majormajor42

in response to the topic - not one more dollar to garmin - I just successfully uploaded opensource maps to my oregon for the first time. Why spend all that money on maps when I am only going to be in Paris for a week. options: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_Map...Garmin/Download the one I used for France: http://www.raumbezug.eu/ag/internet/osmGarmin.htm I don't need routing yet, but when the time comes, I'll be seeing if there is a good routable openstreet that I can put on my Oregon. kinda cool. I sent in some packets a while back. might get involved with contributing again. help make it better

At first, I was a little resistant to your idea. After all, we were all newbies once and like a lot of aspects of geocaching, we figured things out. These are the the obvious risks we all take with TBs. But, looking at the homepage, you are right. The only mention of coins and TBs on the homepage is the "trackable items" link on the left side. Most extreme newbie probably don't even know what a "trackable" is. Should something about trackables be mentioned in the "welcome to geocaching" paragraph, which is almost like a mission statement? Perhaps even at the bottom of the page under the "Geocaching Statistics" it might say something about active trackables? I'm not really pushing for a change of the home page. Someone who has been more active in the forums could probably tell you if it has been address before in prior threads. You might want to post something in the "Geocaching.com Web Site" forum if you want a more definitive answer.

I can't wait to see it either. Looking forward to getting up to High Falls, NY where the cliff jumping scene takes place. there is a real cache nearby but not underwater one from the movie.

The location of the waterfall scene is High Falls, NY outside of New Paltz. there is a multicache there but I have no idea if one of the stages involves swimming for it: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...b8-c5e357b9d8b7

There will be a special screening of Splinterheads at this year's Geowoodstock on May 23rd in Bell Buckle, TN here's a link to event's forum: http://www.geowoodstock.com/forum/viewforu...6e6c8f82c1f8d0c

Rachael Taylor played the NSA beauty in the Transformers movie. Now she is geocaching! Anybody know where these locations are? The meadow could be anywhere but the swimming hole might be familiar to someone. Good luck to this movie. The director is an old friend of mine. I was out of touch, so just finding out that he is a successful director AND he put GEOCACHING in his second movie is very exciting!

yes, I was just looking at the GSAK macro page and saw that one. fortunately it is the first one. I only read down the the 'D's till my eyes glazed over. lots of Marcos. I'll try that one first though. thanks. Good thing we don't have speed cameras around here yet but we do have red light cameras (not that I speed or run lights often) so I like what you say about being able to load those up too.

Like I said, I haven't started playing with GSAK yet so the answer might present itself or be obvious down the road. sorry if that is the case, but my question is if people post and share files such as your compiled 150,000? you see, I imagine I can only load caches up 500 at a time using the pocket query method to send to them from GC to GSAK. So it took you over 300 PQs to put that together? You can only do up to five a day so that is over two months if you did the max of five a day. And by then you might not have the latest information and might be hunting recently archived caches.... So are there prepared GSAK files that have all the caches in a state, for example, as POIs but also updated every so often to eliminate achived caches?

This is setup on your unit. You need to go to the settings under map (Map setup - Points section) and change the zoom level for your Map Points setting. okay, thanks. that worked. I didn't try the whole GSAK-cache-POI thing yet but I just followed your advice and was able to get my existing POIs (such as the Pizza places) to show up at a wider range. I'm in NYC and right now the widest range I can get the POIs to all show up at is 800ft. that is fine for finding nearby pizza places, but when I am hunting for nearby caches, I might want to get cahce-POIs to display at ranges up to a .... okay, I see that playing with the detail settings will display more POIs at greater ranges. Guess that is something I will adjust depending on whether I am in a hunting in the city or in the country. hopefully will get a chance to load up and experiment with GSAK in the next few days.

what about someone who has placed a challenge cache? They might have completed the challenge of finding 40 something caches but since they placed the final, what do they do? I'm thinking of doing my first delorme challenge. Guess the placer might not ever get a smiley but they do have my gratitude for placing it.

thank you all. I'll try doing the POI thing since it makes sense to me. I have never used GSAK but I guess I'm about start. Now some POI's on my HCx only show up at certain zoom levels. Airports and Highway intersections show up at wide ranges. Resturants and stores show up at zoomed in tight ranges. How do I control it so my GSAK imported custom POIs show up at, let's say, a range of "2 miles" and closer on the little legend in the bottom left corner.

I use WAP frequently. It is great for doing some unplanned caching. I also use it when I FTF a cache at 5am. I simply log "FTF WAP" and then edit the log when I get home an hour or two later. That way, someone waking up at 6am, doesn't unnecessarily run out to be FTF after I have already paper logged it. They can see on the website that I found it and logged in from the field. A little caching courtesy based on my own experience of going out of my way to FTF only to find out that it was found hours ago by three people already. Okay, my gripe about WAP. When searching, I wish, since you have to enter coordinates in the Decimal Degree DD format, that the cache info front page displayed DD as well. This could be in addition to the normal Degree Decimal Minutes DM that are normally displayed. this would save me the extra steps of changing the unit settings on my GPSr. I wish there was a was a way to search caches closest to a cache by simply entering the GCxxxx or on the cache page there was a button for closest caches (just like on geocaching.com cache pages). this would also save me steps since I am usually using WAPing while standing over the cache that I just found. it would save me the steps of converting and entering coordinates. Searching near existing caches, IMHO, would be far more useful than ZIP searches. I hardly ever know the ZIP of the location I am in. The places in this country/world that I do know the ZIP code are usually close to home and I already have those caches in my GPSr. In addition, ZIP search results are centered around some unknown loaction - the geographic center of that zip? the post office? which might be useful if I just so happen to be standing in front of the local Post Office

I like this idea. up until recently, I never cared for a rating system for the same general reasons that have been made already. But, now that I plan a few road trips this year and maybe a delorme challenge, it would be nice if there was an easy way to see the cream of the crop in an area that I am not familiar with without having to look at hundreds of cache pages. I want to see the must-do's of caching. So, my rating system would have cachers (members?) rate their top ten caches. Then some sort of geocaching.com computer would compile and spit out the ones that are on many different top ten list. Those caches might get an attribute or star that can be searched for in a Pocket Query. The rest is up to the community. If we the community actually does overwhelmingly think that skirt caches are the best , then I guess that is what will show up. But based on what I've been seeing the last year and a half, people generally, with exceptions, like what most would consider to be quality caches as well. the other idea, since I often look for good caches by looking at other people's "my favorite caches" bookmarks, would be to have a feature that allows you to see - "the most frequently bookmarked caches" IT wouldn't be a rating system at all, just a way for us to look at what caches many people like to bookmark. It could include all bookmarks, or just the public ones, or just the ones that have the words "my favorite" in them for example. cheers

I've been having fun with my Vista HCX for a couple years. 1000 waypoints max memory has always been about all I've needed. Now I'm looking into attempting a Delorme Challenge this season. So, since I'll be out on the road for about three days straight, I'm thinking it would be nice if I could save more than just 1000 caches. I was just looking up the newer Garmin products, such as the Colorado and the Oregon, and was surprised to see that they too are limited to only 1000 caches. I see the delorme pn-40 is also limited to 1000 user defined waypoints. Not finding waypoint info on the Magellan website. So is there a hiking GPS that stores more waypoints? Or, perhaps there is a way to expand my Vista HCX's memory? I have a 1GB chip in there but as far as I know it is only for storing maps and tracking info. I'm brainstorming that maybe there is a way, if it hasn't already been done, to 'draw' cache locations on a map without them actually being waypoints? I mean, if it is possible to make custom maps, like this guy has done http://www.ibycus.com/ibycususa/ and use garmin mapsource to install them...but this custom map would show all caches and it would be updated every month or so. just wondering

I think pocket queries (premium membership only) send those addition waypoints. I use my mapsource software to send them to my GPS. The slower manual way could be, from looking at a picture of the 60CS...what happens if you just hold down the enter button when you are on the map screen? for me (vista HCX) a create new waypoint screen comes up. then I edit the coordinates and change them to what I want them to be.

what GPS do you have? the easiest way, if you have a garmin, is to connect the GPS to the USB port and transfer data. On my Vista HCX, I can use the on screen cursor, hold it over a position and press enter (push down on the "mouse") and it will make a waypoint and also give me a chance to enter other coordinates as well. but again, what unit do you have so someone else can walk you through it?

summer is coming too (in N. Hemisphere) so those remote caches might be getting more visits in the next few months. I would be more concerned if it were late autumn and winter was coming and that Cache might not be visited for a long time. Unless it is a bear TB, in which case hibernation is a good thing.

I was just doing some Rockland Lake Park caches today. I was down by the river this time. Couple weeks ago I did some of the Long Path caches too. I don't know what is more dramatic...being on top of those cliffs and looking down, or being under them and looking up at them. So I would just do all those caches that are north of Nyack, just east and south of Rockland lake. Read up on some of the caches to see where the best parking spots are.

so who besides me is thinking of having a small hollowed out space in their tombstone for a cache? Question is who would maintain it???

http://www.lohud.com/article/2008811170334 Like the article basically says, nothing conclusive yet. anybody here think they ever saw one locally? certainly plenty of deer to eat nowadays if they are into that sort of thing.

yeah, I always do the cell phone thing to look less conspicuous.

I was also having problems loading .gpx files into mapsource from PQs. Since I only wanted the coords and titles (GCXXXX) I made my PQs .loc files instead. It was a simple solution. I use WAP on my cell phone if I need hints and stuff about a cache I am trying to find.

I wouldn't sweat it too much. Since you are new, I'm still kinda new myself, I would say move on to other caches. Once you have over a dozen or 20 finds, come back to this one and you might find it right away. I would say my Find/DNF ratio was 50% in the beginning. Even now it is still only 60 or 70% on many caches.

okay, back home now. I do have the latest version now. Next time I update it, I will use the website like you suggest. I was succesful opening the PQ file with mapsource when it was a .loc file. It still does not work as a .gpx. Anyway, I was able to send all those .loc caches (an additional 400!) to my garmin. It is not a huge deal for me to be loosing out on the additional info available with .gpx file IMHO. When I am caching, I carry my cell phone and use WAP quite successfully for a good paperless experience. maybe I'll get to an event within the next few months and see how others use these programs and do their paperless caching. thanks

--> QUOTE(brian b @ Apr 26 2008, 07:57 PM) 3447275[/snapback] I've never had a problem at Anthony Wayne, but I have had major issues at this spot: Big Hill Shelter. Anthony Wayne is a very popular spot for Boys Scout Hikes, so i would imagine, with its increased traffic, that one would be fine. I live very close to this. I went to day camp at Gate Hill for a couple summers. What is/are the "Guardian of the Towers"? side question; since I only got into caching recently and did not know that a cache was once located here, is there a way of finding out other former/archived cache locations? It would be nice to place a cache in a location that all the local veteran cachers haven't been to already. It is funny when reading someone elses cahce page, and they are enthusiastic about the spot and some veteran finds it and logs "oh, I was here in 2005 when such and such cache was here. nice to be back" he he