Advice for GPS users

Dizzy (me again!)
Apparently Garmin produce the chip that is in most of the GPS devices available on the market.

I have a Garmin GPS 12 which is a couple of years old now but works ok.

You can not load maps on to it but a few of the others you can, prices range from £100 upwards shop around

Accuracy is good at finding boxes but not fool proof there can be a tolerance band of upto 15m that is to say if you drew a circle around you with a 30m diameter it would get you to somewhere in the circle (it may have come down to 5-10m)

having used mine for geocaching they do advice you to take 15 readings of the location when placing a cache/box and average it out. I have placed several caches and have had feed back saying 'your grid refs where out I ended up 7m away but we found it.'

They dont like trees! as it breaks the sight of the satelites

How do they work well.....check out the internet there are some good ones on that, But basically there are something like 24 satelites above your head whizzing round the earth. the gps picks up and detects these and triangulates your position using a master satelite to verify this.

My handset lists the ones it has found and the signal strength

I'll do a bit of research for the blurb above.

Ever wondered why the US military have allowed their satellites access to the general populous of the planet?

That is because the satellites up there are beginning to get near the end of their useful life - in a few years these satellites will run out of power and the new generation satellites is already being shoved up into orbit all on different frequencies - so in a few years time all these handsets will not be worth a hell of a lot.

Number 70 thanks for the info, it's sound pretty acurate to me! You have certainly pointed out the benefits for using a GPS.

Nik Errm, not to sure now after reading your reply, so you are saying that the older GPS devices could become obsolete within a few years?

Paul

A couple more points for you

If you go onto the Garmin website you can view the instruction manuals and see how you program them etc and if I remember rightly there is a program to help you choose the one for you

Secondly and I smile as I type this..
you do find missing boxes rather quicker

What about something like this:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/NEW-GARMIN-ETREX- ... dZViewItem

Its cheap I know but letterboxing was supposed to be a cheap hobby! Is it worth bothering with and would it be easy to use?

Sounds good Boo Boxers , not sure if it's the one I would consider buying though. To be honest with you I would prefer one that you can upload onto your computer with the software suppied as part of the deal. Plus it would be good to have a built in map system.

Ok I know it would be much more expensive, but you do only get what you pay for in most cases anyway.

Thanks,

Paul

Hi.

We are looking to buy a handhelp GPS for use on the moors. Can you give us a bit more info please. Does the screens give a good closeup of where you are and what difference do the dearer types give you over the more affordable ones. From what we have read here, it seems you can add waypoints to show boxes you have collected so far, is that right?

Suzanne & Steve.

Hi Suzanne & Steve, I have a basic Garmin Etrex (yellow & black), picked it up off Ebay for £67 new). Basically you type in the GPS reference for a box and when choosing 'Go To' it will give you a compass point that points the way you have to go, how far it is and how long at your current speed it will take to get there. These are all called Waymarks (or letterboxes).

You can also plot a Waymark at your car before leaving, then if the mist comes in your can use this waypoint to return back to your car, this will take you within a few feet of a box or anything your have waypointed such as a cross, or maybe a walk you are planning to give to someone.

This model has only a black and white screen but works great, the newer one's have many more function with larger coloured screen, but hey, mine works great and does the job!

Dizzy

Thanx Dizzy

You have answered my question and also my next one, I was going to ask what the difference was with the more expensive ones but you say colour screen and extra function. Is there a down side to this type of GPS, for instance the battery life and expense of buying batteries all the time, does the dearer ones have the rechargable type camera type batteries in?

Sorry for all these questions but we only want to buy one of these GPS's once and not have to buy the wrong one for the sake of a few extra lira.

S&S.

P.S. Is it the dearer ones that you can load maps into and is this an anvantage to load.

I have the Garmin Etrex Legend which is the next one up from Dizzy's. Yes, it has a colour screen and I can download the maps. However the map I bought was about £100.00 so all in all came in as quite expensive. Saying that, I wouldn't be without it.

I input my route on the computer and then transfer the information across to the GPS. So much quicker than putting it in by hand. Always mark the position of my car in case of fog and very accurate to within just a few feet.

The batteries last quite a long time - 2 AA batteries. They last longer in the cold but I normally get 3 or 4 trips out of them.

Hi Tina

What maps did you buy and where from for £100 for your GPS, could you not download them from the net?

Suzanne

Am looking at this one , what do you think?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Garmin-eTrex-Lege ... dZViewItem

Looks good to me.

I purchased the Dartmoor map Topo from Garmin and it does the job I needed it to. Not sure whether it was possible to download from the internet or not though. All sorts of things like copyright involved.

The best combination I have found so far and results in paperless letterboxing (no clues, no map etc.) is Garmin Montana adding a OS 1:25 Map so you have the map on your GPS (screen size is big enough) and using the Geocache Function of the Montana to load the letterbox clue description with Colin Masters Letterboxing software, which is fed by the catalogue clues from Colin Richards.

That combination I would say is the most moden and up-to-date combination to-date and all in one.

Do however take a compass with you just in case all crashes and you can find your way home/to the car, which (crahs) it has never done for me in the last years ... and spare batteries.