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Am I on the right track?


JZKA

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so a friend introduced me to geocaching recently and i think it is something my kids (9 and 7), who are also scouts, would also love to do.

 

so from all of my reading about my first gps, i am narrowed down to a Delorme pn-30 ($200) and a Garmin etrex HC ($125) or HCx (~$170).

 

it seems that for the delorme i can go completely paperless or i could save some money and stick with garmin which seems to be very popular units.

 

do i see myself caching all the time? nope - both kids are also active in sports and scouts and i travel often for work. we live in florida so having fun in the cold of winter (50 degrees :D ) is an option. i see us heading out a couple hours on the weekends and hitting up the easier caches so the added features may not be necessary. i also want something easy enough that the 9 yr old could use.

 

so am i on the right track?

 

which way would you go?

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Hmm, very good questions and points. I'm a Garmin lover and Groundspeak and Garmin have done a lot of work together too, to bring paperless caching and Wherigo to GPSrs. I know for sure that GC.com supports all Garmin products. It may support others as well. Me personally, I'd go with a lower end Garmin Oregon, such as the 200, or go with the Garmin Dakota.

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Hmm, very good questions and points. I'm a Garmin lover and Groundspeak and Garmin have done a lot of work together too, to bring paperless caching and Wherigo to GPSrs. I know for sure that GC.com supports all Garmin products. It may support others as well. Me personally, I'd go with a lower end Garmin Oregon, such as the 200, or go with the Garmin Dakota.

my friend (who introduced me to geocaching) has a garmin oregon iirc. i liked the unit a lot and it was very easy to use the touchscreen features - granted he set everything up and i just held it and was the hero for finding a few caches - but i dont yet know if i want to spend much more than $200 right now. i know that seems to be the magic threshold number in many posts.

 

i stopped at the $200 since i seem to have a habit of saying "well for $50 more i can get ____________" until i have spent a ton more than i originally set out to spend. but the oregon 200 is only $40 more :D.....

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Well, I know that you only want to spend $200. The issue is that when you start to spend as little as possible, you start to get as little as possible, at least thats the way the manufacturors have it set up. The more you spend, the nicer the product. Thats just common business practices. You know all that already though. I've only owned 2 GPSrs, the GPS Map60Cx and the Oregon 400t, so I don't know of any units out there that offer paperless caching for less than $200. I got my Oregon for $250 on black Friday, it was a steal. I would do a little more research. Garmin has a feature on their website, where you can compare all the features of any two units side by side, literally, so that you can pick which one that you want.

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The Delorme PN-30 offers full paperless caching and can be had on Amazon right now for $199. Actually the PN-40 has even been that low off and on in recent weeks. The advantage is that it also comes with routable TOPO maps and the TOPO USA software in the box. The Garmins are nice but detailed routable maps will cost you extra unless you can find free ones at gpsfiledepot.com. Something to consider when looking at total cost.

 

If your not sure if you'll really get into caching or not, the Etrex HC would do a perfectly fine job getting you to the cache for less money, just no extra bells and whistles.

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I have a DeLorme PN40 and several Garmin units. If it was just for casual geocaching I'd go with the Garmins.

 

The DeLorme offers a lot of bang for the buck being that it comes with topo maps included in the price, but I hate that it eats batteries like potato chips and that I need to bring my reading glasses along to read the tiny menu fonts. Also, the reception isn't quite up to the level of my trusty 60CSX.

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Newbie, here. I'm going out later today to look for a previous DNF where I just went by a Google map from memory. Today, I'm taking along images from Google Street view. Would GPS units get me closer?

i would surely say yes.

 

though i wouldnt say i am much further along than you, i have done this both ways. except for those caches that are very obvious where they would be (from google). a couple i saw today - google only had old pictures from when buildings today were just dirt fields, so it was hard to tell where it should go.

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Newbie, here. I'm going out later today to look for a previous DNF where I just went by a Google map from memory. Today, I'm taking along images from Google Street view. Would GPS units get me closer?

Absolutely.

 

Although some people use Google imagery to find caches, it can be very hit and miss. In some areas coordinates shown on google earth can be quite a bit off. Even the cheapest GPSr should be more accurate than google.

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Newbie, here. I'm going out later today to look for a previous DNF where I just went by a Google map from memory. Today, I'm taking along images from Google Street view. Would GPS units get me closer?

 

If you are doing only urban caches then I would say this method should work fairly well. However, for caches in the woods (my favorite kind) it would not work at all really.

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Thanks for your replies. I did find the cache without a device, on second try, and Google maps got me very very close. However, last night I put the geocache application on iPod Touch, and now I know why I had DNFs on several other caches; for one of them I was considering the area that pops up on the app. but with maps alone my search area was too large, and that spot was only one of many possibilities. I am doing only urban caches for now and I see what you mean that sometimes it wouldn't make a difference; I've also heard that where there are highrises, it's hard to get a reading. btw, nice app. and much less work and time than putting info. into iPod notes. I'll try to put off buying a GPS unit until I get a lot more experience. It's an addictive, fun hobby. :rolleyes:

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