Re: Garmin Oregon. Anybody got one?

One of the important things missing from the Oregon is the satellite page. It is on your Legend. Without it, it is difficult to judge how good the constellation is, and hence how much the probable error is (the number given for estimated position accuracy, called by various names by the different manufacturers) is uninformative and often misleading. Garmin refuses to say what exactly their EPE is (is it a 50% error circle, 95%, or what). The graphical constellation can also give you an idea of which direction the indicated position is likely to be off and can give an idea of whether and which direction multipath will throw you off (there is one area I pass through frequently where the track is consistently off by about 1 kilometer in the same direction every time I go through there with my various Garmin units - a glance at the satellite screen shows that all the satellites being received are off to one side of the sky). Also, the screen shows which satellites are being used, so you can tell whether you actually have only a 2D lock, or a full 3D lock, or also whether you are getting an assist from WAAS (the correction messages that are transmitted to tell your unit the corrections that need to be made for clock error, satellite position error, and atmospheric effects - you don't need to worry about them, since your GPSR takes care of them, except that you want to know if it is receiving that information).

Basically, that satellite screen tells you how closely to trust the position the GPSR is showing. The red-green-blue light on many of the vehicle units and similar indicator on the Oregon is about as useful as the oil light on the car's instrument panel - when it blinks, you are already in trouble and it's too late.

The reason the geocaching websites want you to register is the same reason Trailspace wants you to register, plus the large potential for mischief makers. On Trailspace, though, the moderators have to keep a close eye on posts and clean things up by hand, where on GBA and GC, all that is necessary is to shut off someone's access if they are out of line. GC has on the order of a million registered users, GBA in the tens of thousands (not all in the SFBay Area), plus there are physical caches and people who do environmental damage around known caches.

You could also look on Usenet's news groups for GPS - sci.geo.satellite-nav I do hesitate to suggest anything on the Usenet newsgroups, however, because of the amount of garbage you have to wade through (the amount of garbage on the rec.climbing and rec.backcountry is why the original rec.climbing.useful and rec.backcountry.useful were started, which eventually became Trailspace).