CharlieP

There are a couple of reasons terrain ratings may be misleading: 1) Ratings are subjective to some extent, what is easy for a 22 year old in great shape is not necessarily easy for a child or an overweight 55 year old man. 2) There is often more than one way to approach a cache, and the rating may be based on the easiest way, which may *not* be the most obvious way, or the shortest route. That second factor can turn a 1 or 2 rated cache quickly into a 4. A good rule to follow is that if the cache is rated below a three and you find yourself in a situation that seems extreme, you need to ask yourself: is there a better way to get to this cache? It is also a good idea to read the logs and see what kind of comments are made about the terrain. In some cases, using a topo map of the area can help you avoid a bad route. Those who shun the trail and insist on taking a bee-line route to the cache should not complain about terrain ratings. FWIW, CharlieP

There are a couple of reasons terrain ratings may be misleading: 1) Ratings are subjective to some extent, what is easy for a 22 year old in great shape is not necessarily easy for a child or an overweight 55 year old man. 2) There is often more than one way to approach a cache, and the rating may be based on the easiest way, which may *not* be the most obvious way, or the shortest route. That second factor can turn a 1 or 2 rated cache quickly into a 4. A good rule to follow is that if the cache is rated below a three and you find yourself in a situation that seems extreme, you need to ask yourself: is there a better way to get to this cache? It is also a good idea to read the logs and see what kind of comments are made about the terrain. In some cases, using a topo map of the area can help you avoid a bad route. Those who shun the trail and insist on taking a bee-line route to the cache should not complain about terrain ratings. FWIW, CharlieP

quote:Originally posted by Geoffrey: Antenna is a problem on the GPS Map76, it has to be as close to vertical as possible That has not been my experience. I often lay my GPS 76 on the dashboard of my car, at about a 15 degree angle from horizontal and it works fine in that orientation. I think one of the reasons reception may decline with any GPS unit held horizontal is that it may be held lower and signals are blocked by the person's head and body. FWIW, CharlieP

quote:Originally posted by Warm Fuzzies - Fuzzy: Unlikely. SA was designed specifically to defeat averaging. ... The only way averaging was any good under SA was if you averaged several hours worth of fixes, to give the error plenty of time to wander all over the target area. A mathematician named Wilson did quite a bit of research on averaging under SA and his work showed that averaging under SA would improve accuracy if the averaging period was longer than about 6 minutes. The longer the period of averaging, the better the results, but even just 30 minutes of averaging would reduce error by more than 50%. It may seem counter-intuitive, but Wilson has shown that with SA off, averaging is much less effective in improving relative accuracy. FWIW, CharlieP [This message was edited by CharlieP on March 14, 2002 at 09:20 PM.]

The Ranger's letter has a certain tone that indicates to me that using reason and logic on this person is probably a waste of time. I agree that someone should point out that these caches are not buried, and that digging is discouraged in our sport. Also point out that the geocacher in question obviously did not know of the Park Service policy restricting the placement of geocaches. Beyond that, we should place non-virtual caches in locally administered parks (city, county, state) and wait to see if our activity continues to grow. If it does, there may come a day when we have sufficient political power to make our case with those who may actually help us on this issue, members of the US Congress. In the meantime, be cool. FWIW, CharlieP