Anyone figured out an easy way to deal with the new GCxxxxx numbers when your GPS will only accept six digits?

I know GSAK will allow you to strip off the redundant "GC" and reduce the waypoint to five digits, but I don't have GSAK.

Is there a way to take a .gpx pocket query file and do the same thing?

I'm afraid that since my GPS just drops the last digit it's going to consider two caches with the same six remaining digits to be duplicates and drop one of them.

(or do I finally have a legitimate excuse to upgrade my GPS?)

~erik~

quote:

Originally posted by ~erik~:
(or do I finally have a legitimate excuse to upgrade my GPS?)

~erik~

GSAK would be cheaper than a new GPS.

Anyway I don't think any of the Free GPX software will do that. You might be able to use a plain text editor on the GPX file and tell it to search and replace GC with G. Then loaded it into the GPS.

I don't use the GA number because it's hard to refer to...for me. I refer to, mention, talk about the cache name or it's 'smart name'.

GSAK will create a Unique Smart name. My GPS has 3 lines of display.

Line 1 - I use the smart name.
Line 2 - The second I use the long name limited to 18 Characters.
Line 3 - I put the Difficulty, Terrain, Cache type and Container size (abbreviated)

I can put any detail of the cache on the display, limited of course, but this'll be GSAK 103.

But you can edit (Find/Replace) the GC with blank and resave.

Thanks for the hints. I figured out something that worked for me.

I opened my PQ files in Notepad. I selected Edit/Replace. Typed in GC for the letters to be replaced, left the next field blank, selected "replace all". It stripped all the "GC's" from the page. I then saved the changes as "All files" instead of the default .txt file type.

I then opened up my file in EasyGPS and loaded it into the GPS.

FWIW I had done two PQs - one with 250 waypoints and the second with 245. There were some overlaps so the net result was 430 waypoints loaded into my GPS. That was 430 waypoints with the "GC" stripped off. When I did it earlier with the "GC" on there I had only 428 waypoints in my GPS. So apparently there were two new caches that had the same six initial digits.

I did load it into my PDA without stripping off the GC prefix, as CacheMate can handle seven digits just fine.

Learn something new every day.

~erik~

Only thing I can see as a negative about that method is if you had a waypoint with "GC" somewhere else in it. If I recall the format correctly, (don't have one to look at right now) I think you could avoid this by replacing "GC with ".

I could be wrong on that though, and it's equally likely you wouldn't run into that.

To avoid the problem of removing "GC" some where other than the waypoint name I suggest you change

"<name>GC" to "<name>"

quote:

To avoid the problem of removing "GC" some where other than the waypoint name I suggest you change....

Yes, heaven forbid a cache have a clue with "eggcup", "dogcart", "kingcraft", "dogcatcher", or the ever popular "stringcourse" in it.

I wonder if there are caches with GC somewhere in the waypoint number, such as GC12GC....

I did try the <name>GC replaced by <name> trick and it removed all the GC prefixes just fine.
Thanks, Allen.

~erik~

Edited to add, I answered my own question.
There is a cache gcgc12 so there are probably others. So that one would be reduced to just "12". Oh well, how often can that happen?

Not directly related to erik's question, but I don't use the "%smart" name in GSAK.. I use "%drop2", which instantly strips "GC" off the front without affecting the rest.

Actually, I use a heckofalot more than that:

%drop2 %typ1%con1 %children %drop2%c_Prefix %user

I won't go into "what's that do" here, but see the GSAK help files if you're curious.

I use the GSAK smart name so that it matches the name in the HTML file I export to plucker.

I actually find the GC number pretty useless all around.

Because we all have different preferences, it's a good thing that the various software programs allow for this.

I'm still learning my DeLorme but I've discovered that I can (using GSAK) name the waypoint with both the GC# and the smart name. Pretty handy.