User manual

6
Compass Accuracy & Calibration
The compass is electronic, 3 axis which means it works with the GPS held at any angle and
while you are stopped. I went to look for a cache and used both the 710 and the Oregon 550
side by side – held apart by about 3 foot so the compasses didn’t interfere with each other.
Both GPS’s were set to True North. The 710 has an option to set what speed the compass
switches from electronic to GPS (controlled by the satellite signal). I set this to above 4 miles
an hour.
Both showed minor variations in bearing to the cache and the direction of the compass arrow
(see screen shots). The 710 compass has options to choose a different compass ‘card’ but all
show the sun and moon position and the direction to travel as a small (rather too small) red
arrow. The arrow that stays static in the middle of the compass screen is very confusing. Both
GPS’s got me to the cache very easily.
When I arrived at the cache site the 710 showed 13
feet and the Oregon 4 feet (screen shots above). I then
walked past the cache for about 50 feet and back
again. This time the 710 showed 3 feet and the
Oregon 8 feet (left). Conclusion? They are as good as
each other!
Geocaching
My main use of the GPS is for geocaching and I use Pocket Queries.
Loading PQ’s directly
Just copy the two GPX files from the PQ directly to the Geoaches folder (“caches.gpx”) and
Waypoints folder (“caches-wpts.gpx”).