admo1972

www.geochecker.com It only works if the owner of the cache has listed their cache on geochecker. Almost all of the puzzles in my area (and there are a lot) can be confirmed with geochecker. The link will always be in the cache listing. For example: GC16E33

It's all a matter of degrees. Putting a nail in a tree should be just fine. Will the nail harm the tree, most likely not. Is the tree better off before the nail was put in, probably. But so was the terrain before you walked over it. So was the air before you drove to the cache. So was the environment before you fired up your GPS, using up life of the batteries (even if rechargable). If hanging something from a tree makes a great and unique cache, by all means go for it. There is ZERO way to make geocaching zero impact on the environment. The key is low impact. Hand hammering a birdhouse to a tree, or attaching fire tacks to make a night trail, that's all low impact. Just be smart about it, and don't go making a birdhouse multi just because you can. I wonder how many people against putting a nail in a tree have live Christmas trees this year in their house?

Welcome! A wonderful multi-cache you can get started without a GPS is "God Kissed the Earth and Called it Asheville". The first bunch of stages you can do just by looking at the coordinates on google Earth and then going to the locations. The first stages are all walking in Downtown Asheville. The final will require a GPS, as it is somewhat outside the city. I'm sure you can also do some Virtual Caches with just google earth and then going there. But once you have a gps, it gets much, much more fun!

I have a Vista (old greyscale one, no expandable memory, or high sensitivity receiver). It has 24MB internal memory, and is enough to hold topo maps for all of New Jersey, and small portions of New York and Pennsylvania, and the Asheville, NC area. I am looking to upgrade, and would love the expandable memory to add a bit more info for each cache as a POI, rather than pulling out my Palm just to see the size of the container I am looking for.

The two geocaching items I put on my list is: 60 CSx Hiking stick Don't think I'll get the CSX, but I may get the stick. We'll see...

So it sounds to me like the card is fine, and that it is just a Vista problem. I guess just use the XP machine with the card until Microsoft gets another service pack update for Vista.

Very annoying. Read this yesterday, but only this morning am I denied access. Bummer. To do some very basic searching and logging of caches, you can go to the address: wap.geocaching.com It's text only designed for quick access using pda's, cell phones, etc. But not blocked by websense.

Are you sure is is showing as only a 1GB? A true 1GB card would show up as 920MB or so, not 1GB. A 2GB card should show up as a 1.75 GB card or so (give or take a 100 MB). What is the exact space VIsta or XP is saying is available on the card?

When a buddy of mine wanted to take me out caching, I almost didn't go. My first thoughts was that we were going to have to dig up the cache. Once we found the cache (after over an hour of criss crossing the land, unable to find where to actually go, as we neglected to notice the included parking coordinates), there was a TB in it. I then thought that the tb had some kind of transmitter in it that is tracked. Of course, that was just cooky talk. Then, when I saw how many caches were close to my home and work, I had my GPS within a week.

I find the number the OP refers to as most important, not the total that have ever existed. For example, all we care about with human population is how many are alive now, not the total number of humans that have ever walked the earth. Once we reach 500,000 active caches, I'll find that to be a quite significant milestone.

Caching in a large group is quite fun, and THAT is the biggest reason to go caching. When in a group, we all have logged the find, but most people in their log mention which individual actually made the grab. I've foun dit pretty much the same with FTF's. Twice I was searching for a FTF with one other cacher, and the other made teh find first. We both "claim" the FTF, but I noted that it was the other guy who actually made the grab. Once, with a group of about 5, I found it first, but had no problem sharing the FTF with the others. I'd say 90% of my finds have been solo, so I don't see it being much of an issue either way.

Ahh. Yes, what you are downloading just the loc file, which is your only choice by that method. The gpx files are obtainable by pocket queries (as you already know) and by downloading it from each individual cache page as well, where you have the option to download the loc or gpx file. But you need to open each individual cache page, and download each file. That does mean you will have as many files as you have caches. Pocket queries is the best way to get all the caches you want into one file. Does this makes sense?

Sounds like you are downloading the LOC files, which have very little information. You want the GPX files, which have all the info like hints, attributes, past logs, etc.

How many feet are we talking? You can simply go to that coordinate, walk however many feet along the given bearing, then search for the cache. You can also use the option in your GPS to project a waypoint. But neither case requires the Earth's radius. Of course, if the distance involved is so great that the curvature of the earth affects it...

One near me that I haven't done requires following the reflector trail, while recording your track. The track, once completed represents a digit, which you then use to find the final. It called BlackJack in the Blackness.

That must be because all the old people who retired there can't outrun lightning like I can.

In the past, I've often gotten an error such as that after attempting to upload a route. But then I've found that the route actually did upload fine. Just look in the "you rcreated routes" tab, and it may be there even after you get that error.

We've got that websense junk at my work as well. geocaching.com is fine for me, but geochecker.com has now been blocked for a while. Makes getting those puzzle caches at lunch a bit harder...

Hmmm. As far as I know the GPS uses one or the other, but not both at once (calculating from sats or from pressure). I haven't paid much attention to elevation with my Vista (which has a barometric pressure thingy), but I always like to play with new stuff. Tried to calibrate it once, but did not know the current pressure nor elevation (one of which is required), and never looked back. I am flying soon, so may have th opportunity to calibrate it at the airport, as the elevation is accurate and published for airports. I mostly wanted it for the baloon ride to see our maximum elevation, but more importantly our track. We spent the last 30 minutes criss crossing a cul-de-sac that out pilot was determined to land it. Our track at that part of the trip would have looked like a bowl of spagetti!

When I was on Outward Bound, we were instructed that, short of getting indoors, the next safest place is towards a solitary tree, and sitting with knees up a distance of 2/3'rds the height of the tree away from the tree. I guess the logic is that 2/3's the hight away is the "sweet spot" where you are close enough to the tree that lightning would hit the tree rather than you, but far enough away that electricity passing through the ground would be diminished enough to not harm you as bad. Sitting knees up would alloy any electricity to pass up your butt and out your feet, or vice versa (thereby not passing through chest or head). I wouldn't want to have this in practice.

Whether you can use a GPS varies from airline to airline, and even plane to plane. There's a website that lists what airlines specifically allow or deny GPS usage during flights, but this is ever changing and is often out of date. For exampel, the site (which I don't recall right now) said Continental does not allow GPS usage, but the in-flight booklet says they are specifically allowed during cruising (same as any other electronic device). If your device had a barometer on it, it isn't useful on an airliner, as the cabin is pressurized. Not sure how good ones w/o the barometer are with calculating elevation. I went on a hot air balloon ride, and am kicking myself to this day that it didn't occur to me to bring my GPSr with me until up in the balloon!

As far as I know, the only maps you can get are from Garmin. You have 3 options: You can get very high detailed maps, but are only of National parks (limited value for geocaching as caches are generally not found in National Parks, but the maps do include some surrounding areas of these parks). Topo, which is lower detailed, but you can get the whole country, or City navigator, which includes all roads and is necessary for auto routing. I stick with topo.

I pretty much agree with all that was said here. I have the black&white screen eTrex Vista, and love it. Having the electronic compass was important for me, as I often like to hunt for caches that are a ways off trails in the woods. Walking in a straight line at a decent speed just to get a non-electric compass to point in the general direction of the cache is a bit of a pain. However, this model does get poorer reception in the woods. Once, even with a lock on 5 or 6 satellites, the accuracy read about 100 feet! And I was hunting a micro (which I found through sheer luck). If you want to save some cash, but get the equivelent of having an electronic compass that works when you stand still, get a model without the electronic compass and buy a cheap camping compass at target or wal-mart or any outdoors store. On the navigation screen of the gps, make sure you have one of the "fields" set to display "bearing". This bearing is the direction to your cache, and doesn't rely on what way you are facing. Note the bearing reading, pull out your regular compass, and sight that bearing. It's an extra step, not to mention pulling out another piece of equipment, but will save you upfront cash. You should always have a comass on you anyway, and it's "pointer" will always be more accurate than the one on a GPS, but I find this not much of an asset, as either will put you at a general GZ, and you still need to search anyway. That all said, I really appreciate the electronic compass, and when I upgrade from my Vista, I will make sure to have the electronic compass. It makes getting the last 300 feet or so to a cache site so much easier.

The parking lot of this cache: GCH3V2, is, according to the CO, haunted in Chatham, NJ

1.how many geocaches have you found? 200 2.how many geocaches have you hidden? 0. I've got 2 in the works. Took a month for my town to get back to me on permission for one of them, which they denied. 3.how many people do you know go geocaching with you? Most often I'm on my own. A few times I've gone with 1 cacher, once with 8 other cachers. 4.how many times have you gone on a long trip just for a geocache ^^ None 5.how many geocaches have you found in just one day? I think 10 is my record 6.how many items have you traded? Not sure. 100? 7.how many times have you gone geocaching with out a gps and found the geocache that you were looking for? half a time. I went out without a gps and found the first stage of a multi, but had to wait until the next time I had my GPS to get the final.