Nellsnake

Robinson Falls (GCJGXK)

I just discovered this thread because one of my caches made it on the list . I have looked through my favorites list and found some others to add from Western PA. Each of the following caches has made it onto at least four favorites lists (hmmm, it would be nice to be able to sort caches by numbers of appearances on favorites lists ): A Cachin' Combination by Accident_Prone_Hiker (GCHRGF) Bluestone by Quest Master (GC1CC5) Buttermilk Falls by Swampthing and wife (GC14C7) Chameleon Reborn by Accident_Prone_Hiker (GCJ93G) Heart Attack at Sunrise by slimjim28 and Tonsil (GCE480) Wolf Rocks Cache by Treasure Bandits (GC8C2C)

Surprisingly, I have had 17 unplanned meetings while geocaching with other cachers that were not associated with an Event Cache over the last few years of caching (see my Profile Page for list). So statistically, that comes in at about 2% of the time I am out caching. I guess if one is frequently visiting newly listed or newer caches, that would tend to increase the expected frequency of encounters.

The calculations you are asking about are fairly straightforward to do by hand or with a PC if you use the UTM (Cartesian) coordinate system. As fizzymagic said, this is the way to go if the points are within several miles of each other and the curvature of the earth can be neglected. 1. The midpoint on a line between two points (x1,y1) and (x2,y2) would just be ((x1+x2)/2, (y1+y2)/2). 2. Finding a point that is equidistant from three different points is the same thing as finding the center of a virtual circle whose circumference contains all three points (A, B, and C). One way to do this is to find the equations of the perpendicular bisectors of the lines connecting the three points (lines AB, AC, and BC). The perpendicular bisecting line is the locus of all points that are equidistant from the two points in question. If you then take any two of the three perpendicular bisecting lines and solve them simultaneously, you will find their intersection point. This is the unique point that is equidistant from all three points (i.e., the exact center of the circle specified by those three points). You can solve it for the other two combinations as well to confirm that you get the same answer. To find the equation of the perpendicular bisector of any two points, you: A. Derive the equation for the line segment connecting the two points by fitting the x,y coordinates to the equation: y = mx + b. This is fairly straightforward algebra. Actually, you will only need to solve for the slope m of the line (the y intercept b is not needed for any further calculations). B. Find the midpoint of the line segment (see #1 above). C. The perpendicular bisector is the line (y = m'x + b') that goes through this midpoint with slope m' equal to -1/m (i.e., the negative of the reciprocal of the slope calculated above). You have x and y values and a slope for that line, so you can solve for b'. 3. To find the coordinates of the intersecting point of three circles of differing radii, it is easiest to first calculate the two intersection points of two of the three circles and then figure out which of the two points lies on the circumference of the third circle. To calculate the intersection points of two circles, you can refer to the following webpage, for example: Intersection of Two Circles

Grew up in central N.J., then lived in New England, Western N.Y., and more recently in the western suburbs of Philly...but for the last few years we have enjoyed living just northeast of 'Da Burgh'.

We have a winner!! This will be a perfect cover for Toda's Cacher, and it depicts a great representative of Groundspeak. Everyone that nominated a reviewer can send me an email at jerry@todayscacher.com and I'll send you a copy of the first printed issue. El Diablo I don't post much to the forums and am only now seeing this thread, but I must say that I feel very honored to have been out on that great caching expedition with Keystone and a couple other caching friends. The smiles were definitely genuine. We had a great time that day in May only visiting three caches. I am also thrilled that the photo I happened to take of him using his camera at Wonder Falls will end up on the cover of Today's Cacher magazine. I can think of no more hardworking, caring, and deserving a person than Keystone/Lep to get this honor. Congratulations! (And, of course, I look forward to reading your account of the day -- especially the "incident" near the ghost town of Kendall that has forced you to at least temporarily switch from a Garmin to a Magellan user ).

Exactly, I received an unsolicited complete spoiler on a cache from another cacher (not the cache owner) after logging a DNF on a local cache that is known for its trickiness. In return, this other cacher in the same e-mail wanted hints for two other puzzle caches that I had found that have him stumped. First, I don't feel comfortable giving others hints on other people's caches, and second, he has now ruined that unfound cache for me. I *was* planning on returning to look for it again in the future, but now, what's the point? I would feel like I'm cheating.

You can think of what you're asking to do as solving for the intersection points of two circles with radius 30 miles and 20 miles, centered on Point A and Point B, respectively. In general, there are two solutions to this problem. You'll want to use UTM (Cartesian) coordinates for this calculation. Otherwise, it becomes too difficult. The following is a website that will guide you through the calculations needed. Intersection of two circles

Do you mean you decoded the first part in 5 minutes or the whole thing? If you meant the latter I'm impressed. I'm still stuck at step #3. I just got through it all after about 2 hours. This one's very well done. There's no less than seven discrete stages required to get to the final coordinates. Each stage has a different kind of puzzle to solve. Hmmm...this has given me some good ideas.

I have 126 finds with only 1 archived and 5 disabled on that list. Most of those disabled ones should really be archived, as they have been disabled for quite some time. Even so, that's still <5%! I think this low rate partly reflects the fact that I am still relatively new to this sport (my finds have all been within the last 8 months), so therefore on average less time has elapsed since my finds than many other cachers' finds. I think that the other reason is the point that Lep brought up earlier--people in our southwestern PA area tend to maintain their caches very well. I was the LTF on the one archived cache on my list, but thankfully I had nothing to do with its being archived (that had to do with the time of year and other events that go on in that park during the holiday season).

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