Shortly after purchasing an SUV a couple years ago, I also purchased a Magellan Maestro 4040. This thing has been very handy with traveling directions. After playing with my Garmin eTrex tonight, I started looking at what I could do with the Maestro in regards to Geocaching. The benefit of course would be that it would help me better plan where I should park before walking into the woods. In addition, the map capabilities would help me greatly understand where I am. Even with a GPS, I have gotten very, very lost due to one-way traveling (steep slopes / deep rivers) only to find myself coming back to civilization very far from where I originally started out. A GPS with map software built in – priceless.
I couldn’t find a way to enter GPS coordinates accurately except by touching the map far enough from roads. I updated the firmware and still didn’t have much luck. I downloaded something from the manufacturer called VantagePoint, but it was incompatible with the hardware. Afterwards, I learned that the device was supposed to come with a disc that contained Magellan POI File Editor. I had no idea where the disc was, and the manufacturer wasn’t making it available either. I found a post that helped people to create a custom POI file for Magellan GPS in which it had linked to the Magellan POI File Editor. One of the links were broken, but the other actually downloaded a binary file.
I got the program running. At first, I was having trouble trying to figure out what type of format the longitude/latitude was supposed to be. After a few tries, I found that it expected mostly decimal, but only using unsigned numbers where N/S E/W would be used to indicate the sign instead. What a pain. Anyway, I got past that and the next step was figuring out where exactly I was supposed to save the new MGLN file. The correct location is G:\USR\CPOI\file.mgln, where “G” is the drive that it attached as to the operating system.
Once the file was loaded into memory, the trip planner created a route to the nearest place to the cache with a flag. Then a trail was routed from the flag to the target waypoint.
I think this will be very interesting to play with my nephew. He can use the Garmin eTrex GPS, and I’ll use the Magellan Maestro 4040. Once we get in really close, he can take over for more accuracy. The eTrex has a compass that can point to the waypoint and tell us how far we are by feet. The Magellan Maestro will simply tell us that we have arrived.
