-CJ-

Depends on your style and interests and plans. If a person plays the game mostly in cities/towns, drives a car and never stays overnight on a trail I think there's not much sense to purchase a handheld device. A smartphone with one of numerous apps will be sufficient (most probably the person already owns it). If it's about hiking in mountains for several days or more then buying some waterproof handheld receiver with some additional AA batteries would be a better deal.

After I've read numerous threads/posts about country souvenirs I decided that the question about a souvenir for Russia should be closed. It makes little sense to me to do any requests on the matter for other countries too. We've already agreed around here that these souvenirs are just occasional gifts; we take them with gratitude and like them being in our profiles but have no expectations beyond this point.

Is there such a thing in the world as "FTF ethics"?

A quite agressive thread.

I woudn't give you any numbers. At the moment the national website is obviously more popular in the local community with larger number of caches. As for the saturation issue, we (.com COs) know quite well about two websites and don't allow our caches to be placed near existing ones. Folks from the national website usually don't care. So, it may happen that you find a container quite close to the existing cache at geocaching.com outside of Russia. Folks from the international website surely don't know about such possibility. My point was that comparing to this a slighly shorter distance between two physical hides (say, 150 m instead of 161 m) with these two caches published on the same website would not be a saturation issue to me and if I run into such situation I won't post any notes about the problem.

I won't post any complaints about this fact. There are caches placed on our national website which are very close to those already published at geocaching.com. We talked recently about an example of two traditional caches in Norway where boxes are only 7 metres from each other. This could be a trouble (for .com users). 150 m (instead of 161 m) won't be a trouble to me as a visitor especially if locations are different. Not a question of life and death.

The question is rather interesting to me. We've discussed this issue a lot around here. First, it seems that when you're talking about "commercial" and "non-commercial" or "non-profit", the edge may be thin and not clearly visible. For instance, you need to guess if the owner of the property is a commercial entity or a non-profit entity; sometimes it's easy, sometimes not. Again, even commercial companies may conduct non-profit activities, e.g. there could be some entrance fee but your money won't make any profit for the owners and the stuff of a company. Sometimes you need to go deeper into details and this can be hard especially if you don't know local laws and regulations and language. Second, there commonly are "indirect costs" for visiting many caches. For example, there's a well-known island near Helsinki called Suomenlinna with a huge fortress and many interesting places to visit. One has to pay to get there by a ferry. Is this ferry line non-profit? Obviously no. However, there are many caches on Suomenlinna and no one seems to be bothered with there's paid access to these hides. One local cache (not mine) was banned by our reviewer because of this "commercial" guideline. The market had its interesting story and the box was outside its territory so you didn't have to pay any fees or buy any goods to get to the cache. However, it was counted as violating the guidelines. I spent the last week in Istanbul and visited the cache located at the territory of their grand market. There are many caches in the world located in cafes; it's a good way to prevent them from being muggled so they're often used as TB hotels. Usually you are not required to pay but I've never taken this advantage; it would be really strange to me to visit such a cache without asking for a cup of coffee or a pint of beer. So, at this moment my ideas about "entrance fee problem" are: - Don't hide a cache in a place where commercial interests and obviously dominating. - Try to avoid placing a cache on a territory with an entrance fee. - Get rid of all phrases and words (in your description) that may look like promotion of any brand or product. - Focus on the historical, architectural and other "non-profit" themes related to the place. - If your cache is placed on a territory with open and free access but there are some places nearby and on the same territory with paid access (e.g. a park with a castle, some attractions, cafes, etc.), explain that your cache doesn't require any payments. - If your cache is on a territory with paid access don't hide this fact from your visitors, tell them about how much is it and about working hours. - If you submit a cache on a territory with paid access you probably should explain your local reviewer that it's non-profit and you are not promoting any commercial activity. (This suggestion depends on your local reviewer and your experience with him/her, of course).

If any cacher is going to visit Moscow please let me know in advance. If I'm not away from the city I will happily meet you to exchange trackables. It also happens quite often that I have trackables in my pocket and I wish them to travel further. Will probably add these strings to the descriptions of my caches so visitors know that there's such an opportunity. As for snail mail, I won't take responsibility of recommending it in Russia.

We had similar discussion there at one of our local geocaching websites. No perfect solution. One I used in Germany was Locus + Google Translate (offline version). It was pretty easy to translate descriptions, weird behaviour while translating logs and complete headache with hints. I won't say I was happy but it was better then nothing. The majority of caches were in German language only.

No one came.

No, I don't email suggesting additional hints. I own 50+ caches and am always seeking for chances to increase this number. Next, the majority of my caches are simple traditional boxes. And third, I believe that if one wants any hint he/she can just ask. I always respond. As for local newbies, I do my best to support the activity of announcing new events - in my opinion it's the best way to get people involved. In theory. Locals haven't been too much enthusiastic about events (sadly).

Try https://www.facebook.com/groups/geocachingireland/

I'm not sure if any similar request has already been published. Anyway, as a CO I used to receive e-mail notifications about visits to my caches. Photos are uploaded not that frequently of course. However, it has become common that from time to time I find a spoiler photo where it shouldn't be. I have to check photos manually. If the website informed me about the newly uploaded photos I think it would be helpful. What do you think?

My dog used to dig around the cache site. Every time. I tried to persuade her not to do this. "It's against guidelines!" - I said. She used to reply: "You just found something interesting for yourself with tons of descriptions, hints and photos. I've got nothing of this stuff but you're expecting me to be your companion. Why should I just stay aside then? I also wish to find some treasure for myself, perhaps a mouse or two". We haven't agreed on this matter yet.

No "Will attend" posts so far but let's wait.

The question is rather difficult to answer because it really depends on: - Climate. In many countries you can place a cache at the ground level but it's not the best choice in my region. - Hiding place. A container placed in a pole of a fence, at its top, is subject to rain, snow, everything. If there's any kind of shelter for the hide it makes difference. - Frequency of visits. So many "city caches" in containers with broken lids or tightly packed pulp inside - and a cache in perfect condition somewhere in mountains with one or two careful visitors per year. - Maintenance. Well, if I own a cache 10 minutes from my home I'm able to replace the container (visitors may say: "Oh, look, this can seems to be so reliable, the cache is 3 years old and it looks brand new!") - Availablility. Most of brands you guys discuss here are not available in my country. (And ammo boxes which are widely presented as an example of a geocaching container by Groundspeak are not known here at all). Preforms proved to be unbeatable as the most waterproof solution I know but they are hard to purchase. There are no geocaching shops within the country which would sell them and commercial entities don't take seriously my intention to buy a dozen or two of these tubes. "Tupperware" box is a standard variant for a middle-sized cache. For micros and nanos we have very limited ability to buy containers from online shops. Some cachers do this but due to very high percentage of lost caches in the area buying things from a shop somewhere in Germany appears to be rather expensive. So, most of us use hand-made variants. I myself worked out two constructions and have used the second one for almost all of my caches in Moscow; it's waterproof and very cheap.

Depends on friends. My companions, Mr Jameson, Mr Bushmills and Mr Tullamore, are all great guys but after some years of our friendship I noticed that they demand more time to spend with them to make their geocaching logs really nice and funny. Back to the original question, thanks to all for your comments. As I understood, no one ever tried this app to be sure about what it was doing. The most probable variant is that it automatically logs the distance from the cache while adding logs to the website.

And no, I had no chance to have a look at any logbooks in caches yet. Just noticed.

I suppose that this string is generated by the app, not by the user. It's repeated in different logs and looks like an automatically generated signature. GeoCaches app is not the same as the official app.

Saw a couple online logs of this sort (on traditional caches): "Logged with GeoCaches iOS application, 6.25 km. from the cache". I have had no experience with this application. What does such a log mean?

Please don't take this zero result as anything that proves that no one is interested in exchange caches in Limerick. Perhaps this very forum is visited less then others and people from the "developing" countries aren't that sure about exchange caches. Being myself a huge fan of Ireland (visited Limerick once) I would love to have something of this sort but I'm pretty sure that at this time Russia isn't a good candidate for your idea. Nevertheless, there might be other countries/cachers who will try with more success.

I'm going to visit Istanbul next week again! Most probably these dates will be Nov 16 - Nov 22. For the last day of my staying I announced an event at the website, see it here: http://coord.info/GC5G8J9. It will be a pretty short meet-and-greet event, no big plans, just to talk a little and exchange trackables. Will be glad to meet all those who attend.

My travel in Germany ended and I can share some thoughts on how I solved the problem. 1. The vast majority of listings/hints was in German language only. 2. People in the Eastern part of the country usually don't speak English at all or speak very little of it. Geocachers aren't any exclusion (I took part in a local event). 3. Google Translate (offline version) on my smartphone worked well for descriptions if translation was done from German into English (through the clipboard). 4. It was not that good for recent logs obviously because cachers used more "free" language and terms that were specific to geocaching. 5. It was even worse with hints which were often (and understandable) not much precise.

I see.

How many caches that you own you usually loose, say, per year?