Gps For The Car And For Geocaching

[+mdshamilton]

I use a Garmin Etrex Vista for Geocaching. I've had it for about 3 years now. I'm thinking about buying a GPS for my car to use when driving north of the Watford Gap and in France. Does anyone have any experience or advice on whether I should/could sell my Vista and buy a single GPS for car use and geocaching when I get to a location? (and which one people would recommend)

 

Any advice gratefully received!

 

Thanks,

 

Mark

[+BlueDeuce]

The 60c/s is a good geocache/auto-navigation GPS.

 

I brought a 76cs for the car and use the Vista for the trail. The Vista is going to be easier to carry than either the 60 or 76.

 

I say keep the Vista and buy the more expensive one for the car.

[+McDeHack]

No No No... Dont sell your vista. I sold my etrex once and I was sorry. I had bought a Street Pilot for the road and caching. I missed my etrex. Fortunaly the guy I sold it to also wanted to upgrade to a mobile unit. I bought the etrex back from him.

I now also have a Tomtom go for the road and at a pinch it can be used for caching. But I dont need to as I have the etrex.

[+wigglesworth]

We use the trusty yellow etrex. When in the car we used the follow the arrow and got caught out a few times. We now connect the etrex to a laptop and use Autoroute to navigate to the cache. More often than not we just use the etrex because using the laptop becomes a mammoth task and can keep your eyes off the scenery. The other issue is that the laptop on the knee gets very warm - perhaps I should let the navigator hold the laptop sometimes.

 

Peter

[+M3ZPY]

Get a Vista C and have the best of both worlds although be prepared to fork out for the city select mobile kit. The Garmin V is a good bet too as City select comes as standard kit, I personaly part exed my Vista and got the GPSMAP 60cs as this has a dedicated geocache waypoint finder and I bought City Select nav kit afterwards and now I drive as close as I can get to the cache and leg it to the for the rest of the journey

I am gonna invest in a Land Rover to combat this problem later tho so if you hear a 4x4 behind you it will probably be me trying to bag a cache in an idle sort of way!!

[+Birders]

We use our trusty old Garmin 12XL both in the car and outside. We have an "external" aerial which has stickers to fix it to the inside of the windscreen... always get a great signal on that. The GPS is affixed to the dashboard with a piece of Velcro; when we stop we take it out and off we go..

[+Pharisee]

I use a Garmin iQue 3600 for navigating in the car but quite honestly, while it does that job superbly, it's not the best device in the world for trying to find a cache with. Once out of the car I put the iQue away and use my trusty ol' Legend (or even trustier ol' GPS III if the going gets tough) to locate the cache.

[+mdshamilton]

Thanks for the advice. I think I'll get a TomTom Go for the car. But I would like to upgrade my Garmin Etrex Vista for the new VistaC. Anyone know if/where I can part exchange it? Or where is the best place to sell my Garmin Etrex Vista? It's in excellent condition.

 

Mark

[+McDeHack]

Sell it on ebay or I would bet someone on here would want it.

[+MarcB]

Thanks for the advice. I think I'll get a TomTom Go for the car. But I would like to upgrade my Garmin Etrex Vista for the new VistaC. Anyone know if/where I can part exchange it? Or where is the best place to sell my Garmin Etrex Vista? It's in excellent condition.

 

Mark

Yeah, my SporTrak is getting a bit bashed up now - how much are you selling it for?

MarcB

[+M3ZPY]

For the new Vista C go here The guy is a top dog seller I got my 60cs and the nav kit too! If you mail him and ask nicely he may even do you a p/x deal too.

Edited November 15, 2004 by izzardno1

[+mdshamilton]

hmmm....any offers for my etrex vista with a Garmin belt holster and a copy of my European Mapsource CD? I still have the box, manual and PC cable. £150 or near offer?

 

I'll also check out the part ex price.

[+DomHeknows]

tomtomgo seems expensive for what it is - you could get the aldi pda with tomtom clone and gps in it for half that price.

[+Stuey]

I would like to upgrade my Garmin Etrex Vista for the new VistaC.

Now then.... if only I could remember eactly what it was, but there is somehting that the VistaC can't do that the Vista could..... Might be worth doing some research or maybe someone on here knows the answer. I'll search as well.

[+mdshamilton]

After looking in the GPS units topic forum here and getting some advice, I've completely changed my mind. I'm going to trade in my Etrex Vista for a Garmin Quest. I'm an occasional geocacher with 3yr and 5yr old sons joining me so a 20 hr rechargable lithium battery is fine. Plus I've yet to see any topographical software in the UK that I can load onto a GPS for geocaching so for the most part I rely on the compass heading and "go to" in order to find a cache - which the Quest can do.

 

So I'll give the Quest a try as it seems to be very good for the car, and not as delicate as the TomTom Go. If it's no good for geocaching then I'll buy a second GPS, probably an Etrex VistaC. In any case I'll let this forum know how I get on.

 

Thanks for all the help.

 

Mark

[+derrylynne]

I have just bought a quest and it's out of this world for navigating in the car to the start of a cache. You will wonder what you did without it. It takes a bit of getting used to, but is good value for money. As you say, the battery life is more than enough, and while it is in the cradle working in the car it is charging up anyhow. Another point of course it is still a rugged, although different unit to hold in the hand, also waterproof to the same standard as the etrex family. The screen is good, clear and bright, even in sunlight.

[+sTeamTraen]

If I can add my fourpenn'orth, I find my new 60cs to be better at navigating than the built-in system in my big ugly Nissan. OK, that talks to me and has a bigger screen, but every country CD costs another 100 quid.

 

With the 60cs (or 60c, if you drop the compass; or even a Vista C, slightly less memory but otherwise similar), you get very good routing. Plus the automotive kit is good value, as you get UK, France, Germany, Benelux, and much of Italy in really good detail.

 

I would get your new hand-held GPS first and think hard before getting a second one for the car. Give the Garmin a few runs out in the car and then go back for the TomTom (etc) demo. You might not find you need the second one.

[+Faye & Brad]

Today marked our official return to caching after a break of nearly two years.

 

I've recently bought an iPaq rx3715 along with Tom Tom navigator (inc. bluetooth GPS), as I wanted to use the iPaq for a lot of things other than geocaching ( shock!). I also have my original Garmin eTrex Legend, which had never let me down.

 

The plan was to try and go paperless, but I didn't like the idea of being out in the sticks without andthing to refer to, so printed out the cache sheets as well. I'd take the Legend out and have my wife and kids use that, while I tried to get to grips with the iPaq.

 

So, after spending the last few days reading up and getting as much software as I thought I might possibly need, I thought we were set to go. Memory Map had the caches waypointed, GPX Sonar had the cache pages stored, yup - time to give it a try... except I couldn't find the Legend for love nor money! So the question now was should we cancel the trip until the Legend reappears, or take a leap of faith and see how we get on?

 

One short leap later, we arrived at the first cachesite and for the rest of the day everything went absolutely brilliantly. Using the iPaq, I was able to see exactly where we were on a real OS map (thanks to Mapsource), read the cache pages and make notes in the field (GPS Sonar) and even take photos at each cache (iPaq again). As an added bonus, the GPS itself stayed in my pocket the whole time and never worried about having a "clear view of the sky" once! Fabulous!

 

So when the Legend does show it's face again, the others can certainly use it - but we won't be needing paper again. Absolutely everything we needed for the day (with the exception of a pen to sign the logs) was contained in one small, lightweight unit. THIS is how it should be!

 

Happy caching!

 

Brad