Back to the roots
This has been a strange geocaching week, which started rather scary.
No, I’m not going to dish up the gc.com debacle again. I’ve said my thing in my two previous blog posts. Nope, on Sunday the 5th we wanted to take it easy and tackle only one cache since the daughter had a birthday party the day before. We choose a short multi in the neighbourhood: “Sander en Hannes’ cache” GC173FM. Strange things happened though: my GPSmap 60Cx had much troubles acquiring satellites and when it did, the signals were poor and it lost contact several times. We could find all the waypoints based on the descriptions provided with very little help from the GPSr. Once calculated the final coordinates, the GPSr gave up completely and since there was a thunderstorm coming, I didn’t persist. Since I read in the BE forums that more people had problems with the satellite, I didn’t examine the problem further.
Later that week, another nice Freggie was published: “Holy Blood, Holy Grail” GC1VEAP. As mentioned before, I’m not that good in solving mystery/puzzle caches, but I knew somewhat instantly where to look for. After a little confirmation, I could calculate the coordinates. So I grabbed my things in order to check things out and even end on the podium with my STF. But when I arrived, the GPSr refused to acquire the satellites again so I needed to slink off. Once home, I search for a solution on internet but even after reinstalling all the soft- and firmware, the 60CX still didn’t work. Luckily I planned to go to my favourite GPS shop the next day anyway in order to buy a Nuvi 865T. I used to have Garmin automotive devices a long while ago, but I tried other brands for a couple of years since I wasn’t completely happy about the Streetpilots I had at that time. After trying out the other brands, it seemed that Garmin isn’t that ‘bad’ after all. The problem with the automotive GPSr devices is that one tries to put as much non navigation features in it and sometimes forget that a GPSr is – in my eyes – only useful for guiding you on the road. It occurs to me that one even neglects that important bit with some strange results. If you say something about it, one fobs you off and blame the card providers. In practice, the cards are usually correct but the problem is the interpretation of it. GPSr manufacturers should go back to their roots and focus on that.
Anyway, I headed last Friday to the GPS shop and one could determine within a couple of minutes that there was a failure of the internal antenna (the external input still worked). Luckily things were still in warranty. So I headed home with a new Nuvi 865T and 60Cx. Before doing that, I wanted to try things out and do some caching in the neighbourhood since West-Flanders was still a blind spot on my geocaching founds map:
- Den Doorn GC1EFQ7
- Afrit 9 GC1EGT8
- Going under GC1F0A8
- Leiemeersen GC1F7Y1
- PITSTOP GROOT – BIJGAARDEN GC1M8CQ
The combination Nuvi 865T / 60Cx seems to work rather well on the geocaching front. Hopefully the 60Cx will last a bit longer and the 865T doesn’t disappoint me.
Btw. I also logged “ASCII’s Streichelzoo” GC1QGWZ which I considered a bit as a kind of variation of an Earth cache (for my 275 finds mark). It has as such nothing in common with geology but the idea of using ASCII art is very nice.
