How many waypoints can I register on a Garmin Etrex?

Q. As an annual South West Coastal Path walker I don't really need a Garmin eTrex H but my family thought I should have one! I recently found (in my experimentation and trials) that marked waypoints can be down loaded to Google Earth and pasted to their map. This could be very useful for me as I take a lot of photographs during my walks (200/300) and have difficulty later in recalling their location. I now have a solution it seems; I simply waymark everytime I take a photo. What I cannot find out and I hope through your site I might get an answer, is how many "continuous" waypoints can I register before initial waypoints are deleted and replaced/over-ridden by the latest? Any help or redirection if necessary would be appreciated.

Ernest Staines, South Petherton, Somerset

A. I have an older Yellow Garmin eTrex (serial port) and a newer Garmin eTrex 10 (USB port).

With the older Garmin eTrex (serial port) I found I could record 500 waypoints before the unit would tell me it was full. It did not overwrite any existing waypoints - it simply would let me record anymore unless I manually deleted some that were already recorded.

However, the tracklog function (which records your route as a continuous line) would start to over write itself after about 40-50 miles or so - or about midway through the third day of a three day walk in the high mountains.

With the newer Garmin eTrex 10 (USB port) I can record up to 1000 waypoints but have not had it long enough to see what happens when I reach that figure (but I expect it to simply tell me it is full like the older eTrex).

With regard to recording continuous tracks (tracklogs) - the Garmin eTrex 10 has the facility to save each track when ever you wish (every hour, daily, weekly - whatever) so saved tracklogs will not be over written by any new ones. The Garmin eTrex 10 I have has some 8Mb of hard drive space which is plenty in GPS terms - enough to save several months worth of Waypoints and Tracklogs.

Your Garmin Manual will tell you more about the capacity of your particular unit - always a good place to start I find.

Hope this helps

Mike (Editor)

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