Team SAR-Dogs
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Posts posted by Team SAR-Dogs
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Mike, NQ3D, here.
Started out as WN3TLK in 1972, when I was a Navy CW op stationed on Guam. Worked many QSO's at the time from our base club station, KG6AAY (all CW, of course). Got back stateside and upgraded to General and became WB3CTR. Upgraded again to Extra and became NQ3D back in the 80's. Was inactive for about 17 years. During that time, my XYL and I and our two Border Collies volunteered our services with a local Search and Rescue agency. That's when we became familiar with GPS receivers and eventually Geocaching. We've been out of SAR for about 5 years but we still cache, although not as much as we used to. We use a Magellan Explorist 210. Now, I'm back on the air and fairly active with the Straight Key Century Club (#2758T), and still work 99.9% CW.
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A few years back, we had quite a few caches go MIA in our area, especially ammo boxes. I would guess more than a couple dozen disappeared, possibly upwards of 3 dozen or more. Some amazing sleuth work turned up a suspect and he was confronted. Although he denied having anything to do with the missing caches, the thievery stopped soon afterwards and we have been fine since. The suspect was a non-cacher, although he did have a log-in name so he could view the cache pages. Due to this, many cachers in our area resorted to placing micros instead of regular caches so the game is still afoot. It sounds like yours are already micros so that is not something you can do.
I think this is a legitimate reason for allowing cache owners to see who is watching their caches. I really don't understand the privacy thing concerning this aspect of caching. Who can it hurt? I am more than willing to tell a cache owner that I am watching his/her cache.
Just my 2 cents.
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Here are our dogs. Casey and Koati are retired Search and Rescue dogs who love to geocache. They're also pretty good at finding most caches. Tucker, the Rat Terrier, is our son's dog and he, too, enjoys caching with us.
CASEY
KOATI
TUCKER
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We have been using a Palm IIIxe that we got on Ebay for around $20 for a few months now. It works great as far as I'm concerned. I downloaded CacheMate for $8 and we no longer have to carry PC paper around while caching. I currently have at least 500 caches stored in it.
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I agree with BadAndy. Set up an event cache, such as a breakfast at a local restaurant or a picnic. We have these in our area every year and we now have over 100 cachers attending regularly, and the number is growing! Be prepared for a large turnout!
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My wife and I use Mountainsmith packs, the same ones we used for wilderness Search and Rescue. She uses the "Tour" (488 cu/in) and I use the "Day" (854 cu/in) and we like them both. They can be used with or without a shoulder harness, hold two water bottles and have 2 nice size compartments. They also have lumbar support.
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If this is in the Slate Belt, it may already be a virtual cache.
We did one there several months ago.
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Stepadery,
I wish I could go with you! My wife and I enjoy Walt Disney World immensely. We have even done some caching there. Anyway, I don't know about maps but that seems to have been covered earlier. If you are a first time WDW visitor, and even if you are not, I suggest you spend some time checking out The DIS. It is an excellent source for information about WDW. Everything you need to know about it is there. I highly recommend you read up on WDW before going.
By the way, are you staying on property? We have stayed at both Port Orleans Riverside and the French Quarter; Coronado Springs; and, Animal Kingdom Lodge. If you are staying at any of these and have questions, or if you have any WDW questions in general, feel free to email me and I will try to answer them. Have a fun trip!
Mike
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Lavareef,
The 210 allows you to store waypoints in "Windows" type folders. It gives you two options for waypoint folders: My Points of Interest and Geocache Points. When you use Magellan's Geocache Manager, it stores the caches in the Geocache Points folder. You can delete and create folders (and edit/add files) just like you would on your PC. I have my PA caches stored in one folder and my NJ caches stored in another. You can store up to 200 caches in one folder. When you want to access a cache, you enter the folder and decide if you want them listed by "Position, Cities or Other". Selecting Position will list them nearest to farthest from your home position, just like your GPSr would. It just doesn't change as you move since there is no way for it to track sats.
You can then scroll to select the cache you want. When you open a file in the Geocache Points folder, you get the following: Name, Cache ID (Waypoint), Owner, Type and Location (coords). You can add a few other things manually if you like, such as Difficulty, Terrain, etc. In the My Points of Interest folder, you get the following info for items stored there: Name, Location, Elevation and a Message you can add manually. So, the Geocache folder gives you more information relating to geocaching than the regular POI folder. I have never used GSAK or EasyGPS so I don't know how they compare to Geocache Manager.
The only thing I don't like is not being able to delete files in the Geocache Folder while "in the field". In order to delete files from this folder, you must use your PC. Files in the MY POI's folder can be deleted without using a PC. I don't know why Magellan set it up this way.
I hope this makes sense. We recently upgraded from an old Magellan 310 (no maps, no PC connectivity and only 2 decimal places for coords, among other things) and we are really enjoying the 210. Since it can hold thousands of geocache waypoints, we also began paperless caching a few weeks ago. We won a bid for a used Palm IIIxe on Ebay and now have information for 500 caches stored in it. With 8MB memory, it can probably hold another 1500 or so! Paperless caching, including the PDA, shipping and Cachemate software cost us less than $35. In the PDA, each cache has about 5 pages of information including the last 4 or 5 logs posted by visitors to the cache. I wish we had started doing this 2 years ago!
As goose_sbe mentioned, we plan to spend the extra money one day to get better maps. The unit has 8MB of maps built in and another 24MB or so for waypoints. The maps that come with it show major highways and roads, major parks, airports, restaurants, etc. but don't show smaller streets or "side streets". It's still better than what we had before. You will really like the 210.
Mike
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A couple months back, I won a bid on Ebay for a Palm IIIxe for $21 plus $4.80 shipping. It is in like new condition, has a hard cover and came with the HotSync base. I added CacheMate for $8 and we are now paperless caching! I have at least 500 caches stored on it and there's room for plenty more. We should have done this a long time ago.
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Kimm14,
You made a good choice! Now you need to think about paperless caching!
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We just upgraded to a 210 a couple months ago (from TigerGPS) and think it's great! We usually get at least 8 or 9 sats, sometimes more, and the accuracy has been excellent. We may take the plunge one day and purchase the better maps on CD but for now we're very satisfied.
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We just started paperless caching with a Palm IIIxe. I downloaded Cachemate for $8 and it works great.
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We have found several waymarks and have posted a couple under PA Historic Markers.
Here's a link to Waymarking FAQ's:
I think you have to be a premium member to access the site.
Waymarks took the place of locationless caches on January 1.
Mike
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We did several virtuals when we were there last year and one micro at DownTown Disney that does not appear to be there anymore. A cacher was "busted" by Disney security personnel while looking for a TB Hotel Cache near DTD just a couple days before we got there. We didn't know it so we looked for it for a little while before giving up but no one bothered us. Apparently, the cacher was asked to remove it and he managed to get it back to its owner. The virtuals were fun to do so don't miss them.
Anyway, I hope you are members of The DIS forums. That is the greatest source of information for Walt Disney World. We've been there 5 times and I can't wait to go again. We don't have any plans to go in the near future, though.
Are you staying on-site? If so, where?
Have a great trip!
Mike
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I add a picture of our Lehigh Valley Geocachers logo to my cache hides by placing this into the page's "short description":
<img align="right" src="http://img.Groundspeak.com/cache/4c6e2c61-f19f-43f3-a445-ed2ce6fecc79.jpg">
I believe there is a box to check on the cache set-up page to enable HTML. And, the picture must be up on the Internet somewhere. The URL for your picture would take the place of everthing between the quotation marks above. I think that will work for you. You will want to adjust the alignment, such as right, left, center.
You can see what one of mine looks like by visiting:
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Welcome Cyclometh! Don't feel bad. We have over 200 finds and still stink when it comes to locating a lot of micros, especially those of the parking lot variety. I think we just don't feel comfortable poking around in such areas. Good caching!
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Thanks! I figured it out a couple minutes after I posted this. DUH! I also got a very quick reply from an email sent to smittyware.com. I have successfully uploaded 100 caches to my PDA.
PROBLEM SOLVED!
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Hi,
I have just downloaded the $8 version of CacheMate and am attempting to convert and load .gpx files onto my GPSr.
For some reason, I don't seem to have the "buttons" in my windows that I am supposed to have. In CMConvert, I have no "Load File" button, "Select All" button or "Convert" button. I can import the .gpx file and select all 100 caches by using a Select All option in the upper drop down menu but I cannot find a convert button.
What am I doing wrong?
Mike
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I won a bid for a Palm 3xe (like new condition) on Ebay for $21, including the base. I plan to download Cachemate for $8 once the PDA gets here, probably later this week.
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I don't think that's very clear in the manual, if it's mentioned at all. I just thought I noticed it in a post here on a forum and now it has been verified.
Thanks, embra!
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We've had one for about a month now and think it's great. Before that, we had an older model Magellan 310 that was OK but it only went out to 2 decimal places accuracy and would not accept cache downloads (every cache had to be entered manually). We have had more than 10 sats already on our 210 and the accuracy is excellent. The only thing I don't like about it is not being able to delete geocache waypoints in the field like you can do with POI's. Other than that, it's great.
I believe I read here on the forums that the 210 can hold thousands of POI's but only 200 geocache waypoints at a time. If that's correct, that is probably why Blucruz can see 300 on Geocache Manager but only 200 on the GPSr. Maybe someone can verify this.
Now, we're going to try paperless caching! We won a bid for a Palm IIIxe on Ebay and should have it later this week. Between the 210 and the Palm, we should really start to roll.
Good caching!
Mike
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We have a 210 and it works like this:
Download .loc files to your Magellan Geocache Manager software that came with your 210;
From there, you can upload them to the 210 as a .gs file.
I don't think you can load caches directly from the geocaching Website to the 210, you have to go through some type of software.
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I did that once and some idiot "moved" it to the middle of the Atlantic somewhere. Instead of showing the back, I "removed" the serial number using an art program and took another photo.
Explore Pensacola GeoTour
in South and Southeast
Posted
We plan to do this tour during our snowbird visit! We're glad we found it!