Amberel

And the electronic compass has to be calibrated - and on the Oregon, at least, occasionally recalibrated. Rgds, Andy

I did a 20 cache 5 mile series round Box Hill and Juniper Hill yesterday with my grand-daughter, very pleasant walk and there are several places where the route can be short-circuited to reduce the length if required. Started at 11 and finished at 4, but we were taking it very easily indeed, including stopping at the restaurant halfway round for our lunch. Rgds, Andy

The problem here is that the ONLY log type to go to a reviewer is a "Needs Archive". I've said it before, we don't actually require a "Needs Archive" log type, we need a "Reviewer Attention" log instead. I've posted a NA of a few occasions, and made it clear that I really do NOT want the cache archived, but that it does need to be sorted out. An RA log would reflect what I intended, AND it is a lot less emotive than NA. An RA log would have been appropriate here, if we had one. But as we don't, the NA was correct. Though it seems it is possible to do this one, it SHOULD be sorted out, and it appeared that the c/o was unlikely to sort it out unless nudged more strongly than by a NM. Rgds, Andy

I'm not sure where that idea came from - half of mine are in churchyards and I've only ever had positive feedback about that. I think the main reason that most aren't is simply that many people can't be bothered to ask for permission. As far as the churches themselves are concerned, I've had a small number of polite refusals, a couple of polite acceptances, and a couple of enthusiastic "yes please" responses. Rgds, Andy

I've been granted permission to place caches in the churchyard on about 50% of those I've asked for. Agreed with all of the points made - letter is better than email, and phone is better than letter. Face to face too, of course, but in my case that's only been after initial contact. And yes, it can take a long time, up to 6 months in my case. But always been worth the wait. Personally, if it's a traditional church with a churchyard, I'd aim for something more ambitious than a grit bin, though quite often more modern churches have less scope. Rgds, Andy

Well, it's a point but not the only point or the whole point, at least, not for everybody. I've found a lot of CMs. I target the series because it frequently takes me to an interesting old building in a peaceful, beautiful and secluded setting, or sometimes a modern building with striking architecture. But an increasing number these days are set by more nondescript, utilitarian buildings, which serve their intended purpose well but which lack wider interest. That's fine for the congregation, and for cachers whose only interest is numbers, but it's less interesting for me. Rgds, Andy

This project sounds a bit marginal to me - your web site is encouraging people to set caches specifically to attract visitors to their churchyard, and that isn't allowed by Groundspeak. Note the subtle difference between you setting a cache to bring others to a location you enjoy, and the promotion of the setting of caches by others for the primary purpose of attracting people to the cache setter's own locations. It's also arguably a bit close to pressing an agenda - the Groundspeak guidelines state "Cache listings perceived to be posted for religious, political, charitable or social agendas are not permitted. Geocaching is intended to be an enjoyable, family-friendly hobby, not a platform for an agenda." And, as a purely personal preference, while I understand your slightly different stance, it remains too similar to the current CM series. Rgds, Andy

I am in possession of a black one, but that's all I can answer :-) Rgds, Andy

It's not intended to be a British Isles database, it's closer to a UK one than British Isles. The list of "countries" I include is a bit arbitrary, influenced in part by the bizarre way that Groundspeak defines a "country". The only reason it includes Ireland is because I want the Northern Ireland caches, and according to Groundspeak they are in the country of Ireland, complete with the Irish Tricolour - I can't get the NI ones without the Irish ones! Nothing against Irish caches, it's just not my priority to have them in my permanent database. The inclusion of the IoM was because I had a particular interest at the time I set up the queries. I have no real reason to include Channel Island caches at present, and including them in my date sequence would likely be disruptive if they caused one to overflow the 1000 limit. The database also includes other selected areas such as chunks of the Alps in France, Switzerland, Austria etc., but these aren't kept up to date so regularly. Rgds, Andy

I keep an offline database of all UK / Ireland / IOM caches, reasonably up to date except it takes about 5 weeks to cycle round them all. I can send you a GPX of all caches with challenge in the name. I understand this wouldn't be a long term solution for you. Rgds, Andy

Sorry, I hope this doesn't count as discussing it. I'm just curious, I had no idea it violated the terms of use, so I was wondering how exactly? And are there any alternatives to the Groundspeak app (you don't need to give me names if that's against the rules of these forums) that wouldn't violate the terms of use, or is it simply the case of "you're not using our app, you are violating our rules" policy? It doesn't use the API but gathers its information by a technique called "screen scraping", i.e. downloading the normal cache page and processing the text data on it. There are some disadvantages to this method - it transfers more data than other methods and throws most of it away, and it usually breaks when the site is redesigned. When you accept the sites terms of use you agree not to use any program that employs this method. Clearly they have reasons to do it that way which for them outweigh the disadvantages. Edited to say that there are several alternatives, but as I'm not an Android user I'll leave someone else to discuss which is best. Rgds, Andy

We are going to try and do 8 in a day when we drive to Austria for ski-ing in March. Not just layby cache and dashes, but 8 high quality caches. Rgds, Andy

I use O2 with an iPhone 5s (but not using 4G). Coverage in towns is fine, but for caching I rarely stay in towns and there are loads of gaps out in the wild. From my experience it seems no better or worse than the other networks in this respect, but O2 do at least have a reasonably honest charging system. I far prefer to use an Oregon over the phone. The iPhone GPSr is quite respectable, but I can think of no reason why 4G should improve it by one iota. Rgds, Andy

It should be fixed now. It appears that the issue became apparent when a request was made centred at a location of high cache density, which is why some people saw it and others didn't. Rgds, Andy

I know of about 6 people who are having the problem, including myself, and they all started at the same time. Also at the same time as the GC app failing I started getting timeouts when GSAK was using the API. Both problems continued for 24 hours, after which I "solved" the GSAK problem by increasing the timeout from the default 45 seconds up to 5 minutes. The GC app problem remains. It seems pretty clear that Groundspeak have made some change, but that it affects only a relatively small number of people. The GSAK problem was important to me, but is now sorted, the GC app really doesn't affect me to any great degree as I use it so infrequently, and have alternatives. Rgds, Andy

I had bowed out of this thread but can't let that pass - please don't make the self indulgent mistake of thinking you would be doing me a favour when the opposite is true. You would be doing me a favour by giving me a few days to get to a computer so I can do my own tidying up please. Rgds, Andy

I think you may have to be careful how you phrase it, else the reviewer may see it as promoting the gardens. It's a fine line between giving useful information to cachers, and promoting a business. Rgds, Andy

I can't imagine paying £6 for no other reason than to find a cache - there would have to be something truly spectacular about the cache itself. It IS likely I would look for a cache if I visited a paying location for reasons other than caching. I would be unlikely to visit a botanical gardens, but I'm sure quite a few people might. Rgds, Andy

Well, the whole point is, no you don't. You can just wait a few days before dropping it off. Rgds, Andy

I'm afraid this is what happens when people grab caches before giving the previous cacher time to drop it off. I certainly wouldn't have grabbed it so quickly after picking it up. If that meant it wasn't moved for a few more days, so be it. People don't expect their TB to move every day. No, I normally can't log my cache finds when I'm on holiday, so I can't log trackables either. I do it as soon as I get home. Rgds, Andy

I'm not wholly clear on what you've done, but I'm assuming you're not just reading your home co-ordinates off the GPSr. Have you have set one or more waypoints, noted the grid ref readings at the time, and are now reading those same waypoints back in lat/long? The first thing is you have to make sure that you have set it to WGS84 lat/long, as you have had it set to display grid refs up to now maybe you have set it to OSGB36 lat/long? The difference is likely to be about one or two hundred metres. If you have the right datum set, then be aware that the algorithm used by Groundspeak to calculate grid refs is very poor, and gives a fairly constant approx 6 metre error. Is the error you are seeing close to either of these numbers? Rgds, Andy

I can go one better if you like, and take you out on the river - my boat is moored at Chertsey. We have several cachers outings during the year, if it was a weekend it could be combined with one of those. Mostly we just potter up to Old Windsor or down to Hampton Court and eat at a riverside pub, but we also have trips through the middle of London and out through the Thames Barrier, but those have to be timed to suit the tides and we eat on the boat rather than at a pub. Rgds, Andy

You speak about them as if I were not the owner of trackables myself For me the more important thing is not a few days delay, but an accurate history of the movement, both as far as caches and cachers are concerned. I do NOT want people grabbing my trackables from others because they don't have the patience or respect to wait a few days for the other person to complete their part of the history. Of course there are times when you do have to grab it, if the previous holder has lost interest, but try to do it properly first. Rgds, Andy

I believe it is gross rudeness to "grab" from someone else unless you are sure they aren't going to log it themselves. For me that means emailing them and waiting 2 weeks for a reply or for the TB to be dropped. 2 weeks is a reasonable holiday duration and is no time at all in the life of a TB. Rgds, Andy

Actually I was advising the OP to use WGS84 lat/long, at least until they are experienced enough to be confident in making their own choices, and given the information we have I remain convinced that was the correct advice. Rgds, Andy