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hi everyone, we are new to this game. we found our first cache at the weekend how cool!!

we managed to find that one cos we live close to it and recognised the place from its discription. we now want to buy a gps but only have about £100 to spend what would you advise? i have found one on a popular auction website a garmin legend for £89 is that what we want??? and do we need to buy additional maps? as this seems to be really expensive. thanks for reading my wafflings and hope someone can help.

 

chris :rolleyes:

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Legends are pretty good, but to be honest, I never use the mapping facility on the legend, and I find that under tree cover the basic yellow Etrex is better...

 

I'd go with a Yellow E trex and then move up to a 60cs / 60csx if and when you decide you want to get more serious / hav a bit more money to play with.

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Legends are pretty good, but to be honest, I never use the mapping facility on the legend, and I find that under tree cover the basic yellow Etrex is better...

 

 

Agree about the legend and tree cover .

 

Our Legend bought last year doesn't keep signal under trees or by tall buildings as often as my yellow extrex .But we've got two extrex's and it's only mine that is marginally better than the Legend.

 

We rely on paper maps so don't use mapping facililties ,but find the Legend more convienient than Yellow Etrex for converting WGS84 to OS map reference when doing multi caches ,to plot next location on map .

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I use a Legend i used to download the maps for the area i was visiting but nine times out of ten they are off road in a field or woods anyway! Nowadays i don't worry.i have been caching in areas i had no maps for and i still found the cache.Effectively you are looking for a dot on a map anyway! Other peoples remarks about bad signal in tree cover is quite right but unless you go for latest with sirf III aerial you will still find caches. I would hazard a guess that the vast majority of caches were hidden using a Legend or basic etrex. Good luck and welcome!

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We've found 400+ caches using a Garmin Geko 201, no mapping but nice and cheap for a beginner.

 

 

They are selling them for £80 at Aldi this Thursday I think (see previous posting on this forum a few days ago). Always been very happy with it and recommended it to friends who are happy too.

 

 

Good luck.

 

 

Paul

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We're quite happy with the basic yellow etrex - you have to enter the waypoints manually, but that's not too much of a problem unless you plan to do loads of caches in one day.

 

The only thing that I don't like about it is the colour - it's too obvious (and harder to disguise as a mobile phone) when you cache in central London!!!!!!

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thanks everyone, well i finally decided on a legend as i found one on ebay for £89 and that was cheaper than the yellow one in our local shops. i wanted to get a geko but aldi is about 50miles from us so no go.

 

all excited now it should be with us on thursday so look out sussex we are gonna be caching!!

 

chris

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thanks everyone, well i finally decided on a legend as i found one on ebay for £89 and that was cheaper than the yellow one in our local shops. i wanted to get a geko but aldi is about 50miles from us so no go.

 

all excited now it should be with us on thursday so look out sussex we are gonna be caching!!

 

chris

No need to wait until then :ph34r: If you really want to get started now, take a Google Earth printout with you and, in conjunction with the additional hint, try and find a (Regular size/Traditional) cache right away!

 

It may not be as simple, but it works. :D:ph34r:

Edited by Edgemaster
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I used a good 'ole yellow eTrex until it died on me, and have had the Legend for a few years now, and it's fine for 'caching....I've never had the maps on it, never really needed them.

 

One thing I would recommend you download, which is free, is Easygps...a program that will upload the co-ords from pc to gps...and vice versa. Link You get a cable supplied with the Legend which you will need, but don't with the yellow eTrex.

 

This is easy to use, it saves putting all the co-ords in by hand....just tick which 'caches you want to download, and they save in Easygps for uploading.

 

Oh....and welcome to the obses......err, I mean hobby :laughing:

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I used a good 'ole yellow eTrex until it died on me, and have had the Legend for a few years now, and it's fine for 'caching....I've never had the maps on it, never really needed them.

 

One thing I would recommend you download, which is free, is Easygps...a program that will upload the co-ords from pc to gps...and vice versa. Link You get a cable supplied with the Legend which you will need, but don't with the yellow eTrex.

 

This is easy to use, it saves putting all the co-ords in by hand....just tick which 'caches you want to download, and they save in Easygps for uploading.

 

Oh....and welcome to the obses......err, I mean hobby :laughing:

The cable can also be bought for the eTrex (or made in my case), EasyGPS is nice, there's also GPSBabel, and GSAK. GPSBabel converts between different GPS file formats and can send data to GPS units. GSAK, the Geocaching Swiss Army Knife, is an offline database of caches that supports transferring the waypoints to many other programs and devices.

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oh this new hobby is just a little obsessive, we got the legend downloaded easygps downloaded two caches and found them both this afternoon!!! great.

 

chris

 

Oh dear......sleep, work,watching tv.....they're all out the window now :anicute:

 

That's it, you're hooked :)

 

Have lots of fun with your new-found hobby....all the rest of us have!!

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