MilamberDragon Posted June 27, 2003 Share Posted June 27, 2003 Well I just purchased a Etrex Legend from Offroute.com (geocaching.com partner) and I was wondering is there any quirks that I should know about the Etrex line. I this will be my first GPSr unit. Also for legend owners any tips or tricks you have found. Rather know the tricks so I dont have to spend much time worring about the unit and getting down to business of finding caches. Happy Hunting, ---------------- ~Milamber I have no signature to speak of. I am working on fixing that though. Quote Link to comment
Neo_Geo Posted June 27, 2003 Share Posted June 27, 2003 Ahhhhh... you're gonna love it! First, check out my post from about a week ago: Standing Still At 1,000 M.P.H.!!! Yes, the legends do have their quirks, but they are great units all-in-all. You're probably going to want to buy a MapSource program, but which one...? MetroGuide is incredibly detailed and therefor you cannot fit very many map segments into the 8MB of the Legend. I cannot fit the entire Washington, DC Beltway roadway using Metroguide! I cannot fit a trip from Annandale, Virginia to North Carolina on it either. But, it can find nearby Points of Interests such as restaurants, hotels and gas stations (search for the nearest McDonald's!). It can also generate a route, on the PC, given two waypoints - won't do that on the unit itself. If you want the residential mapping detail without all of the gas, food and lodging features, then Roads & Recreation is the answer! I can fit a lot more map segments into the Legend's 8MB! If you're more interested in terrain features for goin' after those groovy caches, then TOPO is the one for you! ...And if you'll be doing any foreign travel, then round out your collection with WorldMap! That gives basic road data for the entire world! It served me well in Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands. You will probably want to change the bearing pointer to the course pointer (see page 17 in the user manual). As a matter of fact, be sure to read the entire manual at some point. For now, just go out and have at it for a while. If you'll be using it in the car a lot, then buy one of these cables eTrex Geko 12V to 3V power cable Garmin GPS + on eBay! Send me an email and let me know how you like it. Quote Link to comment
+wickedsprint Posted June 27, 2003 Share Posted June 27, 2003 Why on earth would you use course pointer if on foot???, do account for wind drift when walking...LOL Hold on..figure a ten knot cross wind, and a walking pace of 2 knots, means I will need like 30 degrees of crab angle to keep the CDI centered....hahaha Quote Link to comment
peter Posted June 27, 2003 Share Posted June 27, 2003 Good choice of GPS receiver - I'm sure you'll find many uses for it beyond geocaching. Even though the Legend is pretty good with battery life, you'll still go through quite a few AA cells. Investing in a couple sets of high capacity (at least 1800 mA-hr) NiMH rechargeable cells and a smart charger will pay off pretty quickly compared to throwing away lots of alkalines. Quote Link to comment
perdix Posted June 28, 2003 Share Posted June 28, 2003 I also just bought a Legend and got Mapsource with it. I live in South Africa and, as such, also got a regional detail street level map package. The Legend came preloaded with the worldmap, but not great street level detail. My quesion is this: When I use Mapsource and select my town to upload, I get a warning that I will loose all the pre-loaded info. Now I do not want to loose it. Do you really loose all, or will I simply loose / overwrite the segment that I am uploading the detail for? Can anyone offer advide? Quote Link to comment
Neo_Geo Posted June 28, 2003 Share Posted June 28, 2003 I will only tell you what my experience was. Mine has Americas Roads & Highways pre-installed. This is about the same detail as WorldMap. I later bought WorldMap for a trip to South America. I was very hesitant to upload the WorldMap data because of the warning too, but I went ahead with it because I bought the GPSr for the trip. I figured that the detail was about the same and that I would install the U.S. portion of WorldMap when I returned from the trip. It turned out okay! It didn't overwrite any of the preloaded base map. I later noticed when I was returning (on the plane), that I could not see the U.S. while we were tracking in the WorldMap area. After we crossed over into the US, it immediately picked up the US map, and it was all good! In another dicussion topic, there were conerns about erasing the base map when upgrading the unit's firmware version. It was revealed in one of those posts that the pre-loaded base map is stored on a different chip. I think that the warning pertains only to map data that you've uploaded from the MapSource disks yourself. I would still advise you to write to Garmin for an official answer to that. Quote Link to comment
perdix Posted June 29, 2003 Share Posted June 29, 2003 Thanks Neo Geo, It only updated the map detail of the area I specified and left the rest intact. Quote Link to comment
+Rubberhead Posted June 29, 2003 Share Posted June 29, 2003 perdix, No Fea - The Garmin Legend comes with 8 MB of basemap that is in ROM and is never written over. It also has a Marine Points Database that is loaded in read-writeable 8 MB space that is different from the basemaps. This is where Mapsource files are stored. The Marine Points Database contains what are called naviads (bouys, lights, wrecks, etc.). This database is available on the Garmin website and can be re-loaded if you ever need. Here's the link: http://www.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?product=010-00256-00 Once on this webpage, click on the "Download (2.32 MB)" hotlink on the upper right of the webpage. This .exe will restore the database deleted when you load Mapsource products. Quote Link to comment
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