WanderingAus

Don't recall any in Australia, but I'll keep my eyes peeled. Closest is 'Natures Window' in Kalbarri region, northwest Western Australia, where a natural portal through the rock gives a view over Kalbarri Gorge. A very popular photo spot, hundrds of thousands of visitors would have photos of themselves in this natural frame. (I wouldn't expect that to qualify though). Gets my 'Yea', look forward to seeing it.

I'm responsible for part of the backlog, happy to join and help.

In Australia there are thousands of free barbecues. 419 of them have been added to a Geocaching Australia locationless cache which I own. Yesterday I added another barbecue to my Round Tuit list - I think I probably have 50 or more barbecues to add. At the same time and general location I also added a 'Municipal Parks and Plazas' and a 'Public Playgrounds' to my Round Tuit list for Waymarks. (I'm part way through March 2012 on my Round Tuit list at present, less than 2,000 to go, but the list grows every time I leave home with a gpsr). I think the 'Public Picnic and BBQ Sites' category can run independant of the 'Municipal Parks and Plazas' without a problem. Not all parks have barbecues, not all barbecues are in parks, some are in parks but the park is not particularly 'Waymarkable'. I add probably three parks for every 10 playgrounds and/or barbecues, but that's a personal quality filter in action. I'm surprised that some countries don't seem to have free public barbecues, but there is probably more than enough 'universality' to warrant the category.

OK, I've finally been able to troll the old forums, which as an Australian I was denied access to, and I haven't found an answer to my question. There are mixed views on Waymarking the same location in more than one category, and I agree with the view that it's a good thing, but my reason is that some waymarkers may only look up their "Favorite Categories" so could easily miss an item which would be in their "Favorite Categories" but are actually listed in a different category. My conundrum is what about multiple items which are in one collection, for instance a military or war museum, all of which could be added in one category. Do you add them as one waymark, or each item as a separate waymark. The military or war museum itself can be waymarked, but Waymarking all the items could result in a hundred or more waymarks all in a couple of hundred yards. Is it all about the numbers, or is it about the quality? Personally I would probably Waymark the first item, and include photos of all the other ones within that one, but I'm interested in the view of the more experienced Waymarking community. from The Waymarking Desert of Mexico (well, that's where my waymarks end up on any second edits). My Waymarking Karma is currently about 14.3% (1 visit on placed waymarks / 7 total visits), which doen't compare very favourably with my Caching Karma of 234.2 % (11,298 finds on owned caches / 4,824 total finds).

Let the fun begin Just messing around trying to figure how to use all the stuff in GSAK, Geocaching.com, and Waymarking. Just created a scavenger hunt, first one ever. As an Australian it's nice to finally get into the forums, after repeatedly being told I don't exist - I could post waymarks, and visit waymarks, but I couldn't get into forums. It definitely needed fixing, not too happy about the method as I would have liked to respond to some of the archived ones, but this is better than nothing. from The Waymarking Desert of Mexico (well, that's where my waymarks end up on any second edits). Seriously though, GSAK just doesn't really like Waymarking, I have to visit each waymark listing and manually add the description and visit requirements for each one. My Waymarking Karma is currently about 14.3% (1 visit on placed waymarks / 7 total visits), which doen't compare very favourably with my Caching Karma of 234.2 % (11,298 finds on owned caches / 4,824 total finds).

I have heard of a puzzle cache that met the guidelines, but when the puzzle was solved the result was well inside the .1 mile radius. The first to finder mentioned "seems to be rather close to ...", second to finder did a Needs Maintenance, and third to find went straight for the jugular with a Needs Archived. It was obviously an unsuccesful attempt to circumvent the saturation rule, and was archived very quickly. Of course saturation isn't a problem for me, six months ago there were 36 caches within two miles of my home, and I owned 20 of them. There are still plenty of very worthy holes to be filled, even though the last six months saw 21 new caches placed in that circle. A week ago I went on a maintenance run of 750 miles (1200 kilometres), visited 13 of my caches, placed 2 new caches, found 5 caches (everything within 25 miles of my planned path to my caches), and re-visited two caches I'd previously found. There was room for maybe 100,000 or more additional caches, but only about 4,000 or so really good spots which deserved a cache. The average number of finds for my remote caches is about 4.2, but it's not about the numbers.

Having just got around to looking at challenges I noticed the Crossing Borders challenge, and remembered that I had photos of myself crossing two separate state borders (a foot in each state). Having completed the challenge for the first border, can I complete the same challenge for the subsequent borders?

I have an Explorist 500, and I'm not having that problem. I can currently see 7 red ticks on the screen of the 500, which is the grand total of all my finds. Keith

I just tried my Explorist 500 and found the same thing I checked the Reference Manual for both the XL and 500, neither of them mention a limit on geocaches. I put my geocaches in the SD card, Internal Memory is showing 42% free (total Internal Memory 16 Mb - you have 64 Mb according to the Reference Manual). My 500 geocache file is only 78 Kb - this doesn't make sense Of course I don't understand why you would want 500 in one file - I found it tiresome scrolling through a file containing only 30 caches to look for one cache. I guess if you want the GPS to tell you when you are near a cache, and don't use the internal scrolling to look for them, the more the merrier. Keith

I am thinking of getting an iPAQ HP rx5965 Pocket PC. Would this be suitable for paperless caching? I won't be using the GPS function for caching (Explorist 500 will take care of that), just need to be able to read eBooks from Pocket Queries and maybe run GSAK on it. Does anyone have any experience with this or similar model? Any help or advice would be appreciated. Keith

I am thinking of getting an iPAQ HP rx5965 Pocket PC. Would this be suitable for paperless caching? I won't be using the GPS function for caching (Explorist 500 will take care of that), just need to be able to read eBooks from Pocket Queries and maybe run GSAK on it. Does anyone have any experience with this or similar model? Any help or advice would be appreciated. Keith Oops!! I meant to put this under GPS Units and Software - not sure how I got it here I'll reenter it under GPS Units and Software, so this one can be deleted (I couldn't work out how to do that either).

Keith, the tracking number and the reference number will not be the same. The tracking number can be found on the coin and usually starts with PC (PCXXXX). Some coins do start with different letters, but anything that starts with TB is just a reference number and can't be used to log the coin. Hope this helps. Thanks cmelton14 and Droo. I didn't want to take the coin because I didn't know anything about coins at that stage, but once I read up on the subject I decided to log it as 'discovered'. I plan to go back tomorrow and get it to move it to another cache, so I'll get the the reference number then. Thank you both for your help

I've been trying to log my discovery of a geocoin. When I enter the tracking # I get 'no match'. I've checked and the geocoin is definitely listed as 'Use TBJM8N to reference this item' and that is the tracking # I've been entering. This is my first geocoin discovery so any help on what I'm doing wrong would be appreciated. Keith

Sure! You can cancel premium membership at anytime, or allow your membership to lapse (although depending on how you set things up, you might be billed/debited automatically unless you intervene in some way). I think they just don't do refunds...so, while you can save a few bucks over the long haul with an annual membership, the month-to-month is the least expensive way to try it out and cut your losses if you don't think it's worthwhile. More than likely you'll see within a few weeks what your best course of action is. Thanks for that - I decided to go for the whole year anyway. Have already done my first couple of pocket queries, waiting for the results

Thanks for that - I only want it for "paperless caching". I already have a Magellan Explorist 500, decided against the XL because I like to be able to carry it in a shirt pocket when I'm not actually looking at it, and the XL is just too chunky. I'll have a look around for a Palm. Keith

I am also VERY new to geocaching, and am wondering whether a HP Jornada 540 Pocket PC would be good for the job. My eyesight isn't what it used to be, so I need a reasonably readable display. Anyone have any experience with this model? Keith

Can I upgrade to premium membership for just a month or two, and revert to non-premium membership if I decide I don't like it? As a pensioner I have to watch my spending. Keith

I feel so sad - I recently bought my second Magellan Last year I drove the 24 Km (15 miles) to the Australian Magellan dealer, NextDestination. My 5 year old Magellan Sporttrak Map was crashing when I tried to upload regions. At first the Engineering Manager insisted that the problem I described couldn't possibly happen, and he then proceeded to demonstrate that fact. On the third attempt to upload 4 regions, the gps went berserk, crashed, rebooted, and generally put on an impressive display of refusal to respond to commands, exactly as I had described it. After loading firmware upgrades and various resets, he then demonstrated that the problem was solved - until the third attempt to upload 4 regions, when the gps once again went berserk, crashed, and carried on generally as before. He was so surprised at his failure to fix the problem that he replaced my 5 year old Sporttrak Map with a brand new one. AT NO COST Now I reckon THAT is customer service. Unfortunately the new GPS was no better than the old, still crashed on the third attempt to upload 4 regions. I'd actually had the problem since I first got DiscoverAus about 3 years earlier, but used the workaround of entering 'Code 92' (clear detail maps), then uploading a minimum size region (I'd named it 0empty to make it easy to find in my regions list), then I was able to upload 4 regions without problem. I just had to do the clear and upload every time. One difference with the replacement Sporttrak Map was that the 4 Meg limit no longer applied, and I was able to upload up to 5.5 Meg Unfortunately a bit of rough handling has sent it even more berserk, it now insists that the sun will set around 2 PM every day, so it had to go. The Explorist 500 with DiscoverAus Topo seems pretty good, but only time will tell Keith

GSAK certainly looks useful. I understand a Premium Membership will give me access to Pocket Queries. Do these Pocket Queries populate the diff/terrain/hint fields? I also saw mention somewhere of "the last few logs", but the sample file in GSAK doesn't seem to have any logs - am I mixing up programs maybe? Any help would be appreciated. Keith

way too much work GSAK... The text file takes an average of 3 minutes per cache. Adding the info in Geocache Manager takes an average of 1.5 minutes per cache. Reading and interpreting/digesting the info takes an average of 3.5 minutes per cache. I'm a firm believer in the "Seven Ps Principle". That 4.5 minutes per cache extra work will probably save me between 10 and 20 minutes per cache. The average cache seems to be between 45 minutes and 3 hours. A 10% or less investment in preparation seems worthwhile to me. I should add that I only have one lung, so any work I can do sitting down that saves me a bit of walking/hunting/searching on foot is a good thing - those of you with two lungs are welcome to do the extra beating around the bush Keith

It's that last 10% where the problems are. Some people like super-wordy hints, which means that I'm able to read only the preamble. Sometimes I can only read the hint for the first stage of a multi. I've verified that the entire hint has uploaded to the .gs file, but for some reason Magellan has decided I only need the first 50 characters. It's super-aggravating when I really really need the hint and all I get is (and this is a real one I encountered after 45 minutes last weekend) "Look for the old fence line, and then search tree". I'd have liked to have also seen the part that said "roots to the north." dave You can always massage the info and the hint to be useful within the 50 characters. The full hint should be understood by this" "Look for old fence line - search tree roots to Nth" keith

Is the hint and previous logs only available in downloads created by 'query'? I note that jpred1 is a premium member. I just opened a downloaded file in mapsend lite, and it does not include the hint or logs. I opened my downloads in Magellan Geocache Manager, and modified each entry by adding the Date Placed, Date Last Found, Difficulty, Terrain, and Hint, before uploading to the Explorist 500. I edit the hint to make the most meaningful and helpful use of the 50 characters that the 500 displays. I also copy ALL the cache information from the web page into a text file. With some editing I was able to fit all the info about 60 caches onto 12 pages. It took a bit of work (about 8 hours for the 60 caches) but I now have the info in the GPS and a printout to help me.

That seems so easy - I didn't even notice the "append to existing list" button Now to work out whether EasyGPS Companion or Magellan geocache manager is the way to go. Thanks for your help Keith

Thanks Dale, EasyGPS Companion seems perfect for the job. Keith

Is it possible to merge two or more geocache download lists? I have a Magellan Explorist 500 and am using Magellan Geocache Manager V1.07 to upload geocache lists to the GPS. I can upload any number of lists each containing up to 20 points, but I would prefer to upload less lists with more points in them. Any suggestions anyone?