tozainamboku

quote:Originally posted by TotemLake:I believe we are in agreement from different directions ... Yes, I think we are in agreement. If someone has hidden a puzzle cache, putting the answers in the forum is the same as a SPOILER. If the seeker needs additional clues they can email the hider. However, it seems to me that posting general instructions on how to solve a puzzle in the Getting Started forum is OK. It is no different than the other instructions on how to seek a cache that get posted here. Offset puzzle are quite common and there is confusion about adding or subtracting a number to DD MM.MMM. I think toybox's question was legitimate. You didn't seem to have any problem when I posted formulas for computing coordinates an unknown location given three points and the distances from them to the unknown point. quote:Originally posted by TotemLake in a different thread:Wow! Thanks for that explanation! That's going into my PDA for future reference. 東西南北 Why do I always find it in the last place I look? [This message was edited by tozainamboku on July 17, 2003 at 10:42 AM.]

quote:Originally posted by TotemLake: The idea is to allow the seeker to solve the math problem themselves rather than seek the answer here when looking for a cache. That's part of the puzzle and the challenge. Actually the question and the response was no different than suggestions made here to newbies on how to hunt traditional caches. Particularly comment on not expecting the GPS to get you right to the cache or comments on how to hunt under tree cover by getting a distance and bearing in a nearby clearing. Offset caches like these are confusing the first time you do one. As toybox asked, it isn't clear if you subtract from the degrees, the minutes, or the thousandths of minutes. After doing the math you can usually see that subtracting from degrees or minutes would give an unreasonable answer. Prime Suspect's method is likely the correct one to use. I did one cache that required working in minutes. It also required you to know that there are 60 minutes in a degree because the offset gave negative minutes. 東西南北 Why do I always find it in the last place I look?

test 東西南北 Why do I always find it in the last place I look?

quote:Originally posted by ErSamin:If, by some miracle, some of the caches of today survive that long, will the coordinates be any good? I was reading this on the web from The National GPS Network: "Secondly, note that the axes of the WGS84 Cartesian system and, hence, all lines of latitude and longitude in the WGS84 datum, are not stationary with respect to any particular country. Due to tectonic plate motion, different parts of the world move relative to each other with velocities of the order of ten centimetres per year. The International Reference Meridian and Pole and, hence, the WGS84 datum, are stationary with respect to the average of all these motions. But this means they are in motion relative to any particular region or country. In Great Britain all WGS84 latitudes and longitudes are changing at a constant rate of about 2.5 centimetres per year in a north-easterly direction. Over the course of a decade or so, this effect becomes noticeable in large-scale mapping. Some parts of the world (for example, Hawaii and Australia) are moving at up to one metre per decade relative to WGS84." Will everything be converted to another Datum? will cache owners be responsible for updating coordinates every so often? Why do I care? (I don't know...just thought it would get people's minds off famous lines from movies!) That's why they put the date hidden on the cache page. You're expected to figure in tectonic drift when you go searching for a cache. 東西南北 Why do I always find it in the last place I look?

quote:Originally posted by Jeremy: Nice idea, old idea, wrong web site. Jeremy Irish Groundspeak - The Language of Location Try typing web treasure hunt or internet treasure hunt in Google. You'll find several sites that already do this. Most look like they are pedantic devices to teach kids how to find information on the internet. In geocaching - "you are the search engine". in netcaching - "you know how to use a search engine." 東西南北 Why do I always find it in the last place I look?

I guess based on this log it would be bees. Rattlesnakes would probably apply as well. I don't mind bees and rattlesnakes on the way to the cache cause I can usually find a way around them. But if they are too close I'll give up and come back later. As for playgrounds - they are a challenge for a middle aged man caching alone. Just let 'em know you're interested in the moms and not the children. 東西南北 Why do I always find it in the last place I look?

Shamelessly bumping an old thread, but really I just wanted to shares this Cannot find Weapons of Mass Destruction 東西南北 Why do I always find it in the last place I look?

quote:Originally posted by Cacheola Crew: I wonder if tupperware IS the more common container? Round here, ammo boxes seem to outnumber tupperware. No wonder ammo boxes outnumber tupperware in Hampton Roads. You probably have more military bases around there than geocaches 東西南北 Why do I always find it in the last place I look?

My geocaching handle is the Japanese pronunciation of the following kanji: ? East, ? West, ? South, ? North (The characters will show as squares or question marks if your computer/browser doesn't recognize Unicode or you don't have a Chinese/Japanese character font. But you can see the characters in my avatar). I spent some time working in Japan back in the 80's. 東西南北 -- I found it in the last place I looked.

I didn't have problem with homeless people who wouldn't leave, but with a young couple who were getting amorous on a secluded park bench here. I came back later. 東西南北 -- I found it in the last place I looked.

Sounds pretty redundant if you have a GPSr. It reminds of the shop owner in Japan who checked the results of his calculator using an abacus. 東西南北 -- I found it in the last place I looked.

quote:Originally posted by Dru Morgan: How about you? Since I live close to Dru, I suspect my first page looks a lot like his. With a lot of new hiders we have gotten quite a few new caches in the area. I note several new caches place in the Sepulveda Basin. Of course I have not completed as many of the local caches as Dru. I'm still trying to figure out how to get into the area for Paracache without going over or under fences with no trespassing signs. 東西南北 -- I found it in the last place I looked.

I was FTF this cache which required trangulation to find. Renegade Knight is correct in describing using the Pythagorean Theorem to solve the problem. Here is my try a little further explanation. First, use UTM coordinates as Renegade Knight suggest. UTM coordinates are just the offset in meters - north and east of some point. The earth is divided into segments, each segment has its own origin point. If you have UTM 11S E 385607 N 3771023 it means 385607 meters east and 3771023 meter north of the origin for segment 11. If you are working with points near each other you can drop the first few digits of the northing and easting. (Actually you are translating the origin to a point closer to where you are to make the numbers more managable). Second, using the Pythagorean Theorem, if you have to points on at (x,y) and the other at (x',y') then distance between these point is the square root of the difference (x-x') square plus the difference (y-y') squared. You can write this as: d**2 = (x-x')**2 + (y-y')**2 (I used **2 to represent squaring a number because I can't do superscripts in the forum page). Finally, you need to fill what you know and then solve for the unknowns. In the cache above I knew the UTM coordinates of three other caches and the distance from each of these caches to the cache I was trying to find. d1**2 = (x1-x)**2 + (y1-y)**2 d2**2 = (x2-x)**2 + (y2-y)**2 d3**2 = (x3-x)**2 + (y3-y)**2 After some algebraic manipulation you can get two equations x = [d1**2-d2**2-x1**2+x2**2-y1**2+y2**2-2y(y1-y2)]/[2(x1-x2)] y = [d2**2-d3**2-x2**2+x3**2-y2**2+y3**3-2x(x2-x3)]/[2(y2-y3)] Substitute the right hand side of one of these equation for the variably (x or y) in the other and you can get the formula for x and y of the unknown point. If all this is making your head spin - don't worry. You can use a compass (the kind you use to draw circles, not the kind to find which direction you are heading) and draw circles on a map around each known point with the radius based on the distance. Where the circles intersect is the point you are looking for on the map. 東西南北 -- I found it in the last place I looked.

One point of warning on the Magellan Meridan series (and probably other units) - The non-volitile memory is not written unless the unit goes through a normal power down sequence. If you record new waypoints and have not powered down your system you will lose these waypoints if the batteries go dead. To avoid this, if you have low batteries, power off the unit after recording new waypoints to make sure they get written to non-volitile memory. 東西南北 -- I found it in the last place I looked.

quote:Originally posted by CurlyKrakow: quote:Originally posted by Dru Morgan: BTW, *** is in the Bible. My favorite Bible hero is the mighty Old Testament warrior Nimrod. May Dru was refering to Balaam. His Magellan said that the children of Israel were .8 mi away at bearing 180 but his *** was using a different datum and didn't think they needed to move from their current position. 東西南北 -- I found it in the last place I looked.

quote:Originally posted by Brainerd:I've seen it done. Here is a good example of one where the cache owner took a picture of the cache and it's location. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=9f30afe6-7d1d-4515-ad33-27777e2e09ac Note that the owner points out that one of the pictures is a possible spoiler, and the other is a spoiler. Some people have found these pictures to be helpful in finding this cache. Happy hunting, Tom Gee! I though Brainerd might give the example where I posted a picture of one of his caches Safecraker. It definitely let him know about the condition of the cache. 東西南北 -- I found it in the last place I looked.

quote:Originally posted by CoronaKid: Notice that all the pictures have lat/long coordinates. I'm almost tempted to place a cache right below her estate. How funny would that be? BTW, the coordinates are: N34 00.65 W118 47.24 --CoronaKid There is already a cache at N34 00.107 W118 48.390 a little over a mile from Ms. Streisand's house. I guess another along the beach here would be okay. You can actually walk beneath her cliff here at low tide. By the way the coordinate for the picture are the coodinates of the helicopter from where the picture was taken (probably read from a hand held GPSr) 東西南北 -- I found it in the last place I looked.[/i

I think CoronaKid may be frustrated by the lack of people that hunt caches with high difficulty for terrain. He has hidden 4 caches with terrain of 1, 1.5, 3, and 4. The 1 and 1.5 caches have each gotten nearly 30 vistors since they were hidden in February and March this year. The 3 and 4 caches have each had one visit. I have only hidden one cache. It has a terrain of 3.5. It is also a multi-cache so the difficulty is 3. After 3 weeks of waiting with no vistors I went to visit my cache to be sure it was alright. I was sure the first to find junkies would have looked by then. I posted thisnote. As you can see I called other cachers wimps for not trying a harder cache. I apologize for this. I now know that a multi-cache involving a 7 mile hike on steep trails will get fewer visitor that one hidden under a park bench 200 feet from the parking lot. I suspect the first finders know this too so they took their time before they went for my cache. I can understand the frustration of placing a cache away from the crowds and not getting any visitors. 東西南北 -- I found it in the last place I looked.

You need to remember that there many geocachers and probably as many reasons for why they like this activity. It had been stated in these forums before that geocaching is made from two words: geo + caching. Some like the geo part - getting to the cache which may involve a good hike and navigation skills. Others are more interested in finding the cache once they get to the spot. Its unfair to call someone lazy just because they prefer caches they can drive to. By the way, I too prefer caches with higher terrains. I have a pocket query that give me all the caches with a terrain of 3 or more within 50 miles of my zip code. Thats big enough to get a little overlap with CoronaKids area. I notice that he has done a few 1/1 or 2/1 caches (like me) so even the extreme hikers can have fun with an easy to get to cache once and a while 東西南北 -- I found it in the last place I looked.

Members only caches present a few inconveniences to non-members beside just not being able to search for these caches. While I would have likely become a member eventually, the reason I joined was because there was a members only cache on the same trail as where I wanted to place a cache (based on the cache name and the approximate location from the maps). I could have place my cache and risked it not being approved because it was to close to the existing members only cache. Instead I joined so I could get the location of the members only cache and placed my cache more that .1 miles away. After becoming a member, I moved a travel bug to a members only cache. Later it occured to me that if a non-member was following this bug and wanted to retrieve it, they could not get the location of the cache. Also, since members caches get less traffic, the bug languished in the cache for about three months. It was finally retrieve just a few days ago 東西南北 -- I found it in the last place I looked.

quote:Originally posted by Team Kender:Elevation in Action: the last cache I found was on a pretty steep incline on the side of a cliff face. There was definitely massive variations in elevation, but my GPSr got me right on top of the cache to 1 foot without having an elevation coordinate. A great example of where having elevation may help in finding the cache. You would know whether to approach from the top of the cliff or the bottom. Or Brainerd's example of the Empire State Bldg. You might go the main entrance and find you are only a few feet from the cache. But with elevation you could tell that you needed to go up to the observation deck. This cache uses elevation of the cache as hint to how it is hidden. In most cases however you don't need to know elevation to find a cache so it won't matter what you put in for elevation for the waypoint. I believe that most GPSr units don't use elevation in calculating the distance to a waypoint, but I may be wrong. As a test you could enter a waypoint at your present position and add 1000' to the elevation the see what the unit says is the distance to this waypoint -- I found it in the last place I looked.

Look a little further down at granvilleisland's log. No wonder the father got so upset at someone sneeking around in the park. Of course he could be suspicious at seeing a grown male in the park with a teddy bear as well. That's why I avoid caches in urban parks near playgrounds. -- I found it in the last place I looked.

quote:Originally posted by BrianSnat: They allow backcountry camping in many national parks. Yes, most require a permit and some require, or encourage you to use an established campsite, but people are not limited to camping in campgrounds in national parks. Yes, national parks allow backcountry camping. But my understanding is that there are designated campsites. These may be very primative so maybe I shouldn't have refered to them as campgrounds. National Park Service regulations prohibit "Camping outside of designated sites or areas. -- I found it in the last place I looked.

quote:Originally posted by bigredmed:You all seem to be missing the point. We are being shut out of federal lands for the reason that geocaching is deemed detrimental to their mission while people who do a sport which is directly damaging to the environment are welcomed. Yes and No. The NPS has always banned certain activities while allowing others. It may seem that the rules have no reason behind them. In some cases it is clearly political. The Clinton administration moved to ban snowmobiles in Yellowstone. The Bush adminstration, which received big donations from the snowmobile industry, reversed that decision. Campgrounds make a bigger environmental impact than geocaches, but you don't get to decide where to camp. The rules are that you must stay in one of the Park Service's campgrounds for which you need a permit and generally pay a fee. Perhaps all geocaches should be hidded by the park service and you would need a permit (and fee) to go find them like using a campground. The rule to allow rock climbers to leave climbing spikes may make a better argument. After all one objection to geocaching is that a man-made item is being left in a natural place. This rule still requires a permit and the park service will be able to monitor the number of climbers that do this and have some control to keep it from getting out of hand. I think the objection to geocaching has more to do with the finders rather than those hiding the cache. So long as some geocachers continue to go off trail and tear through vegitation seaching for a cache, it becomes hard for the park service to prevent damage. I agree that the park service should review the geocaching ban. The fact that they have changed rules for other activities has nothing to do with this however. Geocaching needs to be judged on its own merits -- I found it in the last place I looked.

... beacause you will get flamed in these forums if your orientation is different. -- I found it in the last place I looked.