Question about Premium Membership

[xkcerman]

I'm considering premium membership, but I want to know what to expect first. I'm using a Garmin eTrex Venture HC. What kinds of additional information about a cache will load to my device. Right now all I get are coordinates and the cache name. I would like to get things such as the cache size, difficulty, terrain, hints, etc...

 

Is this possible with my device?

[+johnvanderlip]

I have a premium membership and the same gps. I don't get the additional info you mentioned. I use an iPod touch for that.

The premium membership allows you to load hundreds of caches at the same time though, it's well worth it I think.

[+peterkraatz]

I'm considering premium membership, but I want to know what to expect first. ...

Is this possible with my device?

 

What you get out of your Premium membership and your GPS are two different things entirely. For the device, you should look at the manual and see what additional data fields your GPS supports per waypoint type.

 

As for the premium membership: you're buying access to advanced features such as the ability to download hundreds of WPTs at a time, setup notifications and etc. (I oversimplify somewhat here) Almost everyone I know has a two-device solution for carrying around descriptions, hints and additional cache information (or one GPS and some printouts) unless they are caching with a mobile phone GPS.

[Motorcycle_Mama]

With the eTrex Venture HC, you will not get the additional geocache data natively. The unit doesn't support paperless caching natively.

 

However, you can use GSAK and Pocket Queries and the appropriate GSAK macro along with Garmin's POI Loader software to load SOME of the geocache data to the unit as Custom POIs.

 

http://gsak.net/board/index.php?showtopic=8932&st=0entry81818

 

Alternately, you can use a secondary device (as mentioned above) to load the detailed cache data.

[+hukilaulau]

http://gsak.net/board/index.php?showtopic=8932&st=0entry81818

 

Alternately, you can use a secondary device (as mentioned above) to load the detailed cache data.

That's what I do, too. my primary gps is a Magellan eXplorist 500, which only has a little information.

For complete info, I have:

An old PDA, which worked well until I found faster ways.

A Garmin Nuvi 2xx (the most basic one I could find) Which I carry in a hard case and only take out if I'm stuck.

A blackberry smartphone, with Trimble Geocache Navigator installed. I don't like to use the phone as a primary cache finder, but it's great to look up the cache page and previous logs if I'm stuck, and also it means I don't have to do blind PQ's since I can find the nearest caches from wherever I am.

[+CrazySanMan]

I use an iPhone and an etrex Vista HCx. I uploaded a pocket query (a premium member feature) of the closest 800 caches that I haven't found centered around my house into the Vista. When I'm out I use the iPhone to search for closest caches and to navigate me to a parking area, then I use the Vista to make the find. The iPhone is great for reading hints, descriptions, logs, etc., but it eats batteries like crazy when the GPSr is active so I try to minimize it's use. (In fact, my iPhone battery will go down if I am using the GPS while it is plugged into my car charger - the GPS sucks more juice than the car charger provides).

 

I make several long road trips each year (Baltimore to Dallas) and the "Caches along a route" feature of the premium membership has been awesome for that. You can use the maps to highlight the route you are driving between two places and get a listing of every cache along the way. These can be downloaded as one GPX file and uploaded into your GPSr.

 

There are a lot of caches that are Premium Member Only caches. It's a good way to protect cool caches so that only the serious geocachers know of them, so they don't get muggled as often. There have been many times when I'm out with my girlfriend (who isn't a premium member) and as we are looking at our iPhones for caches to find nearby, I get 20-30% more listings than she does due to the premium member only caches.