Wanted to Say Thanks for the Help

[+vwaldoguy]

I wanted to pass along some info about my first real geocaching trip with all the gear. This forum has been a huge help, and I truly believe that I've got a rock-solid setup because of the great contributions here. I finally settled on a Garmin 60Csx GPSr, coupled with GSAK, Cachmate and an old Palm m125 that I had lying in a closet, along with a premium geocaching.com membership, and a combination of Topo 2008/CN 2009 maps. My first trip out allowed me to bag 5 out of 5 caches, so all in all, the entire setup worked flawlessly.

 

Paperless caching worked quite well. I loaded nearby caches via pocket queries into GSAK, exported them as waypoints to the GPSr, then exported a matching set of entries as a PDB database to Cachemate. By using the caches as waypoints (instead of custom POIs), I was able to use the geocaching 'found' feature of the 60Csx, which then adds them to the calendar GUI so I know which ones were completed out in the field. Added logs to GSAK when I got back home, then uploaded the logs to the geocaching.com website directly from GSAK. Slick!

 

It all was very easy. Two weeks ago, this was all a blur, but by lurking around and reading old posts, it all makes sense now. Thanks again for all the great help. This forum is a huge asset! Here's to many more successful caching adventures!

 

Van

Edited October 10, 2008 by vwaldoguy

[+9Key]

Congrats on a successful trip! its nice to hear positive comments about the forums.

[+SUp3rFM & Cruella]

Glad to know you enjoyed that much. You got a "killer gear"! Hope to see you contributing and helping out some newbies, too! :-)

[+Lakebum]

Wow, nice starting setup.

 

I loaded caches by hand in my GPS, and carried paper up to around my 200th find.

 

Around 500 caches I got a Garmin CSX GPS, and now around 1000 I am paperless.

 

You certainly have hit the ground running. Good luck and have fun.