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@WhiteEagle wrote:

The only GPS unit I have is the Free GPS app for the iphone .. it’s accuracy is 5 meters (16.4 ft) radius … Is taht about as good as they get ?
I understand this phone if probably pretty limited in it’s versatility if one can’t get a strong signal but it’s all I have right now….
Looking at maybe getting the Garmin E trex 30 Bundle .. Is that one easy to learn and any more accurate ?

Hi WhiteEagle, I have an iPhone that I use for geocaching but also currently have 2 different models of Garmins that I use (an Oregon and a 62s).

In an open field the iPhone is pretty accurate and would be just about equal to any other GPS. However, I can tell you from experience with the 5 handheld GPS units I’ve owned over the years (plus 3 iPhones) that they are ALL more accurate than an iPhone when under tree cover and sometimes under heavy cloud cover. Still, for urban caching I often use the iPhone out of convenience. But if I’m caching in the woods the iPhone gets put away. The iPhone will still work in the woods, but the accuracy is diminished and the coordinates will jump around a bit more.

I’d like to echo the previous comment about the Oregon 450. When you can find it on sale it’s the best value of all available GPS units in my humble opinion. The newer Etrex units are accurate too but the Oregon can often be had for the same price and it is a better unit and (for me) easier to use.

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Gee and I remember back in the days when Sandlanders had less than 2,700 finds. Congrats on 2,800!

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Holy cow I was stunned at the reviews for this unit. I looked at 4 websites for reviews of the Cobra GPS500 and they were all overwhelmingly negative. At Amazon’s website http://www.amazon.com/Cobra-GPS-500-1-1-Inch-Navigator/dp/B00009B1VS the seven reviews on page one all were one star out of five. The other three sites were pretty much the same thing but without an actual star-based rating system.

Here’s what CNET had to say:
The good: Accurate tracking; user-friendly menus.

The bad: Weak receiver; low-resolution display; inconvenient joystick placement; not waterproof.

The bottom line: While not as expensive as similar handheld units, the Cobra GPS 500 suffers from a weak receiver and a few design flaws.

Having said that, if you can find a cheap powercord for it, it might not be bad to use as a backup GPSr for guests or kids to see how it works. The reviews indicated it doesn’t work well under cover of trees, but maybe in open areas?

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Welcome WhiteEagle, glad you found us!
8)

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@Walkingadventure wrote:

Thanks goes to labzone for trail bossing the 2 newest State Park caches.

GC4QV7Z Newport: WGA State Park Series
GC4QV7B Potawatomi: WGA State Park Series

Fantastic! We’ve been to Potawatomi a time or two but I wasn’t even aware of Newport SP! We’re looking forward to our next Door County trip some day! 🙂 🙂

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Congrats on clearing out the entire county, and done in a very unique way. Now if you haven’t done so already you can try to close out all of Menominee county – it only has one cache in it, a virtual! 🙂

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We went to four state parks this past weekend (some didn’t have the official WGA cache in them yet), and Kim and I just had a discussion about this very topic! What we decided to do is to “probably” find all of the other state park caches (hopefully) when they are all in place and then logs ours last. Then we will go grab the challenge cache for the state park series (assuming there will be a challenge cache forthcoming). That will give us extra motivation (and fun) to pursue this series. It’s going to take a long time though.

For us, the “big four” out there of significance are the Fizzy challenge, the Jasmer challenge, the Wisconsin 72 county challenge, and the Delorme challenge. We’ve completed the requirements for the first three; the latter we look forward to working on and purposely didn’t try to complete it while working on the county challenge (something to look forward to). With the state park series challenge on the horizon, we now think of the “big five” challenges to complete. Fun!

As a trail boss our choice to log our SP cache last is just our choice (for now, subject to change with the wind) and we think it’s fine for trail bosses to log them as found at any time if they desire.

Great question!

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If you don’t have the 600/650 on the list of available GPSr units in GSAK, make sure you update GSAK to the latest version. They are currently up to version 8.3.0.1. If for example you have an older version, such as GSAK 8.1, the newest Oregon that will be seen on the list is the Oregon 500/550.

Also, and this is very important, it would be highly recommended to use the Garmin Webupdater software (free) to make sure you have the latest updates for the Garmin 600/650. When the 600 & 650 first came out this past April/May they were full of inaccuracies and problems, and they had a list of about 50 problems that had to be corrected. Just about every month they have a firmware update to make the Oregon 600/650 less buggy and more accurate. I’d say they’re now about about 90-95% there. It was so bad that on several occasions I had to turn it off while on the trail and use my iPhone instead. With their latest update 2 weeks ago I can actually use the Oregon as a GPS and not as a paperweight! 🙂

The people I know that have the 650 (or 600) are Sweetlife, myself, and FurryHermit.

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We went to Governor Dodge SP yesterday to grab the Wisconsin Jasmer Challenge cache that was there (YAY). We thought we’d go for the state park cache there too but were surprised to see that there wasn’t one there. Not yet anyway. We’ll be back! We were also able to get the WGA Mirror Lake and Rocky Arbor SP caches. Beautiful time to go there with the full Fall colors!

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What challenge?

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Another thought comes to mind. The previous message addressed parks and any land owned by the Milwaukee County Park system. If the property you are considering is owned or managed by the city of Wauwatosa rather than the park system, then it may not be as clear as to how to obtain permission. Howz that for a non-committal answer?

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I have a “bit” of experience in this matter, since we live in Wauwatosa, almost all of our caches are in Wauwatosa, and we have found (I think) every cache in Wauwatosa.

All parks in Wauwatosa have a geocaching policy already! It’s the Milwaukee County Parks policy. The Milwaukee County Park system has authority over all public parks in Wauwatosa, as well as the whole county. To place a cache in a Wauwatosa park such as Hart Park (we just walked there about a week ago) fill out the geocaching permit form, a fillable PDF form found at http://county.milwaukee.gov/Geocaching21582.htm

Then email it to [email protected]
Brian Russart, the Milwaukee County Parks Land Manager, personally reviews them and approves most of them. He’s my hero. 🙂 And we want to keep him happy.

There are several parks that caches are not allowed in part of the park. The list of those parks is shown here:
http://county.milwaukee.gov/GeoGuidelinesPlacer22359.htm

Jacobus Park is the only one (I think) on the list that is located in Wauwatosa.

To be approved by the park system, the caches must labeled as a geocache on the outside container and be within a certain distance from a path or trail. We’ve had about 75% of our caches approved by them and some have been denied because they were too far off the path or in an environmentally sensitive area.

The volunteer geocaching.com reviewers normally will not approve and publish a cache in a Milwaukee County Park unless they see that you have stated the placement permit number from the Milwaukee County Parks Land Manager.

Mark feel free to post questions/comments here or PM me if any additional issues/thoughts/questions.

John (Hack1of2) 8)

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You could manually edit the cookies in each web browser on your system, or you could use a software program to do it for you. The IT guys in our company use CCleaner (it’s free) to clear out whatever data needs to be deleted. Here’s a screen shot of it taken from my computer. You could uncheck everything except cookies and it will take care of the rest. It does so much more than that in case you want to tinker a bit more.

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I checked out waypoint. There’s actually two apps with the same name. They get the job done but have shortcomings. Then I found one that is seemingly PERFECT!

One of the “Waypoint” apps (with a gray & white avatar) shows distances in meters and you cannot adjust the coordinates, just click to set the coordinates when you’re standing in a spot you want to mark. It has a map view and a compass; no satellite or hybrid views. Coordinates are not in the WGS84 datum that geocaching.com usually uses.

The other app named “Waypoint” (light brown and white avatar) shows more promise. Again it has one click to set a coordinate when you’re standing there, and has a compass view, and it can be set to meters or miles/feet. It also has a flashlight button on the screen in case it’s dark and you want to enable the iPhone’s light. But no map, just compass only, and like the other app you cannot manually enter coordinates; you have to be there and mark the waypoint while standing there. With both apps you can then save the multiple waypoints to navigate to later.

With both of the above apps you cannot use them for multicaches because there’s no way of manually entering coordinates. Both are useful though for the right circumstances.

Now for the cool one. It’s called Free GPS. You can mark your current location as a waypoint (2 clicks instead of 1). You can manually enter coordinates for a multi or whatever. You can edit/adjust coordinates, which is great for fine-tuning geocache coordinates. You can name the waypoints, view them on a map, satellite or hybrid view, toggle a small destination compass superimposed in the corner of the map, switch to full compass view, show current speed in the corner of the map or compass, AND unlike the other two apps, the coordinates are shown in the WGS84 datum that gc.com uses which shows DD MM.MMM. I just tested it out on one set of coordinates, comparing the manually-entered coordinates on the app to Google maps on the computer; they showed the identical location.

Sweet!

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isjustus4 gave an excellent description of how to navigate to temporary caches using the Groundspeak official geocaching app. If I were to use the iPhone for temporary caches I would use the Groundspeak app the same way he described.

However if you don’t want to create the temp caches as extra waypoints on an existing cache, you could use the app MotionX-GPS. It more or less does the same thing and a lot more, but it’s tricky to use until you’re familiar with all of its rich features.

Having said that, again, if I were to use the iPhone for temporary caches I would use the Groundspeak app the same way isjustus4 described.

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