Geocaching Overseas

[breebarker]

I live in he USA but I'm going to Australia after Christmas. Will my handheld GPS work in other countires or will I need to buy one there or get Australian maps put on it? If so, how much approx are the maps? Thanks!

[+Huntleigh]

I live in he USA but I'm going to Australia after Christmas. Will my handheld GPS work in other countires or will I need to buy one there or get Australian maps put on it? If so, how much approx are the maps? Thanks!

 

Your GPS should work anywhere in the world (that's if you mean a handheld and not a smartphone).

 

Maps are a different issue and we would need to know make and model. There seems to be plenty of free maps for Garmins not so sure about other makes.

[+NYPaddleCacher]

I live in he USA but I'm going to Australia after Christmas. Will my handheld GPS work in other countires or will I need to buy one there or get Australian maps put on it? If so, how much approx are the maps? Thanks!

 

Your GPS should work anywhere in the world (that's if you mean a handheld and not a smartphone).

 

Maps are a different issue and we would need to know make and model. There seems to be plenty of free maps for Garmins not so sure about other makes.

 

A smart phone will work for geocaching in other countries as long as you don't mind paying astronomical fees for data roaming ($20 per megabyte in may countries).

 

I've found geocaches in 10 countries on three continents without additional basemaps. Sometimes it can take awhile to find ground zero when a cache is located in an area with lots of narrow streets, but it's certainly doable.

 

If you have a Garmin GPS, this site has a good set of maps for most places you'd want to go.

[+Huntleigh]

A smart phone will work for geocaching in other countries as long as you don't mind paying astronomical fees for data roaming ($20 per megabyte in may countries).

 

So long as it is a dual band GSM phone (Australia uses a different freq than the US). I presume most GSM smart phones are dual band?

[+geodarts]

A smart phone will work for geocaching in other countries as long as you don't mind paying astronomical fees for data roaming ($20 per megabyte in may countries).

 

Depending on the phone, perhaps, there may be ways to do it without roaming. I don't know of any reason why I could not use geosphere on my iphone to download pocket queries from other countries and then save the maps for offline use. I have used it in this way when I have been in areas without data service.

 

There are other apps that save maps and display gpx results. The Groundspeak app would allow this as well, but I think it is a little harder to use for these purposes.

 

Some of the geocaching apps on my pocket pc save offline maps, so I assume that most platforms would have a program with this capability. But be sure to turn off roaming if you do not want to be hit with a large bill at the end of a trip. There are some horror stories out there.

Edited December 14, 2010 by mulvaney

[+arprodeo]

When I tried caching in Europe I bought a Garmin maps for street in Paris but I found out afterward that I could have just used the hand held without the purchased map card. However, it took FOREVER to get a lock on satellites, and I found out that it sometimes takes a very long time (30 min or more) for the GPSr to get a new lock when the location has changed drastically while it has been off during the plane ride.

[+BlueDeuce]

When I tried caching in Europe I bought a Garmin maps for street in Paris but I found out afterward that I could have just used the hand held without the purchased map card. However, it took FOREVER to get a lock on satellites, and I found out that it sometimes takes a very long time (30 min or more) for the GPSr to get a new lock when the location has changed drastically while it has been off during the plane ride.

 

Yep, pretty much when traveling over 250 miles with the gps off. Not sure on days turned off. 30 days?

[+Bundyrumandcoke]

Breebarker, Geocaching is well and truely alive in Oz. You can do PQs via a postcode (zipcode) search. Go to this Australia Post website for a list of Australian postcodes. http://auspost.com.au/apps/postcode.html make sure you also choose the correct state. To give you a general idea, the postcodes start with the same number for each state, 0 for Northern Territory, 2 New South Wales, 3 Victoria, 4 Queensland, 5 South Australia, 6 Western Australia, and 7 Tasmania. All our postcodes are 4 digits long. You can cache easily here without maps on your GPS.

You might also like to head over to the Australian geocaching forum, http://forum.geocaching.com.au/ where you should pick up some info that you require, either in the appropriate state forum, or the international visitors section. There is usually a lot of interest amongst aussie cachers to help out overseas visitors. Where in Oz are you visiting?

Also, after travelling a huge distance, and depending on which GPS you have, you can usually enter a rough location in setup mode, which cuts the time it takes to reacquire at a new location.

Edited December 16, 2010 by Bundyrumandcoke