shunra

You have a point. I always use my left hand, but I guess that's because I practice in front of a mirror.

I think a GPSr could be reprogrammed as an LPSr, as soon as the infrastructure is in place...

There you go again. It's none of our business if Spike is a person, a dog, a cat or some other real or imaginary being. LOL

[Man with beard in Picture:] "I wonder who will claim an FTF on that WMD cache"

Hi Newbie, I've done my first 129 finds with exactly that - a Magellan Blazer 12 - and hope to find a few more until Christmas. If your financial situation doesn't allow an upgrade, just use what you have - it's fine for geocaching.

Is there any such excursion planned? I have never snowshoed before, but would very much like to try it.

I have one that wants to go to North Carolina, so your trip would be a great leap. Just - where would I leave it for you to retrieve? I'm over in Port Townsend...

Love the idea! For legal purposes, maybe the terms-and-conditions should include a clause such as "Geocachers hereby agree that their movements in the cache area may be recorded on audio and/or visual media, etc. etc."

The equilibrium radius I'm looking is individual and different per cacher. I don't think you can make a generalization about THAT! And those who've done their entire state will have such a radius too, because more caches will be added within the circle of their 100 nearest unfound.

When flying across the country, I have always regretted not having detailed maps that show what I'm flying over. I vaguely recognise rivers and cities, and some more featurs in areas I am familiar with, but I've always wanted to know more. Now, with map-enabled GPSs, this should be possible. However, is it legal to turn on a GPS in a plane? BTW - I recently happened to sit next to a man who was making discreet cell phone calls on the flight. When he saw me looking alarmed, he said he as a pilot himself, and that the whole thing about not using cell phones was a tradition kept from the time that it wasn't known yet that it was harmless, but that there is no technical or other safety reason not to use a cell phone on a flight. I came home and told me wife. She apparently knew that already. She said she'd never told me, because she was amused to see that there was ONE rule I was respecting.. LOL

I would agree, except: How does *he* have access to the cache? When the thread started, he didn't know what it was, and it wasn't until CO ADMIN told us that it was an unapproved cache, that we could start discussing whether to log it or not. This said, CO ADMIN didn't provide the archived URL to this forum. Since I assume that moderators do not provide inside information behind the scenes, the cache is as inaccessible to the finder as to any of us. On the other hand, providing that information to all of us would be tantamount to approval, so that won't happen either. In other words: the entire discussion seems moot. Unless I am missing something... Is there a way a finder can find an archived cache, which others cannot? Or can we all go hunt for non-approved caches, to approve our FTF count? LOL!

I'm heading out of state today, and don't know exactly in which area I will have how much time. Not having a PDA, I made some 100 printouts of worthwhile possible foci of attention, but put most of them on my watch list, just in case something happens. One cache indeed got disabled, and - fortunately :-) - reenabled.

Things I'd like to add that haven't been said yet: My favourite caches are mostly quality traditional caches in remote rural places where no muggle would ever find them, caches which are often found by few people only who are up to the callenge, and which are well-stocked with quality stuff to begin with, and maintained in similar condition by the finders. My least favourite caches are traditional caches in park&grab locations, which pose no serious challenge to anyone, and which fill up with trash immediately. In between, there are the microcaches. In urban area they can still be a challenge, and the log-only aspect eliminates the trash aspect. I agree with all those who object to the spread of lame caches, whether miro or not. I also agree to those who are in favor of a more in-your-face indicator of whether something is a regular or a micro. However, since I object to standardization, I would rather we eliminate the definition of the container types and sizes altogether, and instead make a more useful distinction, between trading caches and log-only caches.

If it shrunk from 100 miles to 16, that means that LOTS of caches have been added near your home, and that you're not finding them - your caching at farther distances has no effect on the radius of the nearest 100, of course.

Well, that's no different for me. I live on the tip of the Quimper peninsula, which jots into Admiralty Inlet, separating the Straight of San Juan from Puget Sound. Most of my nearest 100 caches (5 pages) require taking a ferry, or a long drive around. But skewed or not, my question was whether the radius remains the same. FWIW, while my radius for the next 100 has expanded from 24 to 27 since I started caching, my radius for the next 200 has only expanded from 30 to 31, and my radius for the next 300 has remained constant at 34. It looks as if a 34 mile radius from home is the radius within which caches get hidden as fast as they get found by me. That's an area of 3600 square miles, many of which, in my case, are sea.

I'm talking about the radius of the closest 100 UNFOUND caches. (My Cache Page > Filter Finds > Page 5 > distance of last entry). Obviously, for each of us that radius is different. For those of us in densely populated areas it will be smaller than for those of us in rural areas, and for those of us on the coast it will be larger than for those in the interior (assumign that the cache density in the sea is low). When I started caching, this radius was 24 miles for me: 100 unfound caches within 24 miles from home, as the crow flies. Obviously, with every cache that I find, the radius for the next 100 expands a bit, but as the circle grows, the area inside grows as well, as does the likelyhood that new caches are hidden inside that circle - and with every new cache, the radius decreases, and the area contracts a bit. So when I started, my 100 unfound caches radius radius was 24 miles. Today, it is 27 miles, but expanding only very slowly. Eventually, I will reach a point where that radius will be fixed, and people will be hiding caches inside that circle at the same speed that I will find caches within that circle. (Caches found outside of that circle are not relevant in any way, for these purposes.) I'd like to hear whether three- and four-digit finders among us have already reached such a point, and after how many finds that happened, for them!

When caching during hunting season, and all the hunters are standing around in camo clothing, inconspicuosly behind trees, would the best way to go about this for an animal lover be by being loud and trying to keep the hunter's prey at a distance? (Ducking) Noh Funpuns

If I feel strongly enough to place a cache somewhere that it may require me to do so, then I guess I would be prepared for that. Some places it may require that, other places it won't. Is there any material available from Groundspeak for such a presentation? Perhaps there could be an official presentation, a PPS slide show downloadable for all of us from the Groundspeak site, which each of us could download when talking to authorities and land managers, which we could then individually enhance with personal data about the region or the park inquestion, etc.? And are there statistics available about the size of our community, with some Geographic breakdown? Edited and added: Oops, I just read that a private presentation was made available. Thank you! My question about official Groundspeaks material and statistics remains, however!

That's a great idea. I've improved a few caches myself, but stocking up on some essentials to save an unexpected cache-in-need is a good idea.

Why are you referring to this as percents anyhow, if every warning is 10%? It apparently has nothing to do with real percentages out of number of postings. My two cents: remove the silly feature, and do your work behind the scenes. I don't mind admins being autocratic and I don't need even need them to be accountable to us users (and certainly not to the unpaying ones among us), but there's no need to rub it in. All these warning squares are good for is a perpetuation of useless debates.

Hah! I postpone 'turning on the lights' until it is absolutely necessary, and use the headlight only after reachign the coords and looking for the cache, and for writing the logs. Fear of geomuggles was actually a cause of a recent DNF, which was hidden in a park next to the County Sheriff's office, which was officially closed after dusk to boot. So I stayed on the large trails and didn't see the smaller trail, until I went back some weeks later :-)

You've just given yourself the answer! Some weeks ago I came back from a tough hike to a snowy mountain peak cache, and the that was one of my most memorable experiences, just a it would have been to you. But then, as i came home way after dark and logged it, I saw there was a new cache out there, 5 miles from home as the crow flies and 15 miles driving, and I went for it at 11 pm, and had all the excitement of a beachwalk in the moonlight, of wondering whether someone else would get there first, and of having an "official" excuse for not being home in bed. So that was cetainly a memorable experience, too.

Make it an event - I have been eyeing those for a while, and would like to do it with a group!

I use a headlamp too, AND one or two maglights. One with a strong focussed beam, the other more diffuse for general illumination (Good for reading texts on gravestones, etc. My kids like that). Not that I bought anything specific: all my lights are grocery store cheapos, but when you have half a dozen, you find out the relative merits of each of them :-) The kids mostly use the lights just to create shadows, shine into each others eyes, to feel safe in spooky places, and just to be out when it "feels" after bed time.

There is, although I'm unsure if it's universal. OK, clue the rest of us in!