mcrow

The only way I'd ever delete any log is if it gave away the exact location of the cache.

While I've never owned a base Etrex I do have a Venture HC and it's a great basic caching unit. I also have an Explorist 300 but I find the Venture HC to be the better unit. Just looking and what other people say and from people I know that own basic etrex GPSr, I think that it is a step down to the explorist 100.

You can already do that with PQs.

In a way I say yes, because a traditional cache like they were in the old days were made to hold items. OTOH, "cache" has eveolved since then to mean many different things including to mean anything that we hunt using a GPS. It would be nice for new geocachers not to stumble on the micros and nanos for their first caches but I don't know if changing the system would help much with that.

My 17 month old daughter tossed my GPSr out of my office window on the second floor onto the sidewalk down below. Other than a scuff mark (not on the screen) it works the same as it did before it left the window.

That explains some of the trouble I had when I was over caching in Hutch! Being off 60 feet will have cacher posting the corrected coordinates in their logs. 60 feet was barely acceptable in the "old days" with old technology. With the chips we have today, I generally try (when hunting a cache ) to get within 10 feet or less of GZ and much more often than not, find the cache very near there. I only own one cash that I recently placed and has two finds but so far nobody has had trouble with my waypoint and I did a one shot. Also, I think most everyone in the area does the same thing and I've had no trouble finding caches.

It appears that it is his way of rating your cache. from his profile: The way it sounds is that yours scored a 70 out of 100 which seems to mean he liked it.

Well, some common sense should be uesed as well. If the owner knows that there is a chance that a lot of people will think the cache is on the other side of the river, maybe they should give a hint. No matter how well averaged your waypoint is the cacher could still be off by 30ft.

People can continue to average their waypoints but I doubt is will improve anything. Maybe I have the wrong idea about how GPSrs and Geocaching works but I thought the idea was to get the cacher into the vacinity of the cache and let them search manually from there. If you mark a waypoint and it will get cachers withint 15-60ft of the cache that seems quite accurate enough.

Yeah, I just downloaded it a few days ago and it seems to be working fine.

The most expensive thing I've found so far is probably a travel bug. In my cache I left a $20 gift card to a local pizza place. I figured that people might be in town for a cache tour (it's a small town) and I figured I pay for pizza.

I have not logged enough caches to claim maturity or anything like that but I have formed a preference. I like small,large, and normal caches. While Micros tend to be more challenging, many of them seem to only be based on being small and have nothing really interesting about them other than that. Wow...another magnetic micro under a park bench!

I've looked at parks in Apple Valley,Eden Prairie and Burnsville and have not been able to tell if there were playgrounds there or not. You can clearly pick out ball fields, tennis courts and basketball courts but playgrounds are more tricky. I can see big spots of what looks like it could be sand but it could be an unpaved parking lot for all I know.

Most GPSr will get you within 20-30 ft, ones with a high sensitivity chip set will get you within about 15-20 ft. So between your GPS and the cache owner's gps you could be off by 60ft or so. If you are new you may want to stick to normal and large sized caches and those with lower difficulty, it takes some experience to find micros and even small caches regularly.

Maybe I'm biased. I've found a lot of caches sans GPS. I've never been surprised to discover that a cache is in a playground. After clicking on the "Google Maps" link and switching to satellite view, I can easily tell if the cache is hidden in a playground, near a playground, or elsewhere in the park. For playground caches, I hunt for the cache when there aren't any kids around, and I decrypt the hints before searching. I also have my PDA out. I try to walk right to the cache location, take care of business, and keep moving. No one pays attention to people who do that. But they do pay attention to people who are trying to act stealthy. That's interesting since I've never seen a satellite view that shows detail enough to show playground equipement. Now, if you are familiar with the park you can probably tell by where the google mark is in the park whether or not it's in or near the playgound. Still, I almost always look at the google maps and they generally are not detailed enough to know. I can almost always tell it's a playground without even looking at the satellite view. When there's a cache symbol in a conspicuous hole in a residential area, what do you think it's going to be? (The rest of my commment is edited out, since I just read your last found log and it is now apparent that your OP was either an outright troll or you've done a complete about face) Talk about a trll. You have no idea. I found the rocket hill cache today which is actually over 200 ft away from a playground plus I had my daughter with and we went to play on the playground after we found the cache. As others have noted Google maps do not zoom to that level of detail in all places, I have yet to see one in MN that zooms to that level. In the future you may want to keep your snark to yourself unless you know what you are talking about. How is what I said a troll? I just stated I don't like them to be right on the playground and I think people should note in the description if it is on,/near a playground. I don't care if others like playground caches or not, if you like them good for you but I don't and I'm not the only one.

I don't get full days or even half days to cache. An average outing for me is 2-3 hours and I've managed to find as many as 12 in that time frame. So, if I put an 8 hr day into it I'd probably get in the area of 35-40 in a day. It all depends on how many you can find compacted into a small area. I've had 5 caches on a single trail in one park before and it took about 30 mins to grab them all.

Not sure how it got changed but when you send waypoints: gps>send waypoints Then you get a popup screen for the options for sending them to your GPS. Check the "use default" box to unlock the send options. There is a "waypont name" section with a box labeled "you can build waypoint name using tags". In the box is should have: %code You probably have %smart in the box and will need to change it to %code. That should fix your problem.

The easiest way is to download the file to your PC and unzip it. Then download GSAK and install it. Then click on the unzipped file and it will automatically start an upload to GSAK. You can then upload them to your GPS using GSAK,

Then my suggestion for the Nuvi 500 + Venture HC would what I'd go with. However, if you're on a tight budget then it seems like the 500 should be good enough for Caching.

Then my suggestion for the Nuvi 500 + Venture HC would what I'd go with. However, if you're on a tight budget then it seems like the 500 should be good enough for Caching.

I had one the other day that I made way more difficult than it had to be. I was walking along a deer trail not far from a creek and the GPSr started pointing 50ft which would place it about 8ft directly across the creek. I looked up the trail to see if it looked like it would wind around back to it but it looked like it went the opposite direction. Now, I thought there was a good chance the trail did make it's way back around closer to the cache but I was short on time and didn't have the patience to possibley take the trail and have an extra 30 minutes of walking one way. So, I decided to try and jump the creek (about 8ft), luckily I made it for the most part. I got one foot in the creek and a couple handfuls of mud but made it without major disaster. I found the cache and sure enought there was a path within 100ft of it and it lead back to where I jumped the creek and it took about a 5min walk.

I can't argue much against that either. In fact, I think my next GPS will be an Oregon and I'll use it for both because it seems great for caching and good enough for me for an auto GPS. However, price is a factor depending on if his boss considers the Oregon an autp GPS or not. Even an Oregon 200 goes for around $300, so with his boss paying $150 the Oregon 200 would be a good deal, if not two separate untis is probably a better deal.

Depending on your budget, I'd go with with Nuvi 500 and then grab a basic handheld like the Venture HC. With what your boss is willing to pay for tha auto GPS you can have both for around $240 out of pocket. That way you have a pretty good car system that can be your backup GPS for caching should your other GPS breakdown or is forgotten at home. Plus the Venture HC is about as good a basic handheld you can find.

Definitely stick to easier caches to start, like normal and large sized ones. Also, it may be to your advantage to look at all of the websites that sell caches and caching products, that way you'll get a better idea of what most caches will look like.

Chances are you are at ground zero. GZ is when you get to the area around the cache that is about 40ft in each direction. Once you get to GZ you just have to look over that 40 or so feet, your GPS will just keep spinning around on you because you are close. If your GPS and the GPS of the cache owner get a similar reading then you can expect to get with in 20ft but you will still have to look around. I know of a couple of cache owners that use the same model of GPS that I do and I tend to get with in 15 feet of their caches, most of the time, sometimes I get right on top of them. The bottom line is that the GPS only gets you there, you still have to put it away and find the cache yourself. Other factors can cause problems like heavily wooded areas, lots of concrete, and bad waypoints by the owner.