 states comprising the Western Great Lakes card. Of course, an equally valid way of looking at this is that if you're never going to camp/hike/offroad in any of those other 43 states, then perhaps there's not much point to spending the extra $13 to have their topo maps.

 

Since it doesn't sound like you can merge in additional map sets onto a preprogrammed card (not without blowing away the original maps ), you'd presumably be doing a card swap whenever you want to change from City Nav maps (say, loaded onto the 64MB microSD that was included with your 60CSx) to the preprogrammed Topo West Great Lakes. If my understanding of the 60CSx layout is correct (I've got the 76CSx myself, which has a different card/battery layout), you have to open the back and remove the batteries to switch cards with the 60CSx. If you bought the full-up versions of both City Nav and Topo US and downloaded maps to a single microSD card, then you wouldn't have to open up the GPSr every time you transitioned from road to offroad. Switching cards is hardly the end of the world - I bet with a little bit of practice you could do this in under a minute - but perhaps a teensy bit inconvenient if you end up doing the swap-a-roonie half a dozen times on each cache outing. (Drive to parking, swap, hike to cache and back, swap, drive to next cache, swap, hike to/from cache, swap, drive, swap, hike, swap, drive, swap, hike, swap...you get the picture.)

 

If you went with the full-blown versions of both City Nav and Topo US, the 64MB microSD card that came with your 60CSx is large enough to hold combined street and topo maps covering at least 75% of IL. Depending on how far you tend to roam on your caching/Jeeping/etc trips, this might be perfectly adequate. As a rough visualization aid, the following area with both street and topo maps would use 58.1 MB:

 

 

There's plenty of games to play with coverage, of course - you could drop the Peoria and Champaign areas and pick up a mix of street and topo maps in WI or IN, for instance. (And of course you can always download a different combination of maps to suit specific trips - 64MB worth of map data should take well under 10 minutes to transfer to your GPSr, so customizing the maps for vacations and suchlike isn't a big deal. I used to frequently download different map combos to my 76CS for out-of-state business trips.)

 

You've also got options for spreading purchases out over time to gradually increase the functionality of your GPSr without having to shake out the couch cushions looking for spare change. Perhaps start with City Nav v8, giving you autorouting (very cool) and a reasonably rich POI database that can be oh-so-handy for pre-/post-/non-caching activities. (My muggle g.f. and I have discovered that a copy of Zagat's restaurant guide and City Nav make a wicked combo for exploring new restaurants. ) As a reference point, you could fit City Nav v8 maps for all of IL in 51.3MB.

 

Maybe a bit later on pick up a copy of US Topo, drop the street maps for the southern/southwestern portions of IL and move to a combination street and topo setup like the 58.1 MB example in the picture above.

 

Then still later on, if you're exploring far and wide and the 64MB card starts feeling a bit cramped, go pick up a 512MB or 1GB microSD card. (You can always pick up a 1GB at a well-known online computer store like NewEgg ($41.99), but people have also found even better deals by keeping their eyes open for sales/rebates/specials at other online stores.)

[+geognerd]

When you are having a bad cache day, it's still better than your best day at work

So true!

 

Trezurratt, you may want to take a look at the Geocachers of Northeastern Illinois (GONIL) forum and possibly meet up with some local cachers to get a taste of geocaching.

[+trezurratt]

Munin,

Thanks again for the crash course!! I have one more question for the time being. I am going to purchase my first piece of software along W/ the 1GB card. You suggested City Nav v8. Is this software the same, better, not as good or completely different than the city select which comes with the Automotive Navigation kit ? I read and reread and lost my links and am somewhat frazzled at present. Thanks in advance!!

 

Regards........

 

 

name='Munin' date='Jul 23 2006, 06:32 PM' post='2358317']

Thanks for the heads up on the Topo maps. I would much rather have the Mapsource Topo US maps Than the 24K series. I have another question? The Mapsource Topo US maps CD is the entire U.S. and needs to be uploaded to your unit, which in turn needs a MicroSD card. Here is my problem? If I purchase the preproggramed MicroSD card with my region, Topo Western Great lakes. Is that card packed full of memory by holding that software or is it also like an expandable memory card? It doesn't say in the description. I'm not looking to bury myself W/ bills, I just want to do it right and get the most out of the unit. I wonder how many people actually go out with a SD card or 2 or 3?

Whether or not the preprogrammed microSD cards are writeable is a question that's been posed by others several times in the forums, but I haven't seen an answer yet - apparently none of us here in the forums have invested in the preprogrammed cards. The closest I've found to vaguely authoritative info was the Garmin Blue Chart User's Guide, which cautions on page 4:

 

"Do not use preprogrammed BlueChart cards for saving MapSource maps. The preprogrammed data will be lost. Remove any BlueChart cards in your Garmin unit before transferring MapSource maps to the unit to avoid losing the preprogrammed data. If you overwrite the preprogrammed data on a BlueChart card, Garmin will not replace or recover the lost data."

To me this sounds like the BlueChart preprogrammed cards are writeable, so I'd expect the others (City Nav and Topo cards) are the same. However it also sounds like there's no way to merge in additional maps, like adding MapSource City Nav maps to a preprogrammed Topo US card or vice versa - if you transfer MapSource maps to the card, you blow away the original maps in an unfortunately permanent manner.

 

Some thoughts that come to mind...

 

A single preprogrammed Topo US card, like the Western Great Lakes you mentioned, goes for $76.95 at TheGPSStore.com. The full version of Topo US can be had for $89.95 at GPSNow.com. So one way of looking at this is that you can get 50 states of topo coverage for $13 more than the 7 states comprising the Western Great Lakes card. Of course, an equally valid way of looking at this is that if you're never going to camp/hike/offroad in any of those other 43 states, then perhaps there's not much point to spending the extra $13 to have their topo maps.

 

Since it doesn't sound like you can merge in additional map sets onto a preprogrammed card (not without blowing away the original maps ), you'd presumably be doing a card swap whenever you want to change from City Nav maps (say, loaded onto the 64MB microSD that was included with your 60CSx) to the preprogrammed Topo West Great Lakes. If my understanding of the 60CSx layout is correct (I've got the 76CSx myself, which has a different card/battery layout), you have to open the back and remove the batteries to switch cards with the 60CSx. If you bought the full-up versions of both City Nav and Topo US and downloaded maps to a single microSD card, then you wouldn't have to open up the GPSr every time you transitioned from road to offroad. Switching cards is hardly the end of the world - I bet with a little bit of practice you could do this in under a minute - but perhaps a teensy bit inconvenient if you end up doing the swap-a-roonie half a dozen times on each cache outing. (Drive to parking, swap, hike to cache and back, swap, drive to next cache, swap, hike to/from cache, swap, drive, swap, hike, swap, drive, swap, hike, swap...you get the picture.)

 

If you went with the full-blown versions of both City Nav and Topo US, the 64MB microSD card that came with your 60CSx is large enough to hold combined street and topo maps covering at least 75% of IL. Depending on how far you tend to roam on your caching/Jeeping/etc trips, this might be perfectly adequate. As a rough visualization aid, the following area with both street and topo maps would use 58.1 MB:

 

 

There's plenty of games to play with coverage, of course - you could drop the Peoria and Champaign areas and pick up a mix of street and topo maps in WI or IN, for instance. (And of course you can always download a different combination of maps to suit specific trips - 64MB worth of map data should take well under 10 minutes to transfer to your GPSr, so customizing the maps for vacations and suchlike isn't a big deal. I used to frequently download different map combos to my 76CS for out-of-state business trips.)

 

You've also got options for spreading purchases out over time to gradually increase the functionality of your GPSr without having to shake out the couch cushions looking for spare change. Perhaps start with City Nav v8, giving you autorouting (very cool) and a reasonably rich POI database that can be oh-so-handy for pre-/post-/non-caching activities. (My muggle g.f. and I have discovered that a copy of Zagat's restaurant guide and City Nav make a wicked combo for exploring new restaurants. ) As a reference point, you could fit City Nav v8 maps for all of IL in 51.3MB.

 

Maybe a bit later on pick up a copy of US Topo, drop the street maps for the southern/southwestern portions of IL and move to a combination street and topo setup like the 58.1 MB example in the picture above.

 

Then still later on, if you're exploring far and wide and the 64MB card starts feeling a bit cramped, go pick up a 512MB or 1GB microSD card. (You can always pick up a 1GB at a well-known online computer store like NewEgg ($41.99), but people have also found even better deals by keeping their eyes open for sales/rebates/specials at other online stores.)

[+Munin]

Thanks again for the crash course!! I have one more question for the time being. I am going to purchase my first piece of software along W/ the 1GB card. You suggested City Nav v8. Is this software the same, better, not as good or completely different than the city select which comes with the Automotive Navigation kit ? I read and reread and lost my links and am somewhat frazzled at present. Thanks in advance!!

Good catch, trezurratt - I missed that the Auto Nav Kit was still listing City Select. City Select has been phased out by Garmin, and no further updates will be released. City Nav v8 will continue to be supported and updated. (Basically in the past Garmin supported both product lines, marketing City Select for handhelds and City Nav for their automobile units. Then one day they woke up and asked themselves why they were spending time and effort maintaining two virtually identical products. So they decided to retire City Select, and tweaked their City Nav software to be a little more friendly for handhelds - City Nav v7 had huge map segments, unsuitable for use with older handhelds containing relatively small amounts of non-expandable memory, so one of the changes for City Nav v8 was to slice and dice the maps into smaller segments. Not as much of a concern with their newer "x" models where you can simply stick in a bigger microSD card, but it was an important change for just about every other handheld they'd sold previously.)

 

I have both City Select v7 (on a 76CS) and City Nav v8 (on a 76CSx). At least here in eastern MA I've found them to be pretty comparable as far as autorouting goes. City Nav v8 is a little more up-to-date, but only real place I've noticed a difference so far has been one intersection a couple of towns over where CS always wanted to make a left turn - unfortunately, not a legal option there - while CN appears to be aware of the no-left-turn prohibition and correctly routes down to the next intersection, where a left is legal. Not sure if it's the firmware in the CSx GPSr or improvements in CN v8, but I also like the way directions through rotaries (aka traffic circles, aka roundabouts) are handled - on the 76CS GPSr with CS v7, it tried to guide you through each little segment of the rotary individually (go 50 ft on A Street, 50 feet on B street, 50 feet on C street, right turn onto D street), wherease the 76CSx with CN v8 gives the more concise and more usable "go to fourth exit on roundabout". (If the Chicago area hasn't had rotaries inflicted on its streets and you have no clue what I'm talking about, consider yourself lucky. ) Overall, call it 99.9% the same for routing around here. CN v8 also has the latest/greatest Points-of-Interest database, and contains several restaurants that were missing in CS v7. Given a choice, I'd go for City Nav just because it's a little more up-to-date, but it's an incremental improvement, not some massive rewrite with tons of new gotta-have features.

 

Garmin should provide a free upgrade to City Nav v8 if you were to buy an Auto Nav Kit containing City Select - their policy has long been that they provide free a upgrade if you end up buying an older product after a newer version has been released. However, from what I've read in the forums here they have not yet created upgrade discs for CN v8 - right now they just have the full-up retail version available - so even though you'd qualify for one, it'd be a while longer before you could actually get your hands on a CNv8 upgrade disc. (For what it's worth, I had zero problems obtaining the City Select v7 upgrade after ording an Auto Nav Kit that shipped with the then-obsolete City Select v6. Hopped onto Garmin's website, filled in a short form, and less than a week later I received the CS v7 upgrade DVD.)

 

If you're interested in the Auto Nav Kit, my thought would be to first call/email some of the online vendors and see if any of them have Auto Nav Kits containing City Nav v8 instead of City Select - it's always possible that updated kits have been shipped and that the information on the web sites hasn't been updated yet. (Probably a long shot, but hey, can't hurt to ask. ) If that doesn't pan out, it's a tough call. If money were no object, I'd just order City Nav v8 and pick up the 12V adapater and bean bag mount individually - taking GPSNow as an example, it'd be CNv8 ($119.95) + 12V cable (19.95) + 60C/CS mounting bracket ($25.95) + Friction Mount ($29.95) = $195.80 total, versus $159.95 for the Auto Nav Kit with City Select v7. (In the "money is no object" mindset, I might think "what's an extra $40 given that I'm already spending several hundred on the GPSr, maps, and accessories".) But that $40 difference in price almost covers the cost of a 1GB microSD card from NewEgg, or would make up nearly half the purchase price of the US Topo map software somewhere down the road (or simply dinner with the spouse/sig-other for being so nice about me blowing money on toys ) - so if I were trying to keep the toy budget under control I'd certainly consider getting the Auto Nav Kit even if it came with City Select instead of City Nav, and figure that for the savings I can afford to wait a bit until Garmin starts producing City Nav upgrade discs.

[codeyellow]

Lots of great info here as Im picking me up a 60CSX real soon myself and Im just sucking up this info:)

 

What exactly are the TOPO maps? DO I need that too.

 

Im pretty sure Ill grab the city select V8

[+Munin]

What exactly are the TOPO maps? DO I need that too.

"Topo" is short for "topographic" - maps that show terrain features like hills, wetlands, etc. These aren't needed (in the sense of "required") for geocaching - I found my first 100+ caches using a Garmin Foretrex 201, a unit which has zero support for maps of any kind. (I also got myself a bit ...ummm... mislocated - okay, lost - driving to/from caches on a number of trips, which was one of the main reasons I upgraded to a GPSr with maps and autorouting.)

 

Topos are useful for visualizing the terrain, which can be handy for planning your route to a cache. Is the cache on top of a hill, or on the far side? If it's on top of the hill, is one direction a gentler approach than another? If it's on the far side of the hill but at the bottom, does it look like any trails might loop around the base of the hill, perhaps allowing a less strenuous hike? Is there a stream in between me and the cache, where I might want to keep an eye out for a bridge to cross, even if it doesn't seem to be the most direct route?

 

To get an idea of the differences between City Nav and US Topo maps, here's two views of a park in my area:

 

<== City Nav -vs- US Topo ==>

 

With the City Nav map, the park is just a big old blob of green. Nice to know that it's a park, but that's about all City Nav can tell me. With the US Topo map, we can see potentially useful things. There's at least four prominent (named) hilltops in this area - that's those little blue and white mountain shapes. The one I've got the cursor over, Burrill Hill, is 284 feet high, with some of the nearby contour lines showing 98', 131', 164' - basically if there were a cache on Burrill Hill, I'm looking at anywhere from a 120' to a 186' elevation change depending on which direction I'm approaching the hill from. Okay, so this area isn't exactly flat as a pancake, but it's also hardly the Alps - I reckon I can survive the hike. It's a little hard to see, but just under the "C" in 'MERRIMAC" there's a topo symbol for "wetlands" (kind of a light-blue spikey shape) - might be something to consider if I thought I'd have to hike through that section (boots and bug spray, perhaps?). I can also see several roads, including one heading up Burrill Hill - most likely maintenance roads inside the park, and probably not open for driving since they don't show up on the City Nav map - so these might provide good hiking routes to get to various sections of the park. I also see a stream of some sort coming from "Walden Pond", meandering through that wetlands area, and apparently ending up down in "Breeds Pond" to the southeast. Hmmm - might be an obstacle, but those roads seem to cross it in a couple of places...so probably not going to be a problem if I stick to the park roads.

 

Would you be able to find caches in this park without topo maps? Why, of course you could! Might the info derived from the topo maps come in handy? Possibly! Will they help you figure out that the cache is inside the hollow stump of an old oak tree covered by a layer of leaves? Not a chance!

 

A few things to know about the US Topo maps. First and foremost - at least for US Topo, the maps show roads but do not contain navigation info - if you want automatic route planning, you also need something like City Nav or City Select. That sometimes trips people up, since they see roads on the topo map and don't realize that it takes more than just a brown line on a map to let a GPSr automatically compute road routes. (It's a little different for Garmin's Canada and UK topo maps - apparently those do contain navigation info and can autoroute.) Second, the US Topo maps rely on USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) map data, and some of those maps haven't been updated in decades. Chance are that this won't matter much - mountains don't tend to move around all that frequently, and larger maintenance roads tend to stay pretty much the same, but always keep in mind that the info on the map could be a bit dated - maybe a maintenance road has been relocated, or new roads built that don't show up on the map. There might be new subdivisions where the topo shows an open field, or a stream may have shifted its course a bit so that a cache turns out to be on the opposite bank of where you were expecting. (For that matter, always keep in mind that any map, even City Nav v8, can be obsolete - highways sometimes get moved/expanded/merged, interchanges get diddled with, exits are added/closed, etc.) Lastly, if you were already familiar with topo maps like the 1:24,000 scale USGS paper maps that people often use for backpacking trips, the US Topo maps aren't nearly as detailed, being 1:100,000 scale - you'll still see larger hills and mountains just fine, but some of the smaller hills might not be as obvious as they would be on the higher-resolution maps. Smaller trails that might be shown on a high-res paper map are usually absent from the lower-res US Topo maps - don't expect that these maps will show you every little footpath wandering through a park.

 

Im pretty sure Ill grab the city select V8

City Nav v8, perhaps? (City Select only goes up to v7, which is the final release for that particular series. )

[+Munin]

Just in case anyone's thinking about taking the path of buying City Select v7 (as part of the Auto Nav Kit) and upgrading to City Nav v8, Garmin now has City Nav v8 upgrade DVDs available for shipping.

[+trezurratt]

Just in case anyone's thinking about taking the path of buying City Select v7 (as part of the Auto Nav Kit) and upgrading to City Nav v8, Garmin now has City Nav v8 upgrade DVDs available for shipping.

 

Munin,

How's it going today? Hope all is well. I received my 60CSx in yesterdays mail. A little overwelhming, but I will crawl, walk, run as I always have. In my excitement I turned the dadgum thing on inside and just as the sky opened up and drenched us. The directions say to turn it on outside on a clear day. I'm not sure how important this is? But I am sure the thing found itself. Right now it's tracking at about +or -16ft. I gather this is pretty good. Thanks for the heads up on the city select upgrade. The unit came with th trip and waypoint manager in the bundle, so I won't be needing to buy that. I'm tempted to just get City Navigator North America V8 now and worry about the auto nav kit later. You have been a great help to me and I'm sure others in the forum. I thank you. Hope to stay in touch. Take care.......

[+Munin]

How's it going today? Hope all is well. I received my 60CSx in yesterdays mail. A little overwelhming, but I will crawl, walk, run as I always have. In my excitement I turned the dadgum thing on inside and just as the sky opened up and drenched us. The directions say to turn it on outside on a clear day. I'm not sure how important this is? But I am sure the thing found itself. Right now it's tracking at about +or -16ft. I gather this is pretty good. Thanks for the heads up on the city select upgrade. The unit came with th trip and waypoint manager in the bundle, so I won't be needing to buy that. I'm tempted to just get City Navigator North America V8 now and worry about the auto nav kit later. You have been a great help to me and I'm sure others in the forum. I thank you. Hope to stay in touch. Take care.......

Hey there, trezurratt - congrats on the new toy! With the 60CSx, you're probably fine powering it up indoors, especially if you were near a window. (Heck, I can usually get reasonable reception in the middle of the ground floor of my house. ) The directions about turning it on outside on a clear day are just the safest way for Garmin to ensure that the GPSr will be able to receive enough satellites to establish a position fix and retrieve the current almanac (orbital parameter) info. If your GPSr eventually got a lock and figured out where in the world it was sitting, then it's off to a good start. (Basically you won't hurt anything turning it on indoors - about the worst that could've happened would've been that it didn't pick up enough satellites for a position fix, and maybe thought it was in China or Quebec or something.)

 

One site that's well worth reading is Sputnik's Garmin GPS FAQ page. It covers a number of things that aren't terribly clear in the user manual. I know it was really useful when I moved from my little old Foretrex up to my 76CS.