I know this has been discussed before, but I have an E-trex Legend under the tree, and it is killing me not to open it! I have been scouring the web and bookstores reading about this GPS thing. I ride in some places that are pretty large, so it will be very helpful on those trails. Also, I hunt, so it will definately be handy at the deer lease.

Has anyone checked out www.geocaching.com ? It looks very cool. Basically, folks go and "hide" a treasure, or "cache". They load the coordinates onto a webpage, and you go seek it out. Looks very fun. (hey, at least I am not wearing black socks and using a metal detector....yet!!) Then, you report on your find. They have caches that travel the country too!

Just curious. This is just something else for my wife to get on me about. ANOTHER thing for me to be out of the house for!! Would she rather me be on the couch with a beer in one hand, and my other hand in my belt like Al Bundy? LOL

Chucky

 

C'mon, chuckybrown, be a good boy and do the right thing...go open that GPS up and use it now! You can always acrt surprised when you "open" it on christmas! You will love the legend. Just to tell you, a friend and I were checking out some new trails today and I turned on the GPS and put it in my box and shut it and itould still read the satellite's right through the box, I like this better than having it mounted and fearing that you might rip it off on a low hanging branch or something. It is a great safety net and you will notice that you will have a lot more fun discovering new trails than always worrying where you are and when you made that last turn.

As far as the geocache site, I looked at it , but it didn't really jump out at me, I might have to check it out again.

 

Chuckybrown
yep i use a garmin gps 38 all the time, found it quite usefull when travling on sled or quad a long way from home. Works great for refinding lakes ,ridges, old homesteads etc. Have used them for years to find things from aireal photo's and found it great when needing to find a way home when in new places ,sometimes 50 miles from home.
isn't it great to have a wife , etc. that buys you great toys. Hay i found something real great when you own a gps, its oziexplorer a maping system approx $75.00 u .s. that you can download free demo and all kinds of u.s. maps free. you can create maps from scratch, scan maps etc. if you are interested they have a website. Works great and very flexable. look it up, and if i can be of any help i will try my best.
raymond

 

I got a Magellan Meridian for Christmas, my grandmother now just send money instead of wrapped gifts and that is what she got me this year. Already had it out several times and it really nice to ride with.

Chris

ps... go on open it, you know you want to!

 

Hey Chuck,
you will grow to love your GPS! I bought mine back in 95 and it is still probably my most favorite gadget. The more you use it, the more ways you think of to use it. I also have been Geocaching for several months. I use the same Screenname on that site. My brother also Geocaches with his son and has hidden a few himself. We have thrown around the idea of doing ATV caching. Do you think there would be interest in combining the two sports? Anyway, it's a pretty interesting way to learn how to be better at using the GPS.
It's only a few more days......be a good boy and wait to open it! Keep the wife happy....

 

I have been looking into getting a gps for a while now and had some questions, but the salesmen usually dont know anything more about them than what they read on the box. What are the things I should look for in a unit, and what really dosent matter. Should I get one that has plenty of extrage memory storage for downloading maps or is that something that I will really never need. If I turn it on and ride all day, will it map out where I rode by itself or do I have to punch in waypoint along the way. I noticed that some have considerably more waypoints than others, again is that something I would want or will it not be a big deal ? Lastly, if I ride an area and map it out, can you save it in the unit and pull it up later to ride the same trails, kinda like a pre-made map and can you download them to your computer to print out ? Sorry for all the questions, but I dont know a thing about these and I dont wanna buy one and hear a month later that I should have bought one that did something else.

 

Geocaching is a lot of fun. I have stashed 2 so far and have found 5. I would really like to see more ATV'ers stash them along cool trails they have discovered. I have one hidden in the Sand Dunes.

As far as GPS, I bought the Magellan Sportrak Pro and absoutly love it. The Magellan has a 4th generation antenna so it picks up satellites faster and easier than most other GPS's. Mine will even find satellites indoors. My second choice was the Rino 120 since it has a built in FRS and GMRS radio.

 

jjs378
Cant give you all of the info on gps. but i do knew that the waypoints are something you mark, the more waypoints you need in area the more waypoints room you need in gps. It depends on how detailed a map you are wanting to build and store. Tracks are something you leave behind when you are travelling with your gps on , this is where you need lots of track room or to be able to space tracks say every 500 yards instead of 100 yards, you can actually backtrack on them. Some gps can use downloadable maps, this i believe would be a great feature. but the most important part is that a gps can download and upload waypoints track etc. a good program in your computer gives you the ability to see this map , change map, add comments etc. The track on map can be downloaded added to, changed and you can even read date time and locations of each piece of the breadcrumb trail, Every thing you down load is changeable, This flexability give you the option of downloading certain area's for example, if you lived in new york state and went to maine every year , you would save info on computer and down load it when you were ready to go to maine, this clears off all the unneeded , space consuming stuff. when you get back home dwnload all the new info to file then upload all the new york info.
Now some gps's will upload the maps s themselves some will not, they go with the gps veiw of the area either way it sure is great.
Raymond

 

JJS, deciding what unit to buy will be easier if you have some idea of what you want to do with it. My GPS being an older unit does not have some of the functions that the newer ones do. For my type of use it has not been a problem. I do want to upgrade though for the simple reason that the newer ones do pick up the satellites faster and under more cover, and some memory for saving info would be nice. All of the models I believe have a tracking feature which can be adjusted to how often you want to make a track point. A track point is a reference point saved by the GPS either by time or automatically. On my model I can choose. I have found on a long day of riding, the auto function runs out of track log space before I return, resulting in loss of the earlier part of the day. It uses a snake style memory in that it continues to save when the memory is full by eliminating the earlier track as space is needed. If you are a ways out and need the track to find you way back that can be a problem. I set mine on manual so the track log will last at least 10 hours. If you need more accuracy for maps and such the interval needs to be shorter.
My Garmin unit has space for 250 Waypoints. The waypoints are marks that you manually set, save and can name for future use. 250 has been enough for me so far but I can see where more might be better. These points will be saved in the internal memory as long as you want and must be manually deleted, unlike the track log that will be covered up unless you save it.
I have not used a GPS with mapping yet, but I carry a DeLorme map book with latitude and longitude so it is easy to look up my position and get a big picture of exactly where I am. Also I am able to make notes in the book for future use.
You can map an area and save the track, but you will need to download it to your computer. There are some very good programs on the internet for that. One is www. EasyGPS.com and the other is TOPOUSA. Easy GPS is very user friendly and its free. It has some very cool ammenities too. Arial photos of where you ride are available just by entering latitude and longitude.
I don't think I would buy the cheapest starter model but I wouldn't go with the most expensive one either, for the simple fact that they probably have a lot of functions the average guy will never use and can be confusing to remember.
Good luck, you will love it!

 

Thanks alot for all the help guys. It seems that I should probably look for a unit with more memory and way point ability. A lot of the places I ride are private areas that I would like to map out and use in the future. They have real tight trails and there are several trails that intersect and it get a lilttle confusing. One last question, will all of the newer models be able to pick up the satellites pretty well under cover or will only the Magellan do it like Dextreme was saying. It would be nice to be able to throw it in my bag and not have to worry about mounting it if I dont want to.