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The Happy Hodag! 6 years, 4 months ago.
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When I said about $30 a year, all the FAQ’s and other pages I see recommend buying a GC Premium Membership to be able to use GSAK. That’s on top of paying $30 for GSAK itself.
The buck stops here. . .and gets entered into Where's George.
Where's George? Stimulating the economy one EMS'ed dollar at a time.
I don’t think I would be able to use GSAK without a premium membership because I wouldn’t be able to do PQs anymore… unless this has changed and you can do PQs without a premium membership.
I ran the dates placed challenge on Project GC last night and it was way easier than GSAK. I could just select MN, run the filter, and it produced a map of the state showing where all the unfound caches are that I can use for the challenge. This is a lot more slicker than creating a PQ on GC.com limited to 1000 caches, loading it into GSAK, then running the macro which brings up a list of caches. Then having to click on each cache to see where it is on a map… but maybe there are some shortcuts to doing this that I don’t know of yet.
One thing I don’t get is why cachers think they *have* to use GSAK to download pocket queries. I’ve been downloading pocket queries just fine without GSAK for years and I’ve been satisfied with the results. Is there something I don’t know that makes GSAK so special? That’s what I’d like to find out.
-The Happy Hodag!
The buck stops here. . .and gets entered into Where's George.
Where's George? Stimulating the economy one EMS'ed dollar at a time.
If you’re satisfied with your current setup, I wouldn’t worry about it. I don’t know how one loads a PQ without something like GSAK, but we were printing out our caches and using a real map to make our way for about the first 1500 finds until someone gave us that free copy of GSAK, which we have since purchased. It’s simply what one is used to using, I think. GSAK is capable of a lot of cool things, but if you’re okay with what you’ve been doing….don’t worry, be happy! 😉
That said, one feature I’ve used a few times is the ability to project a waypoint and then correct the coordinates before heading out. Depending on the distance needed to project, it can help you decide if you’ll be going anywhere near the actual cache. It also made solving the puzzle for the Illinois Well Rounded WAY easier.
I was hoping to learn about GSAK, which I have here. It just seems like most everything that GSAK has to offer, I have without GSAK. The couple of extra features I’ve heard about here certainly aren’t worth the $30 they ask for. As far as downloading caches to my GPS, I just open up the associated ZIP folder and plug my GPS into my computer and drag the file from the ZIP folder right into the appropriate folder on my GPS. Trekkin’, you’re not the first cacher I’ve heard from to say that you can’t download PQ’s with GSAK, so that’s something that makes it worth it to you. As for the challenges I’m working on, I just keep track of those things manually.
-The Happy Hodag!
The buck stops here. . .and gets entered into Where's George.
Where's George? Stimulating the economy one EMS'ed dollar at a time.
I think I’ve been sold on GSAK, believe it or not. One thing that I’ve run up against in the past is the waypoint limit on my GPS, which is 5,000. This in turn limits how many PQ’s I can download onto it, because any overlapping area between PQ’s will see caches count twice toward that limit. However, I’ve found that caches in any overlapping area will count as only one waypoint with GSAK. This saves me so much memory space on my GPS if I run multiple PQ’s that overlap.
-The Happy Hodag!
The buck stops here. . .and gets entered into Where's George.
Where's George? Stimulating the economy one EMS'ed dollar at a time.
I use GSAK and have barely scratched the surface of its capabilities. I love the macros for meeting Challenge cache requirements.
I’d Rather Be Lost Geocaching, Than Found At Home!
I am pretty much an expert in GSAK … that is for about 3% of the program. I love it! And I enjoy learning what else it can do for me. A well spent $25 once upon a time. I especially like being able to merge PQs from several cachers when caching together to target those unfound by the entire group. I also like being able to easily sort by last found date to identify any problematic caches that I can delete before loading….and the list goes on…
The views expressed here are that of myself only and do not necessarily represent that of the WGA board.
GSAK is well worth the $30. I use it a lotand I barely scratch the surface of what it can do if one is GSAK knowledgeable. If you need something there is probably a way GSAK can make it happen.
I am pretty much an expert in GSAK … that is for about 3% of the program. I love it! And I enjoy learning what else it can do for me. A well spent $25 once upon a time. I especially like being able to merge PQs from several cachers when caching together to target those unfound by the entire group. I also like being able to easily sort by last found date to identify any problematic caches that I can delete before loading….and the list goes on…
Project GC also does the cache found compare among cachers quite slick also… I’ll use it to peruse a map before going out with others to see which caches no one has found. Saves a lot of time in planning. I use GSAK and project GC about equally and think both are well worth the cost.
I only use it for downloading caches right now, and for the reason I’ve stated the other day. I’ll consider paying the $30 once my free trial is done, and I’ll take a look at other features I might like over time. This will be a slow and steady process, and I’m sure I won’t like or even use everything GSAK has to offer. But hey, I’m giving it a shot.
-The Happy Hodag!
The buck stops here. . .and gets entered into Where's George.
Where's George? Stimulating the economy one EMS'ed dollar at a time.
I have been using project-gc like dmnrec and that has satisfied most of my needs and does corrected cords automatically from my personal notes. Haven’t been able to truly test out GSAK though due to having a mac as my personal computer and GSAK doesn’t want to authenticate with GC using my work laptop (likely being blocked or something). But either GC.com does it for me with its PQ’s if not I step to project-gc which I do pay for
Climbing To New Adventures
**The views expressed here are that of myself only and do not necessarily represent that of the WGA board.**
I have been using project-gc like dmnrec and that has satisfied most of my needs and does corrected cords automatically from my personal notes. Haven’t been able to truly test out GSAK though due to having a mac as my personal computer and GSAK doesn’t want to authenticate with GC using my work laptop (likely being blocked or something). But either GC.com does it for me with its PQ’s if not I step to project-gc which I do pay for
I think GSAK does not work with macs. You probably know that, but just a heads up for anyone else looking into it.
I have been using project-gc like dmnrec and that has satisfied most of my needs and does corrected cords automatically from my personal notes. Haven’t been able to truly test out GSAK though due to having a mac as my personal computer and GSAK doesn’t want to authenticate with GC using my work laptop (likely being blocked or something). But either GC.com does it for me with its PQ’s if not I step to project-gc which I do pay for
I think GSAK does not work with macs. You probably know that, but just a heads up for anyone else looking into it.
Correct thats why it doesn’t work on that laptop :/ .
Climbing To New Adventures
**The views expressed here are that of myself only and do not necessarily represent that of the WGA board.**
Like many others on here, I probably only use a small percentage of GSAK’s full features. I use mine to filter out what type of geocaches I want to find. I use it to filter out geocaches that have a string of recent DNF’s. That’s just a small sample of what I use GSAK for.
For a data geek like myself, GSAK is also great for getting specific data. For example, if you want to know how many geocaches that you found that was placed by a certain owner, GSAK can get that info for you.
And that’s just the beginning. Trust me, Happy Hodag, you will LOVE it and will wonder how you lived without it once you get yourself familiar with the software. It is money well worth spent. Attend a local GSAK class that sometimes pop up and check it out.
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