Useful GPS

Ok, so I got the Legend for my birthday for deer hunting. It was so I could mark stand sites, deer sign, etc... I had heard about Geocaching years before, out of curiosity I went out and tried it. It was an excellent way to learn how to use the Legend.

Once you get how to enter waypoints into the GPS, the Legend proves to be pretty effective when it comes to finding caches. From my dealings with other cachers, it quickly became obvious my Legend wasn't nearly as accurate or could hold a signal as well as a few other cacher's more highly priced units. But for the money the Legend is a good way for the Newbie to go. I also placed caches using coords taken with the Legend. Although this takes a little bit of trial and error, I have had few complaints from other cachers about bad coords. The few times that has happened it has been the result of heavy tree cover, or wet vegetation. Any GPS will have trouble in conditions like this.

The Legend doesn't have any built-in maps, or topographical info (you have to purchase separate software, you don't need it to find caches, as I've found 117 with the Legend as it comes right out of the box) but it does come with the cord to hook the GPS to your PC, which makes transfering a large amount of waypoints much easier then entering them all by hand. I downloaded waypoints for all the caches within a 40 mile radius of my house (approximately 400) and had them on the GPS in seconds. Navigating to these waypoints is as easy as selecting them and selecting "go to"

The unit does appear to be very durable, I am very rough on equipment, as my old digital camera could attest to, that is if it could talk. My Legend has a few scratches on it's screen and sides where I dropped it a few times, but it continues to operate just fine.

My only real complaints about the unit is the battery life, it's not too long, and using the backlight just eats them up even faster. Also I've accidentally turned the backlight on in daylight conditions and eaten them up without even knowing. I suppose the cigarette lighter adapter would help with this.

If you read the manual, the FAQs on the caching website, it's pretty easy to get out and start finding caches with this GPS right after purchasing it. I'm very pleased with this unit and the new hobby I gained from using it.