terratin

Just a quick update: We picked up our Oregon last week Monday in Calgary and have been trying it out ever since. I must say I'm quite impressed. Even in downtown Calgary amongst skyscrapers it connects to satellites within the blink of an eye while our Vista HCX needs minutes and ages to do so. The accuracy is also somewhat higher and there's less drift. The screen is not as reflective as I first thought and I don't need back light. A few nibbles: still need to get used to the touch screen. It feels like it takes longer to navigate to a certain menue item, though I'm not sure if that's really the case. e.g. select cache -> auto-go to map -> go to menue to select cache and read description, then to compass. not sure if it's compatible with EasyGPS. After we set out for a trip we found that our pocket query transferred with EasyGPS was missing. Back home we realised the data was there, but somehow not stored as geocaches. Gosh! It really needs a lot of energy. While the etrex can deal very well with as good as empty camera alcalines, the Oregon needs better stuff. Anyway, Eneloops are ordered and should arrive next week. Lets hope they will work better. tiny nibble: the same map on the Etrex seems to be more detailed, or rather more simplistic, and at the moment easier to use. Also the 'follow road' line is more difficult to distinguish from the road colours. Despite all it's a very nice unit.

That's really cool! I wish I was the one logging your cache Mrs. terratin

Maybe it's a good idea to first submit yor cache in English and only when the reviewer has approved the English text go for the translation. You could mention this in a reviewer note then the reviewer is aware of it. OK, publishing it will take a bit longer but if your cache needs some changes then you don't need to have parts of your cache translated a second time. We did the same with our latest EarthCache in Spain. It just makes life easier for everyone involved. Mrs. terratin

Not really much, just: enjoy and do accept the offer by Cincol. He really knows the country (and he might bring you to one of our caches ) Anyway, the only thing that comes to mind, but you probably know that: make sure you have enough water and food, and check the jackup and emergency tire. It's rather embarrassing to be stuck in the middle of the desert with a flat tire you cannot change Mrs. terratin, who really misses Qatar

I like the 3M on the Oregon, I had a zagg, but it was hard to scroll the display as the zagg was kind of sticky Sounds good! I considered buying the Zagg-one as the shop I'll pick up my Oregon stocks those. Any idea hopw difficult it is to find a 3M one? And to jump in here: what are the best rechargables to be used with an Oregon? Mrs. terratin

Hey, we bought that one as well yesterday (night for us here in Denmark). We'll pick it up in about two weeks time. Mr. terratin considers walking to the shop from Downtown Calgary and do a few caches on the way Mrs. terratin

That's certainly the idea! For some reason getting good rechargables here is quite difficult but they are on our Canada shopping list as well, as is a handfull of mini-containers. Hmm.. just looked at a Danish GPS website. There the Oregon 450 costs more than double of what we paid Mrs. terratin

Why not consider the eTrex 20 or 30 then? I believe they have all the paperless features of the OR 450 and the interface will be near identical to your Vista. See here Yes, we considered that for a moment but in a whim* we just bought the Oregon 450 for a really good price. I think it got everything we're looking for, and it's a tested GPS. If something is not working perfectly I'm sure there's a workaround for it. We're happy now already *well, it took us almost 2 hours to find out how to buy and pay for it. In the end we phoned up the shop and will pick it up when we're in the area.

Thanks for your answers. Our Vista is getting a bit touchy lately. Sometimes it just switches itself off or has weired display errors, and the rubber band is broken and needs repair anyway. We're going to Calgary and are seeing some marvellous offers around there. I haven't checked yet what the prices are now after this crazy Friday (Can't come up with the correct name) but it will still be so much cheaper. What I've been wondering: How sturdy is the 450? can it deal with a bit of dirt and a bump? Battery life is a bummer. I don't necessarily need all sorts of wild display options and would prefer loger battery life instead. But other than that it seems to win over the Vista with everything else important to me. Mrs. Terratin

Hi, we're thinking about a GPS upgrade. We currently have a Garmin eTrex Vista HCX and consider buying an Oregon 450, especially as we'll be in a country soon where they are really cheep (here in Denmark they cost a fortune). Are there people here who have used both? What is your experience, which one do you prefer and why? Which one has the better reception, what about battery life, sturdiness, display, menue usage (adding coords by hand...) etc.. The great pro for us is paperless caching, though we don't know what it looks like on that gps yet. Every now and then I'm away on business, quite often on rather short notice and it would be great to just load all the caches in the area plus the descriptions instead of spending days and days to find out what caches are in the area and select a few, make a description sheet in Word (don't like the layout of the print-options here), print and take a big pile of paper along. Being able to do whereigos also sounds nice as we don't have a smart phone and don't plan on buying one anytime soon. Cheers, Mrs. Terratin

I fully understand… It seems that since the 1st of this year many EC issues, have been made as clear as 18 lb. drilling mud and the only consistency is inconsistency itself. Many cachers in my area are disappointed w/developing ECs and as a result have given up. If it wasn’t for the positive responses I’ve received, I too would have done so as well. So, as of now I’m truly sitting on the fence w/ECs. I’ve caught wind of something known a Opencaching, perhaps it’s time to look into it a bit more? I don't think the photo requirement is that complicated. Don't request photos anymore, unless it's to record something unique. A photo of you and your GPS? No A photo of an outcrop? No, as it will always be pretty much the same photo and doesn't add to the learning. A photo of a tidal wave passing though a narrow gorge? Possibly as it will be different every day depending on the moon and other factors. I suppose you could make a question asking for a photo of such wave and ask the cacher why he thinks this wave has such height/shape/whatever at the very moment the photo was taken. (leaves the question if tides are a suitable topic for an EarthCache anyway, but I can't come up with a better example at the moment. I guess it shows that there aren't many occasions where you can actually ask for a photo. ) Mrs. Terratin

Despite the overdone topics (erratics, waterfalls, thermal springs, etc) I don't think it's too easy to log many EarthCaches with a similar learning within a certain area anyway. At least for the places we've lived in so far there are very few dublicate topics. I just had a look through our list: 2 esker (both Denmark), 2 cinder cones (both Gran Canaria), all other ECs are rather unique. We might get our second erratic soon, but the first one was logged in Norway, the other one will be in a different country. Mrs. Terratin

We sometimes wonder the same thing, especially when we've visited a cache covering a topic we find really interesting and the questions are open to interpretation (and we have discussions on what might be the right answers). As CO of a few Earthcaches most of the times not all answers to all questions are correct, so we (try to) always send a reply with the 'correct' answers. This because we think the questions and therefore the 'correct' answers are a vital part of the earth science lesson. Mr. Terratin

So, what consequence will you draw? Not to use such type of questions and only use questions that can easily answered by the majority of the visitors? Cezanne And wanting people to find and log the cache is wrong how?????? It doesn't meet your caching aesthetic to have caches that laypeople are able to log but that doesn't mean that others don't want to have caches that laypeople are able to log. We're going for Difficulty 6 (genius level), makes it easier to check the two logs a year against given answers... Cheers, Mr. Terratin

Yes! That's pretty much the kind of tasks I was thinking of, TerryDad! How do people manage to solve them or do people have problems of any kind? I was looking at some kind of mapping exercise before, on the 'back spine' of Qatar, but my stay there was running out and I didn't even start testing how people could measure angles without having any equipment (I thought about providing a plan for building that from cardboard). Being the person that has adopted the first cache on this list, I can vouch for its difficulty. I get many answers from finders, the majority of the answers are way off. OK, thanks for your answer. That gives me an idea of what kind of questions might be a problem after all. Good that I asked even though this ended in an endless discussion of schools worldwide mrs. terratin

Yes! That's pretty much the kind of tasks I was thinking of, TerryDad! How do people manage to solve them or do people have problems of any kind? I was looking at some kind of mapping exercise before, on the 'back spine' of Qatar, but my stay there was running out and I didn't even start testing how people could measure angles without having any equipment (I thought about providing a plan for building that from cardboard).

Yes, that's what I've been wondering. I suppose you could do a more difficult EarthCache with a somewhat more extensive task. As an example out of chemistry you could probably describe an experiment and ask your average 14 year old to run the experiment and describe the results. It's not that I really want to make a more difficult EarthCache because it might be possible, but I'm rather thinking of adding little 'practical geologist' questions which will be more extensive than your average 'read word x from the sign' cache

Hullo, during our vacation we came up with some ideas for new EarthCaches, and then got really wild with logging tasks for those, and for things we don't know if we ever find a suitable location. I wonder, are there EarthCaches with a high difficulty rating that work? I guess our 'Got Vinegar?' caches is a bit more difficult than most, but the question is how far can you really go without asking for specialist knowledge. What would a D4 or D5 EC look like? Cheers, Mrs. terratin

Almost there. Picked up 10 more ECs during the last two weeks and have done the reading and field work for publishing our sixth. Almost double platinum now Mrs terratin

Certainly Not sure though what we're starting with. It's a fairly touristy place and the oldest EarthCache there has over 220 logs per years On the other hand, our target locations are probably too far from those beaches and regular excursion stops. I haven't seen many places where nice geology corresponded to nice beaches (though I once did a field work on a rocky beach, and asked sun bathers to let me have a look underneath their towels ) Mrs. Terratin

Nearly half of our finds were done while biking. Though for us a bike is really just a means to get somewhere as we don't have a car, and not our favourite means of transport. I would love to cache while inline skating but that would be difficult for most caches and restrict us to roads. Admittedly we had some lovely hunts in some nearby forests, and last winder, cycling through hand-deep fresh snow was also great So yes, I guess I could get used to that. Only the weather should be better and please less wind

Lets see. We got 34 ECs in 15 states and have 5 published. For our vacation from next week on we can pick up 10, earn another country and already have some 3 ideas for new ECs. Thus if we can at least develop one we'll be having double platinum. We'd still not qualify for a discovery award though, other than charcoal. Mrs. terratin

Would love to attend, but I think it's just a bit too far away Mrs. terratin

TerryDad2 already gave a good answer so I only want to add: I really would love to log such EC series It sounds like a marvelous idea. Mrs Terratin

Cheers Red. I haven't done cross country skiing in ages but would really love to try it again. Never tried snow shoes though and haven't done much snow caching. Oh, we found one in Norway and crossed a small, surprisingly deep snow field. That was good fun (apart from the wet trousers). Lets hope this works out.