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Beer Baron 007

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My dad just bought me a Garmin eTrex Legend for my birthday :cool: . It will function mainly as a hunting tool (Northcentral Pa) but I'll be doing some boating (Abaco, Bahamas) and I'd like to use GC as a means of learning how to navigate properly.

 

One issue I'm having is that when I fire up my gps, the Map states I'm in Brookhaven, PA. Which would be fine if I weren't in West Conshohocken, PA B) There's a difference of about 18miles ATCF between the two locations. I'm just hoping the accuracy is a little better when I try to actually use this thing! B)

 

Any thoughts on how I reset the map to read my current location properly?

 

Also, the specs note there is no GC mode for this product. Does this mean I can't use it to go caching?

Edited by Beer Baron 007
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You can use that fine fo rgeocaching. The GC mode has something to do with pointing you from one cache to another or something. Most people I've spoken to find GC modes useless, and generally a marketing gimmik to get newbie cachers to buy GPSr with "geocaching mode". YMMV.

 

As for it being off 18 miles, that doesn't seem right. Are you outside with a clear view of the sky? It should tell you it's accuracy. When my Vista gets a fix, it generally starts at about 60 feet and quickly gets better to about 20 or 16 feet.

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Admo:

 

I suspected it might be something along those lines. Guess the only thing that has to be put into GC mode is me! B) dunno what is "ymmv"?

 

I'm getting accuracy of 9 feet (pretty good IMO) and shows a map of my true position, but for some reason I haven't figured out yet, it sometimes displays a city that's 18 miles away as my home position on the top of the screen.

 

You can use that fine fo rgeocaching. The GC mode has something to do with pointing you from one cache to another or something. Most people I've spoken to find GC modes useless, and generally a marketing gimmik to get newbie cachers to buy GPSr with "geocaching mode". YMMV.

 

As for it being off 18 miles, that doesn't seem right. Are you outside with a clear view of the sky? It should tell you it's accuracy. When my Vista gets a fix, it generally starts at about 60 feet and quickly gets better to about 20 or 16 feet.

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YMMV = Your Milage May Vary. Perhaps some people find geocaching mode useful. But it definately isn't necessary. I was surprised my Vista, which has no geocachimg mode, is "aware" of geocaching. When I mark waypoints, it lets my chose among a large list of icons to represent the waypoint (home, tall tower, parking lot, restroom, etc). Two of the options is "geocache" and "geocache found" represented by a treasure chest and an open treasure chest, respectively.

 

As for the city being your "home" position, it may just be that that city is the closest urban area your GPS knows about and defaults to that. I'm really not sure.

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ymmv = gotcha

 

My Legend also has those two items.

 

I guess that could be, but the area it's showing is one considerably less populated than the one I'm currently in. *Shrug* I'll keep tinkering with it until I get it figured out.

 

YMMV = Your Milage May Vary. Perhaps some people find geocaching mode useful. But it definately isn't necessary. I was surprised my Vista, which has no geocachimg mode, is "aware" of geocaching. When I mark waypoints, it lets my chose among a large list of icons to represent the waypoint (home, tall tower, parking lot, restroom, etc). Two of the options is "geocache" and "geocache found" represented by a treasure chest and an open treasure chest, respectively.

 

As for the city being your "home" position, it may just be that that city is the closest urban area your GPS knows about and defaults to that. I'm really not sure.

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My dad just bought me a Garmin eTrex Legend for my birthday :D . It will function mainly as a hunting tool (Northcentral Pa) but I'll be doing some boating (Abaco, Bahamas) and I'd like to use GC as a means of learning how to navigate properly.

 

One issue I'm having is that when I fire up my gps, the Map states I'm in Brookhaven, PA. Which would be fine if I weren't in West Conshohocken, PA :mad: There's a difference of about 18miles ATCF between the two locations. I'm just hoping the accuracy is a little better when I try to actually use this thing! :(

 

Any thoughts on how I reset the map to read my current location properly?

 

Also, the specs note there is no GC mode for this product. Does this mean I can't use it to go caching?

I'm guessing you don't have any additional maps loaded, other than the base map that comes with the unit. The base map is only going to have the bigger cities in it. Since West Conshohocken only has about 1,500 people, it's probably not listed. Brookhaven is about 5 times larger, pop-wise.

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Prime Suspect:

 

Unit came with Americas Marine Point Basemap , , Jan 2001 already loaded. W. Conshohocken now shows up when I told it to stop navigation to Brookhaven. I think I had inadvertantly panned the map and selected goto: Brookhaven.

 

Now if I can only figure out how to get a better map of the Bahamas for free...

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Unit came with Americas Marine Point Basemap , , Jan 2001 already loaded.

 

That is not a base map. It is a marine point database. The Legend ships with Americas Highways basemap and that's about all it shows, America's highways - just major roads, cities and bodies of water.

 

If you want detailed maps, Mapsource Topo is what you need to use with the Legend, as it has limited map memory and most other mapping solutions are memory hogs.

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