all my caches are off by several yards

[PFTybalt]

I have a Garmin 60SCx and all my caches seem to be off and i have no idea why? can someone give me some help.

[+Jhwk]

Well, you are using a handheld device that is getting faint signals from sats miles up and moving really fast. Plus, you never know how good the cache owners coords were when they set out their cache. 20-30 feet off is normal.

[PFTybalt]

well usally the caches are spot on, and for some reason my locater is moving around like crazy, and theres nothing over me.

[+GeoNorthNick]

I have a Garmin 60SCx and all my caches seem to be off and i have no idea why? can someone give me some help.

 

Your Garmin 60CSx has lots of features in it that are going to take some time to get used to so be patient as well ok. First if you have the Topo, City Navigation software and say other maps loaded into the unit you need to go into the Menu to hide all and only have one MAP running at one time. Per Garmin the unit can run with all Maps open but you need to only have one open at a time, this stops any software confilct with say Topo and City Nav. You can do this by pressing the Menu button TWICE. Then go to the setup option, after doing this you need to scroll through to the I icon at the top, its a circle with an I in it. After you get to that hit the menu button once. Now remember how to get to this screen because after you start to use this unit you will be going into this field a lot. This field allows you to turn on the City Nav. as well as disable the City nav. and turn on say Topo and turn Topo OFF, very very usefull but remember you can only view on at a time. Example, you can only view one MAP at a time, so if your needing to view the TOPO feature your going to need to go back into the Map setup option and disable the city navigation to view Topo. Ok that is the mapping information I can share with you.

 

Current sattelite calculations, your going to need to reset your sattelite reception to your current location, you do this by pressing the OUT button then power button at the SAME TIME for say one second then let go, please make sure your outside and second you need to let the unit stay outside for 20minutes to get what it needs. What I have done is lock my unit in my car sitting on the dash. Quick history lesson, my unit was doing the same thing and I had to send my unit back to Garmin and they sent me a new one that did the exact same thing. After talking with a tech @ 1-800-800-1020 they told me about the sattelite reception. I thought when I power my unit on it looks for the current sattelites and then uses that information to calculate my lat/long. WRONG- Were ever it was first turned on is were its trying to find sattelite reception. Example if you bought it from say someone in Iowa and you lived in California its looking for the sattelites in Iowa throwing off your Lat/long, silly I know but you need to get it to the most current sattelites so it will give you the correct lat/long and calculate correctly.

 

Ok I hope I have not lost you, the final mode you need to set or at least now its there is the routing MODE. Please hit the menu button and scroll over to setup once again after doing this go to the routing button and press enter. What you see should be Guidance Method ( I have mine set to prompted), Follow Road Method, and Next Turn Pop-up. The Guidance Method is when you go to a waypoint or a geocach and select it, it gives you the option of Delete, Map and Goto, when you hit the Goto option it will pop up a menu that wants you to select Follow Road or OFF Road, this is really helpful because if your off Road then self explanatory. Anyway back to the Routing PAGE if you see at the BOTTOM, VERY BOTTOM there is a field that says follow Road Options, go to that and press enter. Ok this is if say your geocaching you need to change your Calculate Routes For field. You do this by going to the Calculate Routes For field and press enter. After you do that is should bring up a pop up menu that says, TRUCK, BUS, Emergency, Taxi, Delivery, PEDESTRIAN, Bicycle and Car/Motorcycle. This menu you need to change to the appropriate kind of traveling your going to be doing. Say if your using the car for the first half then have it on car mode, when you get close enough then change it to Pedestrian mode, understand. Anyway I hope I have not lost you in anyway please if you need more help contact me via email and I will call you personally to help out. Take care and I hope you understand. GeoNorthNick. email= AdoptedPluto@charter.net

[PFTybalt]

thank for the help it seems to work now.

[DogFleazJR]

thank for the help it seems to work now.

 

I, too, had a lot of accuracy problems when I first got my 60CSx.

 

I was in the process of returning it, talked with Terry in Garmin customer service and he asked that I do a master reset and Auto Locate before I decided to return it.

 

That made all the difference. I have tested against a couple of benchmarks and map generated waypoints and it is now consistently within a 15 foot radius, even under the trees and around the ledges and escarpments found here in North Jersey and NY.

 

When I turned on the 60CSx for the first time, I changed the location from Tiawan to NYC and let it run for 30 minutes or so. Accuracy was running 15-18 ft in the open, 50-60 ft under the trees. MY ol'GPS V was better than that! I did a user reset which helped tighten things up, but my V was still far more accurate. Even after 2 battery changes (30 hours of use?) it just wasn't getting any better and I decided to call Garmin to arrange to send it back.

 

The master reset made a huge difference. Don't know why this is. Go outside where you have an unobstructed view of the sky (I went to a soccer field), turn the power off and then press and hold the following keys in the following order (you might need three hands!) Quit / Menu / Zoom Out / Power. Continue holding all of these for 10 seconds, then release. You may get a dialog box about maps, enter ok, then let it run for at least 20 -30 minutes, or longer if you can.

 

I then took the unit to Kansas with me (I was going on business, not just to test my GPS!) and just let it run under the big sky plugged into the rental car all day (I use my BlackBerry charger, same connector as the USB cable, one less charger to carry!). Of course, in Kansas I was getting +/- 8 to 10 ft readings. In Jersey +/- 10 to 14 ft on the road, +/-14 to 18 under the oaks. Sometimes higher, but generally below 20ft in most conditions.

 

Interestingly, WAAS doesn't seem to make that big of a difference with the 60CSx. While in Kansas, I would drive for 30 minutes with it off and watch the reported accuracy. Then I would power down and turn WAAS on. I was receiving 48 loud and clear, solid black bars all the way across with Ds (except no D on 48 or 51). Perhaps that is the point, with nine strong signals the GPSr has all the info it needs to get an accurate position with or without WAAS. The jury is still out on WAAS in Jersey. I get 51 just fine. Sometimes it seems to make a difference, other times it is hard to tell. I just leave WAAS on all the time and don't obsess over it any more.

 

Good luck with your 60CSx. If you have any doubts, I would call Garmin customer service. I had to wait on hold for 30 minutes but they seem to have helped me out.

[VoltageHz]

This thread has a lot of good information.

 

I have a question about accuracy. I did a master reset and let my 60Cx sit outside for an hour with a Gilsson antenna plugged into it. From that day on I get 7-9 foot accuracy with the Gilsson antenna when out in the open. However, with the antenna unplugged and running off the built in antenna on the 60Cx, the accuracy goes up to 16-25 feet. I can see how the bars drop from full strength to halfway or less when I unplug the Gilsson, I also loose a bunch of satellites.

 

20 foot accuracy isn't bad at all, I'm not complaining. I'm just trying to figure out why the Gilsson is so much better? It's not all that much bigger. Could there be a problem with the built in antenna?

 

Thanks!

 

EDIT: DogFleazJR, when I did a master reset I did the following: "Hold down ENTER and PAGE while powering up".

I assume your method (Quit / Menu / Zoom Out / Power) is different? Maybe I should try that way.

Edited November 3, 2006 by VoltageHz

[DogFleazJR]

 

EDIT: DogFleazJR, when I did a master reset I did the following: "Hold down ENTER and PAGE while powering up".

I assume your method (Quit / Menu / Zoom Out / Power) is different? Maybe I should try that way.

 

Terry at Garmin told me the steps for a "master reset" which is the Quit / Menu / Zoom Out / Power described.

 

I did the ENTER / PAGE / Power reset before I called customer support which seemed to help, but the unit's performance improved dramatically after the "master reset" as requested.

 

I don't know why it improved, nor do I understand why it was so poor out of the box. But I am a happy camper, now.

 

Good luck! and happy navigating.

[+baloo&bd]

Another question, prompted by a comment you made about the needle jumping all around, do you have the compass turned off? It will do some real funky things that sometimes appear intermittent if you don't have it off.

[+Renegade Knight]

Ignoring anything else. If the GPS is working right the compass pointer will jump around when you are too close to ground zero.

 

What's happening is that if you are standing within the error zone of the GPS (call it 20' for this example). The GPS can put you anywhere within that 20' and then it compaires that to where you were last time to figure out which way you are facing and then it uses that along with where you want to go is relative to your direction to tell you where to head next.

 

When you are too close you bounce around relative to ground zero, and relative to where you were standing last. Both problems combined make the needle jump around when you get close to the cache.

 

When you are a good distance from the cache if you stand still, the needle will bounce around because it's position calculations are bouncing around a 20' circle. It knows where you are (within 20') and it knows where you want to go, but it can't figure out what way you are facing because you are standing still and your position bounces around in a random circle rather than moving more or less in a straight line. This is where an electronic compass comes into play. Then the GPS can figure out which way you are facing.