Can't Figure Out How to Get Benchmarks Into GSAK

[+Thot]

I spent the better part of a day yesterday trying to get benchmarks into GSAK in a useful form.

 

In your pinned Me First topic, under County Downloads, nothing seems to work. It reads:

 

If you click here, NGS - it will take you to the NGS site. Just select the state, click Get County Archives, select the county and choose the file format (zipped if you are on dial-up internet) then click Download. Save this file to your hard drive.

 

You will need to download BMGPX to convert the downloaded file into a GPX format for use with other programs. You can get BMGPX here. BMGPX

 

Once you have installed BMGPX on your computer all you need to do is drag and drop the county file (unzipped) onto the BMGPX "icon" and it will spit out a gpx file ready to use.

 

First, clicking on NGS, as instructed, is a dead link.

 

Second, after stumbling around on the NGS site I found my state, but there was nothing about "County Archives."

 

Third, so, I downloaded the huge State file and dropped it on BMGPX (an unsupported program) and it choked on the file.

 

Fourth, I found a page that allowed me to select my county's data but wouldn't allow me to download it. It refused saying I was asking for too much data.

 

Fifth, I downloaded some benchmark files from GC in Loc format (GPX doesn't appear to be available) but when imported into GSAK the descriptions are not present in a form that can be exported to my Palm or Nuvi in the way I do cache descriptions.

 

Is there a (hopefully straightforward) way to get benchmarks into GSAK.

[AZcachemeister]

For $10, I will send you a set of 3 DVDs with .gpx files for all counties of each of the the 50 states.

No muss, no fuss. Load them into GSAK and go Benchmarking!

[2oldfarts (the rockhounders)]

Go here http://www.ngs.noaa....n/datasheet.prl - select datasheets - select county - select your state - select the county you want - select get datasheets. Just remember that you can only select up to 1000 datasheets at a time. When it show the list of benchmarks go to "File" - select "save as" - name it the county chosen. Take the saved file & run it through BMGPX or NGS-GPX and drag and drop the output file into GSAK.

[+Thot]

Go here http://www.ngs.noaa....n/datasheet.prl - select datasheets . . .

Thanks, but that link doesn't work either.

[2oldfarts (the rockhounders)]

Go here http://www.ngs.noaa....n/datasheet.prl - select datasheets . . .

Thanks, but that link doesn't work either.

 

I just clicked on that link and it worked properly. When you click on it, it will take you to another page with links, just select the first one "Datasheets" and it should take you to the "Retrieval Methods" page where you select "county".

 

John

 

[jbuffethed]

I dont use GSAK to load benchmarks, but this is how I load them directly into my Colorado 300.

 

Click on the state and select the county: http://www.holoscenes.com/special/geocac/ds_archive.html

 

You will download a ".dat" file.

 

Download NGS->GPX http://ngs.tsqmadness.com/ngsgpx/release/NGSGPX-210b317.exe

 

It will convert to a usable gpx file. All location adjusted show as a gold treasurebox, location scaled shows as a "?" You get the full description as you would a cache. I use this all the time and works like a champ.

Edited September 13, 2011 by jbuffethed

[+EdrickV]

NGS-GPX may be able to process state wide datasheet files too, depending on the state and how many benchmarks are in the state. (I know it can handle the 12,000+ benchmarks in my state.) It also does a better job of creating GPX files. In addition to the Scaled/Adjusted it can set Intersection stations to show up as locationless caches. (With my particular program it doesn't have icons for all those types, so I used GSAK to change Adjusted and Intersection station icons to types my program can handle.) It can also make recovery reports into Geocache style logs.

[+Thot]

I dont use GSAK to load benchmarks, but this is how I load them directly into my Colorado 300.

 

Click on the state and select the county: http://www.holoscenes.com/special/geocac/ds_archive.html

 

You will download a ".dat" file.

 

Download NGS->GPX http://ngs.tsqmadness.com/ngsgpx/release/NGSGPX-210b317.exe

 

It will convert to a usable gpx file. All location adjusted show as a gold treasurebox, location scaled shows as a "?" You get the full description as you would a cache. I use this all the time and works like a champ.

 

Thanks, that worked slick. Somebody should update the pinned stuff with these instructions.

Edited September 13, 2011 by Thot

[foxtrot_xray]

NGS-GPX may be able to process state wide datasheet files too, depending on the state and how many benchmarks are in the state. (I know it can handle the 12,000+ benchmarks in my state.) It also does a better job of creating GPX files. In addition to the Scaled/Adjusted it can set Intersection stations to show up as locationless caches. (With my particular program it doesn't have icons for all those types, so I used GSAK to change Adjusted and Intersection station icons to types my program can handle.) It can also make recovery reports into Geocache style logs.

The program can handle the largest state - California, with about 65k station. HOWEVER, the biggest limitation with the v2 program was that it does everything in-memory. So doing a state like CA will pretty much hose the system if you have anything less than 4Gb of RAM. (v3.0, when it's released, will take care of this.)

[+Thot]

Wrong thread

Edited September 13, 2011 by Thot

[jbuffethed]

I dont use GSAK to load benchmarks, but this is how I load them directly into my Colorado 300.

 

Click on the state and select the county: http://www.holoscenes.com/special/geocac/ds_archive.html

 

You will download a ".dat" file.

 

Download NGS->GPX http://ngs.tsqmadness.com/ngsgpx/release/NGSGPX-210b317.exe

 

It will convert to a usable gpx file. All location adjusted show as a gold treasurebox, location scaled shows as a "?" You get the full description as you would a cache. I use this all the time and works like a champ.

 

I found a pic of how the above instructions show on my Garmin Colorado.

 

Green Box - Regular Cache

Gold Box - Adjusted Benchmark

? - Scaled Benchmark

Little antenna near cursor - towers/radio antennas