Is an old Gamin a good Garmin?

Discussion about software such as GSAK, OziExplorer etc, as well as all things hardware, GPSrs, laptops, PDAs, paperless caching, cables etc
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nutwood
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Is an old Gamin a good Garmin?

Post by nutwood » 01 April 11 10:22 pm

Having just discovered, and joined, geocache, I'm wondering if my old Garmin 38 is accurate enough for the task? I'm noticing that people are reckoning on getting down to 5 metre accuracy. The last time I used my GPS for pinpoint work, I was reckoning on 50m accuracy but that was with selective availability.
Anyone any experience with this unit?

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WazzaAndWenches
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Re: Is an old Gamin a good Garmin?

Post by WazzaAndWenches » 01 April 11 10:46 pm

Don't know anything about the 38 but can say that if you cannot get at least 10m or better accuracy your going to find it real tough to find a lot of caches. A lot of caches are hidden so well that accuracy of <2m still leaves many, many possibilities and (usually) a lot of searching. ](*,)

There are a number of GPS's available now for very little money. =D> Shop around and check out some of the "what gps should I buy" type forum threads. Don't buy the gps recommended by the salesman unless they are a cacher and understand what you're going to use it for. :-"

Waz.

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Richary
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Re: Is an old Gamin a good Garmin?

Post by Richary » 02 April 11 12:02 am

An older Garmin can be a good Garmin, but not the 38. I have used one of these in the past for work (and I think it's still in the office somewhere), sitting it on the ground took a good 15 minutes to get a decent fix with some tree cover around. I would go back as far as the basic yellow etrex to say that is a good GPS. Anything earlier is a bit too slow and innacurate, especially under tree cover.

It might be adequate for an easy cache in open country with a good hint, but you might also be opening yourself up to a world of pain and frustration :wink:

nutwood
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Re: Is an old Gamin a good Garmin?

Post by nutwood » 03 April 11 10:32 am

Thanks for the replies. I think that's good advice. Tree cover was always a problem with the 38, although at the time I got it, nearly 15 years ago, it was superior to most others on the market!
I gave it a test run yesterday. Dusted off the cobwebs, put some new batteries in and put it outside to figure where it was. Took ages (over 30 minutes!) to get a fix, presumably because it was still in holiday mode. I then took it on a walk to the top of Quamby bluff where it figured it's location quite quickly (less than 5 minutes) and operated with a EPE of 16m. I found the cache quite quickly but that'd have to be close to ideal conditions. Standing on a trig point on top of a treeless mountain! Even then, it was a case of "getting warmer" and "getting colder" as the 38 would tell me when I was 10m away, or 0m away. I can see that that combined with a minimum 16m error would make any more tricky locations very frustrating.
Excellent. An excuse to buy a new toy. I'm off to the "what shall I buy forums".

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