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Annie & PB

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Everything posted by Annie & PB

  1. For us it would entirely depend whether we were going to be two steps away from the car or two miles (or more) away. In the first case probably only the camera as we are in the habit of taking pix in the vicinty of all our finds (though very seldom 'spoilers'). In the second case - me: swag bag containing a few McToys (we don't very often swap) extra plastic bags, pencils, stashnotes, log books (as it is part of our caching mission to do a little maintenace for owners whenever we can), printouts (we are just in the process of getting a Palm to go paperless), spare batteries, LED headlamp, camera, knife/multitool for sharpening pencils and what ever other uses it can be put to and probably a few snacks. Husband: daypack with first aid kit including antihistmines, water, food, his headlamp, extra clothes for us both depending on the weather and terrain, sunscreen, insect repellant, and probably a few other bits of survival gear. For a walk that we know is only going to be 20-30 mins max, we would just grab the swag bag most likely. The one thing that we maybe should add that I hadn't considered including is a mirror - though here in New Zealand there are not quite the same dangers involved with sticking your hand or arm in holes and under rocks as in the USA or Aussie. All the same it could be useful. We do tend to use our digital camera to take photos into places we can't see into, and that has been wothwhile at times.
  2. When you are looking at the cache page at geocaching.com, if you look just below the title/name of the cache, then just bleow that it says 'a cache by ...... whoever' well, just below that it tells you the cache size, terrain and overall difficulty. You probably need to try some that are 'regular' size and terrain of 1 or 1.5 and difficulty the same. Over on the left hand side of the page at the top there is 'navigation' (the box where you go to log etc), then the little map, then 'watched by' then the attributes. For kid friendly caches you need to look for the attributesymbol of the little girl with a flower in her hair. There is also a picture of a stroller if you need to be able to use a stroller too. Also look out for the wheelchair accessible caches - shown by the wheeelchair symbol - you can be sure that the terrain for those will be pretty easy going for little kids too.
  3. Yep - that is what we have done too. If we know there is a TB or geocoin in town that needs to be moved on, we will go to a cache we have been to before and get it, if we know we are going out of town - (particularly if going out of our province). Just put a note on that cache's log and perhaps on the TB/coin's log so that it's owner knows what you are doing - especially if you are not going to be able to place it in a cache again immediately if you are on vacation or something.
  4. Yes!!! And you would be at least a few hundred metres away from where you need to be to find the cache.
  5. If you have a Garmin - go to the 'Main Menu' page, then 'setup' then 'units' and look at the scroll down menu for the 'Map datum' field! Your GPS will display the co-ords any number of ways, if you so choose, but for the purposes of geocaching the map datum field needs to be set to WGS-84 (and the 'position format' to hddd mm.mmm' ) as that is the map datum that is used for co-ords at geo-caching.com, as it is kind of like the world-wide standard. If I used the New Zealand map datum that our (well, at least, my husband's) New Zealand topo maps that we refer to for walking and hiking are based on, I would be several hundred metres out for geocaching. So if we are using a map and compass for walking/hiking etc we would use the local datum, as that is what all the local guide books, rescue services etc etc use, and if geocaching use WGS-84 as that is the world-wide standard that geocaching.com uses. If your GPS is not set to the correct datum, you will be looking for caches at least a few hundred metres from where they are.
  6. And then there are those experts who say 'place the kind of hides you like to find' - and if there are people out there who happen to like to find lots of urban micros in otherwise unaesthetic locations, well I guess that is what they will legitimately place. And it there are superfit superhikers who only like caches on the top of mountains - well I guess that is what they would place based on that concept. One person's treasure is another person's trash - in types of hide/location/cache as well as the contents. We placed our first simple traditional hide pretty early on (we now have 125 finds and 8 hides), after having another location turned down due to saturation, and it is still going OK after a couple of months and has had lots of visits. In our area it seems like relatively easy traditionals get the most visits. This is likely due to ia couple of factors including it being a high tourist area, and most tourists are on a pretty tight time schedule so won't bother with anything too complex, and some of the local cachers being family groups or young teens. Whereas the more difficult puzzles or multis get less visits from mainly only the relatively 'expert' adult local cachers. So I could set a bunch of easy traditionals or very simple maths or historical fact puzzles (which are also the kind of caches I personally like to find) and be pretty much guaranteed they would get lots of finds, or I could use my time to set a few fiendish puzzles (of the kind that I can't actually solve myself based on other examples in our area!!!!) for the local pro-cachers. Which would you do????? Well, as it happens we'll be doing a bit of both ..... but realising that the harder puzzles are only likely to get done by about two local cachers -- not because they are terrible caches/locations, but just because that's how it is in our area. In summary what I'm trying to say, is that there are too many variables to really say what makes a good or bad cache, and these variables make it meaningless to 'impose' any 'restrictions' on how many finds someone should have before they make any hides.
  7. Look on geocaching.com for caches in some areas that you ALREADY know really well- whether that be urban, rural or forest. (Ours were a few little parks/walks in our small semi-rural town) Read the descriptions, hints, logs until you find a cache in your well known area that has you practically saying 'I could find that without a GPS!' Then go looking. We did this when we started - in fact found our first 4 caches without a GPS at all, just local knowledge and caches that had pretty clear hints/descriptions. Then we got addicted, went to the city, brought our GPS, and found our first city cache the same way (it was a Virtual tho) - an area that we already had throughly explored previously. Of course - that idea is a no-go if your locality is a bit less dense with caches than ours. And as others have said - check that you have the correct map datum set. Good luck and hoping that you have success on your next outing.
  8. Hmmm.... first thing to check is that you have the co-ordinates set to the correct map datum. Go to the menu page - assuming that the 60cx is similar to the Legend , then 'set-up', then 'units and make sure it says WGS 84 in the 'map datum' area. There have been many a post that I have seen about this. Then let us know how you go again.
  9. I agree with those who say please use the date that you ACTUALLY FOUND the cache on (- and try to log them in the order that you found them too!). For you - one day you may want to know what cache and what day it actually was that you found your 100th or 200th or 1000th cache!!!! For the cache hider - it is important if the cache is muggled or damaged or can't be found(because it isn't there!) or if travel bugs or geocoins go missing from it, to have the most accurate information as to when these things may have happened. Six DNFs (which would lead a cache owner to think the cache was missing and needed a maintenance check) followed by a Found (which was actually a Find from weeks or days ago) is unhelpful to the cache owner, because now the cache owner would be unsure whether the cache was really missing or not.
  10. Well, we got the Legend HCx (rather than your model) and we ran right out and started hunting!!! Had found our first two caches with the hour from memory. The store assistant showed us how to 'mark' our current co-ordinates and then change that to the co-ords we wanted to find, and we were good to go!!! We found out everything else as we went along - and we still haven't read most of the manual!!!! It actually wasn't that helpful - we got a few hints from the quick start guide that were useful, rather than the main manual. On our model the button on the top right side flicks you between map page, compass page and menu page and that was the most useful thing we found out pretty quickly and after than its just select whichever option you want and click - using the switch on the front that is like on some laptops for the mouse. Eventually we got set up to download co-ordinates directly but we didn't bother with that at first. I think the time has come for you to load the co-ords for a cache nearest to your house, by hand (so long as it is a reasonably easy traditional cache) and get out there hunting!!!
  11. Thanks people !!! Gret to know that we can get good advice here. (Shows how techno challenged I am that I didn't even call the PALM the correct name!!!LOL) Sounds like this combination is what we will need. We don't run Vista so won't encounter those issues. I am ROTFLOL about the prices though - down here in little old New Zealand I will be most likely adding a zero to the prices you guys have quoted!!!
  12. We got the Legend HCx as newbies (about 6 weeks ago!! ) and it's done us well for our 120 something finds so far! So I'd have a look at that if the prices are similar. I can't give you a price comparison as we are in New Zealand (where our HCx cost something around NZ$650!!!!)
  13. This seems to be the most frequently mentioned combination for paperless caching. Now I know nothing about either Palmpilots or Cachemate so I'm off to do a little investigation, so if anyone has some links/sugested reading that would be good or advice on any alternatives. What are the basics that we would need to know??
  14. If I was in your situation with kids - I would not bother with that cache again anyway. There is no point risking an injury that could be nasty (such as barbed wire across the face) 'just' to get a cache. It is only a game. Or I would go and get the cache myself - rather than take my children into that situation. There are little symbols -attributes - if you look in the top right hand corner of the cache's page - the top box is where you log your find and various other things, the next box down is a the map, and the next box down is the attributes - you are looking for the little black stylized picture of a girl's face with a flower or clip in her hair. Caches with that symbol have been identified by the cache placer as child friendly. If it has that symbol with a red diagonal through it, the cache is not child friendly. If it has no symbol use you own discretion.
  15. Thanks everyone for your responses - we are only somewhat computer literate it appears !!! (At least in terms of the new hardware/software we are currently encountering) That is what we had thought we could do ...... but it turned out our computer and GPSr would not recongnise each other. With the help of a communication plug-in downloaded from Garmin and a bit of fiddling around we seem to have got them on speaking terms and I can download from geocaching.com direct to the GPSr. Now however, all that it appears that I am 'allowed' to upload from Mapsource back to GPSr is 'maps' - the other options including waypoints are greyed out. Yes - both of those are on our list of stuff to get - but just at this time of year the price (in NZ dollars) is just that little bit more than the budget will stretch to after havign stretched to the GSPr. ( I don't get paid for about 8-9 weeks over summer (which it is here down under) as I do supply teaching.) Thanks again for your help, and I will no doubt be back with other questions !!!
  16. Hi there, We have just started caching and all we have is our brand new Legend HCx and the Mapsource software that came with it. We have figured out how to download waypoints to Mapsource and then send them to the GPSr. (BTW - should we be able to send waypoints straight from geocaching.com to the GPSr and am I just a techno-illiterate for not being able to figure that bit out?? :D ) Anyway - what I want to do right at this moment is put all the caches with 10 km (kilometres being as we are in New Zealand!) of home on to one map in Mapsource. However - they are on more than one page at geocaching.com and everytime I download a page of waypoints it makes a new MapSource map. How can I get them on to one map????
  17. Hi there all, Thanks for your hints and suggestions. Hi Sky Tracker - we've got that website boomarked but haven't looked around on it too much yet - will have to go and check out the forums. Perhaps we will run into you there some time soon! Annie
  18. Hi there - a fellow teacher here - (the Annie half of Annie & PB) We have had our eTrex Legand HCx for six days now, and we are really happy with it!! The quick start guide was useful and a brief demo from the assistant at the shop where we got it. Mostly though we have just played with it and got more and more idea of what we and it can do as we've gone along. I've glanced at the main instruction book, but it doesn't really seem too easy to follow, so I haven't really bothered with it that much. Read one of your other threads too - an apple type signature item would be cool - we have polar bears for ours (For hubby - the PB half of Annie & PB!)
  19. Hi there, We are pretty new - have owned our GPSr for six days now!!! LOL We will be doing quite a bit of travelling over the next couple of months, and I am trying to figure out whether than Premium membership will be useful, as not all the functions work in New Zealand. We are most interested in the 'route' function. Other than that - does anyone have great hints for helping decide which caches are worth targeting on a longish road trip. Thanks so much Annie
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