etrex h how send to gps when GC ref is >6 characters?

[+the vicar's wife]

Using a garmin etrex h, the waymarks are identified by 6 characters. But many of my local caches have refs which are 7 or 8 characters long - the first 6 of which are identical. (EG GC23DNH and GC23DNX)

So when I send these 'down the wire' to the GPS then each waymark gets overwritten. Is there a way of removing the initial 'gc' or another way round this, other than pen and paper and entering each cache individually with a new reference name? Thanks for any help.

[+geojibby]

For the PC, there are applications like GSAK that I'm sure allow you to strip the "GC" out of the cache name. Are you using pocket queries to get your caches or are you doing it one at a time from the website?

 

Using a garmin etrex h, the waymarks are identified by 6 characters. But many of my local caches have refs which are 7 or 8 characters long - the first 6 of which are identical. (EG GC23DNH and GC23DNX)

So when I send these 'down the wire' to the GPS then each waymark gets overwritten. Is there a way of removing the initial 'gc' or another way round this, other than pen and paper and entering each cache individually with a new reference name? Thanks for any help.

[+the vicar's wife]

For the PC, there are applications like GSAK that I'm sure allow you to strip the "GC" out of the cache name. Are you using pocket queries to get your caches or are you doing it one at a time from the website?

 

One at a time from the website. Will have a look at GSAK. Thank you for your post

 

Using a garmin etrex h, the waymarks are identified by 6 characters. But many of my local caches have refs which are 7 or 8 characters long - the first 6 of which are identical. (EG GC23DNH and GC23DNX)

So when I send these 'down the wire' to the GPS then each waymark gets overwritten. Is there a way of removing the initial 'gc' or another way round this, other than pen and paper and entering each cache individually with a new reference name? Thanks for any help.

[+ecanderson]

I was unaware that any eTrex H didn't have a 16 (not 6) character limit. Something doesn't sound right. I'm sure I've heard stories here (recently) in another thread about a situation where the last character of the waypoint name wasn't being transmitted to the older eTrex. It was a computer or operating system specific issue. I'm afraid if you trim your GC codes down to 6 characters, you're only going to see 5. In other words, you'll always drop the last character. Though it may be a bit tedious, you should search this forum for the last week or so to see if you can't find the thread that dealt with this problem as I suspect you've got it as well. I'm sure I saw it somewhere.

 

Anyone else recall the name of the thread?

[robertlipe]

Etrex H, like the Etrex before it (and I mean that specific model, not the family name like 'Etrex Legend') has a six character name. If you use good software that knows about the receiver like GPSBabel or GSAK, it knows about the waypoint name limits of the receivers and it knows how to keep the names unique within those limits. Good software also doesn't make off-by-one errors - the supported waypoint name length is what you get.

[+ecanderson]

Etrex H, like the Etrex before it (and I mean that specific model, not the family name like 'Etrex Legend') has a six character name. If you use good software that knows about the receiver like GPSBabel or GSAK, it knows about the waypoint name limits of the receivers and it knows how to keep the names unique within those limits. Good software also doesn't make off-by-one errors - the supported waypoint name length is what you get.

My recollection isn't that it was an application error, but rather, that it was some kind of goof where when using the one-by-one download from gc.com, the serial connection was dropping a character at the end. Again, I have only a vague recollection of the topic name where that came up.

 

To the OP: Assuming you really are only good for 6 characters, when you use GSAK, if you specify %drop2 in the "Waypoint name" field, it will drop out the unnecessary "GC" at the front of every GCxxxxx cache code and it will fit fine then. I even use this on my Dakota to save screen space for other info for the descriptive data.

[+the vicar's wife]

Etrex H, like the Etrex before it (and I mean that specific model, not the family name like 'Etrex Legend') has a six character name. If you use good software that knows about the receiver like GPSBabel or GSAK, it knows about the waypoint name limits of the receivers and it knows how to keep the names unique within those limits. Good software also doesn't make off-by-one errors - the supported waypoint name length is what you get.

My recollection isn't that it was an application error, but rather, that it was some kind of goof where when using the one-by-one download from gc.com, the serial connection was dropping a character at the end. Again, I have only a vague recollection of the topic name where that came up.

 

To the OP: Assuming you really are only good for 6 characters, when you use GSAK, if you specify %drop2 in the "Waypoint name" field, it will drop out the unnecessary "GC" at the front of every GCxxxxx cache code and it will fit fine then. I even use this on my Dakota to save screen space for other info for the descriptive data.

 

Thanks - I discovered the %drop2 switch afer GSAK was recommended by the FTR (first to reply) - does exactly what I wanted. Just logged back to say thanks for telling about GSAK I'd not come across it before. And yes my etrex h really is only good for 6 characters and I don't think there is any 'fault' - just enjoying geocaching but sticking to budget. I appreciate eveyone bothering to contribute to this thread.

[+geojibby]

Glad to hear it works for you. I know that when I used MacCaching on the OS X platform (before Basecamp was released) it had the option available to strip the "GC" part, which was helpful.