I am copying this from another forum with the posters permission. Just thought it was important info for anyone looking to buy a GPSr. Thanks to Frodo_Underhill from SJGeocachers for the info......
I stumbled upon some info that anyone thinking about purchasing a used Maggie or any of the eXporists models currently on clearance should consider. Even though the box will state the unit is WAAS capable, they will not be able to receive the WAAS signals.
To understand the problem you need to go back to last summer. At that time the government replaced the two WAAS satellites (120 & 122) with two new ones (135 and 138) Prior to the change over, the old satellites sent out revised almanac data, which if your GPS was active at the time would have been received and stored in your units RAM. Then your unit would know about the new WAAS satellites and you would not have any problem. However if your unit was not being used during the transition, you would not have the new almanac data and the unit would not know about the new satellites.
Now here is where it gets worse. If you upgrade the firmware or do a factory reset of any kind, then the new satellite data in your RAM will be replaced with the old satellite data in the firmware and you just lost WAAS capability.
If you just purchased an eXplorist on clearance, it was never run prior to the satellite changeover in July, 2006, so it has the old satellite data and is not WAAS capable.
What makes this problem even more insidious, it that the unit will still show the old satellites on the sats screen. The old sats are still there but they are commercial geostationary sats that the government was leasing. The frequencies the WAAS signals were on are now in use for a different purpose - so you may receive a signal but your GPS will not know what to do with it.
I wrote to Magellan customer support yesterday and got a response that basically said that my unit is "no longer serviceable or updatable" Then they go onto explain they have a trade-in program that allows you to trade in an older GPS for a different model at a discounted price. Well my experience with that last summer when my eXplorist 210 was acting up was that their discounted price for a 500 XL was more than the price on eBay or even Kmart. So at that time I repaired my 210 on my own - the button contacts needed a simple cleaning.
From what I have found on the web, this problem applies to the Sportrak, Meridian and eXplorist line.
If your GPS is still getting WAAS and showing WAAS averaging on the data screen, I would keep the batteries charged so that the flash RAM does not discharge. I have no clue how long it takes for that but if you have put the GPS aside for several weeks it could be a problem
I used to really like the Maggie units but with the horrors of no support for the older units and the mess the Triton roll out has been, I would steer clear.
If you have an old unit and its lost its WAAS capability, it is still useable. In fact you may not even notice as you often loose the WAAS signal under heavy tree cover. Just be extra careful taking readings for new caches to get around the problem. Take many readings and check them often.
So as they say – caveat emptor
I stumbled upon some info that anyone thinking about purchasing a used Maggie or any of the eXporists models currently on clearance should consider. Even though the box will state the unit is WAAS capable, they will not be able to receive the WAAS signals.
To understand the problem you need to go back to last summer. At that time the government replaced the two WAAS satellites (120 & 122) with two new ones (135 and 138) Prior to the change over, the old satellites sent out revised almanac data, which if your GPS was active at the time would have been received and stored in your units RAM. Then your unit would know about the new WAAS satellites and you would not have any problem. However if your unit was not being used during the transition, you would not have the new almanac data and the unit would not know about the new satellites.
Now here is where it gets worse. If you upgrade the firmware or do a factory reset of any kind, then the new satellite data in your RAM will be replaced with the old satellite data in the firmware and you just lost WAAS capability.
If you just purchased an eXplorist on clearance, it was never run prior to the satellite changeover in July, 2006, so it has the old satellite data and is not WAAS capable.
What makes this problem even more insidious, it that the unit will still show the old satellites on the sats screen. The old sats are still there but they are commercial geostationary sats that the government was leasing. The frequencies the WAAS signals were on are now in use for a different purpose - so you may receive a signal but your GPS will not know what to do with it.
I wrote to Magellan customer support yesterday and got a response that basically said that my unit is "no longer serviceable or updatable" Then they go onto explain they have a trade-in program that allows you to trade in an older GPS for a different model at a discounted price. Well my experience with that last summer when my eXplorist 210 was acting up was that their discounted price for a 500 XL was more than the price on eBay or even Kmart. So at that time I repaired my 210 on my own - the button contacts needed a simple cleaning.
From what I have found on the web, this problem applies to the Sportrak, Meridian and eXplorist line.
If your GPS is still getting WAAS and showing WAAS averaging on the data screen, I would keep the batteries charged so that the flash RAM does not discharge. I have no clue how long it takes for that but if you have put the GPS aside for several weeks it could be a problem
I used to really like the Maggie units but with the horrors of no support for the older units and the mess the Triton roll out has been, I would steer clear.
If you have an old unit and its lost its WAAS capability, it is still useable. In fact you may not even notice as you often loose the WAAS signal under heavy tree cover. Just be extra careful taking readings for new caches to get around the problem. Take many readings and check them often.
So as they say – caveat emptor