Step 5 - Reaping the benefits
Google Earth
[img_assist|nid=157|title=Google Earth displaying GPX|desc=|link=popup|align=right|width=155|height=200]With recent improvements to Google Earth, it now understands geocaching.com pocket query GPX and displays cache icons that allow you to see at a glance the type of cache. Needless to say, this is a fantastic way of preparing for caches.
It is also handy to sometimes save a screenshot of the caches, copy this onto the PDA, and have it as a handy overview in a slightly different format than the GPS provides. Not essential, but handy - especially when caching away from your home ground. (PS It was only when I took the screenshot that I discovered a little bug in Google Earth which meant the text describing the cache wasn't shown - it is there, honest!)
GPX Sonar
Little to say here other than GPX Sonar is a fantastic wee piece of software and it the only software that I will say anything nice about on the Pocket PC platform!
When you start it, you can select a GPX file that you have copied onto the PDA. I discovered that a GPX of the whole South Island was rather large, slow to load, and had a whole lot of caches that I typically don't use. Hence my desire to customise my GPX to just those locations that I really wanted.
Once the GPX file is opened, you are presented with caches in a table. I generally sort the table by distance from the current cache I am hunting. If you click on a cache - a cache page opens in Internet Explorer providing a mini-version of the cache page. Once the cache is found, you can 'ignore' the cache so that it doesn't appear in your list - meaning that you have a nice table of the closest unfound caches. It really is that simple.
Notes
The standard Pocket PC Notes application is the final tool I use for caching, where I can cut-and-paste multi or puzzle information for collection and solving, as well as recording caches found and maintaining a list of trackables discovered for later logging.
Summary
I have slowly been working towards this over the last few weeks. Now that I have most of the process automated, I only have a couple of manual steps remaining - transmitting the GPX to GPS and Pocket PC. At this stage I have no immediate desire to automate these processes - and they are made somewhat difficult by power buttons on these devices. The next thing I may do is make more lines based on the state highway network, and polygons based on regional council boundaries to provide some alternate means of splitting the pocket queries that may be useful.
