Matthew 7:7 Too

Funny... When Garmin replaced my 18 month old eTrex, they insisted that this could not be a design fault as they'd only had 2 others returned!! I had also decided to replace it with an Oregon 400t (now they've sorted out the software) so the 'new' eTrexhas been passed on to my daughter and grandchildren for them to take up geocaching. Chris

I have a set of these coins, and agree that they certainly look good... too good to risk losing them in a muggled cache??? But the face of the Platinum coin looks unfinished to me - I had to check the original artwork to prove to myself that it wasn't a faulty one! Was it the only way to distinguish between the Silver and Platinum perhaps?? Many thanks by the way for their prompt delivery to the UK. And for my Silver pin (claimed just before the deadline.) Chris

I have used a Vista HCX for a year and a half, but decided to replace it with an Oregon 400t when the rubber handgrip became loose and gungy. The Oregon shows a much poorer accuracy reading than the Vista, but actual direction finding seems just as good so I think this is just a more pessimistic (or realistic?) algorithm inside it. I found the European TOPO maps had less detail than the TOPO GB in the Vista, so added the TOPO GB map to the Oregon as well (Garmin give you a licence to load it on 2 Garmins). I also have the 1:50000 OS GB map (Northern England & Midlands) but if you try to zoom right in on this when approaching the cache, the map becomes too pixallated to be useful. So I have set up 2 geocaching profiles. The first uses the OS GB map to guide me into the right location with its excellent coverage of footpaths etc. Then I switch to the second and use the TOPO GB map or compass to close in on GZ before hunting around for the cache. I only have one map enabled at a time to minimise processor overload, but zooming in on the OS GB map can still take an appreciable time before the map is redrawn. I don't have any problems when following the trail however. Make sure that you have updated the Oregon software to the latest versions, there have been some big improvements in the last few months which may not have been loaded when your Oregon left the warehouse! (And after replacing my Vista I had a moan at Garmin and had it replaced for free, so now my wife and I can use both of them!!) Chris PS: See the Oregon Wiki for details of how to add several maps to the Oregon and its SD card.

The Vista HCX is a great GPSr but it can't display much information about a cache. The best you can do is send the cache name and hint via GSAK, with POIs for child waypoints. Chris

Received mine today... a very nice coin and a great service. Thanks for creating these Mike. Chris of Matthew 7:7 Too

Thanks Strumble for that info. I see that you can now download the GB Discoverer maps onto your own SD card, so presumably you could download 2 maps onto a 4GB card, or even more on to an 8GB card?? Chris

If you search for earthcaches on the www.earthcache.org website, you find that the UK earthcaches are divided in regions (eg North Wales, South Wales, Northwest England, West Midlands etc) rather than England, Scotland and Wales. So my understanding is that the regions count as 'states' for earthcaching purposes. Matthew 7:7 Too

They certainly seems to be tightening up their acceptance criteria, as I recently found. But by adding more details of the geological strata affecting the landscape around my cache, and resubmitting it, I got it published. Perhaps you could add details of the rock strata that allow the water to run along underground before emerging? I doubt they ave refused to accept your caches just to reduce the number of people getting their bronze and silver pins, but I expect that this decision has created a huge surge in demand as people all try to beat the deadline! I applied for my bronze pin at the start of July, and the pin has just arrived in the UK. I applied for my silver pin yesterday, having just met its requirements, and hope my application has beaten the deadline. Time will tell... Keep trying to get your caches accepted, and if they turn then down ask for guidance on what you need to do to meet their expectations. Matthew 7:7 Too

As this seems to be the place that the GB Discoverer experts hang out, I'd be glad of some help from you all! I have an eTrex Vista with TOPO GBv2 (loaded onto a 2GB SD card from its DVD) at present, and am thinking of getting an Oregon 300 & the forthcoming GB Discoverer 1:50K Northern England & Midlands SD card. I'd like to transfer the TOPO GB and GB Discoverer maps onto a new 4GB SD Card (Garmin say I can load the TOPO maps onto a 2nd GPSr, but I wouldn't be too concerned if I had to disassociate them from the eTrex). Can I combine the maps on a single SD card in this way? The TOPO GB maps are too big to fit the whole country onto internal memory, so an alternative is to load on parts of the country at a time. Is this a better solution? Many thanks for your thoughts, Chris

I was wondering about getting a 4GB or 8GB SDHC card to use with an Oregon or Dakota (still debating which to buy) so that I could download 2 Garmin GB Discoverer maps onto the card instead of having to swap between 2GB cards. Garmin don't seem to say anywhere whether I can do this. Any ideas? Chris

Great, my changes have been accepted (giving details of the underlying strata and how they affected the environment) and my cache has now been published!! Thanks for the encouragement. Chris

As one of the far more than 200 who accessed Google Earth a few times a day to locate caches, I would also welcome a workable equivalent as soon as possible. Chris

If you search on earthcache.org for historical earthcaches in the UK, you will find the Din Lligwy Iron Age Village, Din Lligwy Burial Chamber and Loughton Fort Iron Age Hill Fort listed. But after a lot of work, I have just submitted the Castle Ring Iron Age Hill Fort as the first historical-type earthcache in the West Midlands to be told that it does not qualify as it is not earth science related! My write up was along the lines of the Loughton Hill example, and so I can only presume that the criteria for setting up an earthcache have changed, or that they have recruited new reviewers who are now bending over backwards to insist on earthcaches being very tightly controlled. Anyone else having trouble getting earthcaches adopted???? Chris (Very disheartened)

I'm having the same problem with Firefox. It used to work OK, but now can work once then not again! Downloading the plugin again doesn't seem to help as you can't steer it to Firefox. I suspect it's conflicting with another Firefox security setting or plugin as it's fine with IE7. However, I've now moved to Premier membership and Pocket Queries so it's no longer annoying me. Chris

I have successfully installed v1.5 on my Dell Axim X51v, and find it very useful. I particularly like the ability to store several different Lat/Long locations as bookmarks to select as Center Coordinates when staying at my children's homes. But there seems to be a small bug in the program here. If your normal center cordinate is say N52 54 W2 18, and you select a bookmarked location at N5015 E1 18, the longitude becomes W1 18 rather than changing the W to an E. This will not be problem in the US, but must be affecting many UK users. (The N and S may stick in the same way, but I am not affected by that.) Is the software still being supported? I cannot access the source website to report the bug to the program creator. Chris