Wreck Diver
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Posts
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Posts posted by Wreck Diver
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JohnX, if you don't receive any offers to maintain or adopt Bushwhacking Betty, let me know. You did a good job with the cache and it would be a shame to see it archived because you're having trouble getting to it.
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I think we converted a few muggles at the debut of the Juliett 484 mystery geocache aboard the Soviet guided nuclear missle submarine in Providence, Rhode Island earlier today.
That's got to be a first!
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Wow, great job on the stenciling and paint.
How did you get it so neat looking?
I TRIED to order Cyrillic vinyl lettering from Staples and they were at a loss so I created an image file of exactly what I wanted and then brought it to Ocean Graphics in Wareham, Massachusetts. They scanned the image file and computer cut all of the graphics so that they were pre-arranged on a sheet. They cut two sheets so that I could label both sides of the cache container.
I also laminated the double sided Finder's Note, so the total cost for that aspect of the project was $27.25.
The cache container is inside the Soviet Juliett 484 guided nuclear missle submarine, so there's no worry about the elements. Though the expense was slightly more than the traditional labels, the professional appearance helped make this one-of-a-kind cache possible.
Industrial as it is, I think it pales in comparison to some of the exceptionally creative hides I've seen depicted so far in the discussion.
There's a lot of care and devotion invested in all of these containers, and for what it's worth, they sure beat the hastily labelled off-the-shelf uncamouflaged Tupperware I keep finding stuffed in rock walls.
What a perpetual disappointment that is!
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Can you send it to me too?
Stony2008, a dozen cachers were at the site this morning before they even opened, so a number of them have already logged the successful find.
I've removed the Member-only restriction so you can now access the Juliett 484 cache page.
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Can you send it to me too?
Just sent it, Stony2008.
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I just placed a cache container in the Doctor's Quarters aboard a former Soviet guided nuclear missle submarine, so it had to be appropriate for the setting:
I'm proud of it.
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magellan315, I'll send the text of the cache page to you via e-mail so as to avoid wasting the space on the discussion.
I'm expecting the first group of cachers at the location tomorrow morning, so once the FTF is made, I'll remove the Member-only restriction.
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I have three cache "containers" of this type now, but this is by far the largest:
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All-aspect public safety.
(And always wondering why I have to educate public safety about geocaching!)
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Chess isn't a game of great skill or of cunning, it is simply recognizing mistakes and exploiting them to one's advantage.
Allowing the mistakes to continue to occur and be exploited doesn't make the game any less valid.
While I am not into the whole FTFBA drive, I can't condemn it if it is an ongoing weakness that's well-reported and generally open to anyone with the same attention to detail and motivation.
If you have concerns about the FTFBA weakness, then wait for approval before placing the travel bugs in the cache.
Until the web-side coding issue is corrected, it IS user correctable with simple patience.
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Wreck Diver,
My first thought when I saw your post was that you have caches near the WTC site...after checking out your caches, however, I assume you're referring to victims of sunken ships?
ITW
Quite right, IntotheWoods.
Unfortunately, the vase majority of the victims I've represented continue to lie where they've fallen so the caches are my way of drawing attention to the forgotten and keeping their memories alive.
The WTC is a daily issue for me at work, but I've yet to incorporate the event or those lost into a memorial cache.
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Three thousand seven hundred and four people have died between five of my caches at the present count... thankfully none of them within recent memory.
I'm sorry to hear that you ended up inadvertantly involved in the tragedy, dziner.
I know the inadvertant involvement can haunt you just as badly as being directly involved.
Take your time deciding.
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The User Stats page currently depicts individual statistics for Travel Bug Dog Tags, USA Geocoins, and Jeep 4x4 Travel Bugs.
Clicking on the Travel Bug Dog Tags hyperlink brings up the all inclusive list, as expected.
However, clicking on the USA Geocoins or the Jeep 4x4 Travel Bugs hyperlinks does not provide specific Geocoin or Jeep statistics that lists only those items. Cachers are instead directed to the all inclusive travel bug list. This makes it difficult to locate the requested items, particularly in regards to Geocoins which are subject to discretionary re-naming.
Where the USA Geocoins and Jeep 4x4 Travel Bugs have their own statistics icons, I would like to request that the USA Geocoins and Jeep 4x4 Travel Bugs have their own individual statistic pages showing only the Geocoins or the Jeep finds if the coding wouldn't be a major issue.
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We have a local "cacher" in Massachusetts that keeps visiting geocaching.com to obtain cache coordinates, but he doesn't have an account or a username.
In the past two months, he's found eleven caches and taken two travel bugs, none of which is represented in the online logs because he refuses to create an account. His girlfriend thinks the travel bugs were "cute" so she is keeping them.
You may have had a similar situation with the travel bug there.
PRIME example of why the cache coordinates should be hidden unless you've logged on with a username account that has completed the confirmation process.
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As a public safety geocacher that had previously, and deliberately, sought the 11 September 2001 Memorial cache, I was dismayed to note that the cache had been archived due to owner absence and lack of maintenance.
Given the significance of the cache and the beautiful location of the memorial, this is a tremendous loss for those cachers who have not heard of the monument and who may have become cognizant of it only through the geocaching.com website. I was one of them.
If admin would consider it, I should like to immediately adopt the 11 September 2001 Memorial Cache and take responsibility for the care and maintenance of the virtual.
I will accept adoption of the cache as a permanent responsibility but will surrender ownership should SarDude return and request control of the cache be returned to him.
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gpsdiver, can you post a picture of the equipment that you've been testing?
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Since my friends and I dive in dry suits, occasionally someone will get distracted or out of position and find himself floating towards the surface. As the water pressure decreases at lesser depths, the air in the suit expands, making the diver even more buoyant. The ensuing thrashing that occurs while the diver tries to get the air to exhaust through his release valve while fighting to maintain his depth looks for all the world like someone struggling against an unseen adversary.
My technical diving equipment is 126 pounds on the surface, but slightly positive when both tanks drop below 500 PSI. Because of the weight, a drysuit is mandatory for redundant back-up.
I took a picture of the Bottom Time travel bug with some of the technical rig:
As far as depth rating goes, I don't forsee any guarantee that will hold water, so-to-speak. Simple physics: if it goes up, it must come down, if you put it in the water dry, it's eventually going to come out wet.
One of the reasons I've thus far declined creating a free-dive/SCUBA cache.
Though I have felt my logic sound for my own applications, I can't attest to ever trying gpsdiver's concepts. I have a dive team drill coming up shortly, so I will probably attempt some of the concepts to see an improvised application in the environment that I'd need it.
Public safety is in constant evolution, so gpsdiver's ideas have potential to revolutionalize in-water waypointing if it pans out.
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Slick deal, wreckdiver.
From what I've learned, GPS diver is right about the deploy and retrieve method being the only feasible one. A minimum of 2 sonar buoys is necessary for any degree of accuracy, with 4 being needed to cover an area of any size.
Hehehe, but what really cracks me up is seeing his name on many other sites, and seeing how many people get the same impression I got about him at first.
I was wrong. Enough already!!!
I can admit it. I should have done the research I did after your challenge before I responded at all. I can see now exactly how such a device works, and I can understand how accurate it would be.If I had seen a picture like Wreckdiver's in the beginning, it would have been more clear. For some reason, I was picturing a basketball-size underwater mine-looking deal. Funny what an imagination can do.
I won't comment either way as I have used the pictured assembly as a surface array since I constructed it and have not attempted to retrieve it from the surface during the dive by forcing a descent, or bringing it with me during the dive and attempting to deploy it from depth.
I chose a surface array for several reasons:
1.) Regardless of claims of watertight integrity, ALL water-tight containers fail at some point. Taking photographs of deep water wrecks for publishers taught me that lesson well.
2.) Pulling a positively buoyant object from the surface places equal buoyancy changes upon the diver so neutral buoyancy is compromised upon release and/or retrieval.
3.) Using lift bags fairly extensively for recoveries, I can attest to the hazards of extremely buoyant objects at depth.
4.) There is no way to mark or record a waypoint electronically ("GOTO") if the GPS is in a rigid container.
5.) A GPS carried at depth will not receive a signal and upon deploying at depth, the diver will not have any idea as to whether the GPS has acquired a signal, how accurate the signal is, or how long the waypoint was averaged.
To accurately mark a submerged waypoint without dealing with the detailed issues, I find that it is more feasible to drop a Pelican Float Marker Buoy and record the waypoint using the GPS at the surface in conjunction with the tracks.
As a side note, some of the divers in my cadre have logged dives on the Andrea Doria, the U-869, and the Monitor. During decompression, one has a LOT of time to find ways to entertain oneself.
One of their favorite past times on recreational dives is to "Reverse Depth Charge" jet-skiers that use a dive flag as a high speed turnaround. This simply involves taking a water-filled two liter bottle, inverting it, partially filling it with air, capping it and then releasing the positively buoyant container near the offending jet-skier. During ascent, the flexible bottle expands and ruptures violently as the external pressure decreases.
But that's another story...
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I use a waterproof float for the GPS for logging tracks on recreational dives and for logging tracks when performing search and recovery dives for Plymouth Fire Department and the Plymouth County Technical Rescue Team.
The photo,coincidentally, was taken for the dive made in order to access the "Oh Island in the Sun" geocache on November 10, 2003.
You can also check the GPS Mapping for Underwater Sites webpage.
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WreckDiver,
you're one dedicated cacher and great to have in our community. I sure hope you find a nice spot to that big ol' ammo can! Great job.
Glad you didn't sink with it. Thanks Planet.
I contacted the cache owner and explained the retrieval to him and said that I would retain the cache container and the contents with hopes that he will contact me to retrieve the items for replacement elsewhere.
Taking an archived cache home with me always feels a lot like I'd expect of stealing flowers from a grave. Someone put a lot of heart into it at one time and whatever the current circumstance, things have changed.
This particular cache was well prepared, so I can't imagine it having been abandoned without response.
A number of my co-workers have either already shipped out or they are in the process of shipping to Iraq.
Cache Hider may well be with them.
(I'll include a picture of the retrieved cache container for reference.)
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Cache in probable need of removal
A proposed cache submitted on 3/13/2004 was not posted to the web site because it is too close to an existing active cache. The owner has been asked to either move or remove it but has not replied and has not visited the gc.com web site since March. Therefore, I am soliciting a volunteer to remove the cache container if it is still there.
I removed the unapproved cache container this morning and SWIMMING back with the ammo container, I couldn't help but wonder why I keep going after caches on islands...
This makes four that I can recall.
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Oh oh, that might have been Hunter setting up the sequel to "Think Twice" or "Swamp Monster."
I've still got his dog's collar as an accidental First To Find, though...
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We're talking the geo-grandma's and the like who are lucky to know how to surf the web, let alone wanting to get a new-fangled account. I don't care what they contribute to the e-community. They contribute to the world by being there. Doing their thing.
That explains all of the Travel Bug Graveyards...
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I don't see the benefit to knowing who has viewed your cache page. If your car is parked on the street and fifty people walk by remarking how muddy your Jeep is, how is any one of those people responsible in any way for the theft of the car? Granted someone must "look" at the car to steal it. Unfortunately, identies are can be easily created.
Since you cannot identify the thief from a list of people who have viewed a cache page, how would that discourage anyone? There is no way to identify a felon short of some ID system around the perimiter of the cache.
To clarify, I have never expressed an interest in knowing who has viewed my cache page. As you said, you cannot identify the thief from a list of people who have viewed a cache page.
Tracking the cache page views would be a tremendous waste of bandwidth and circumstantial at best.
My aspiration and expectation is that the caches that I've invested time, effort, money, and a tremendous amout of research time will have rudimentary protection.
Cachers spend four dollars for a travel bug and a basic expectation is that others will not reveal the travel bug numbers. Should that expectation be violated, innocently or not, aggravation results.
Four dollars doesn't even cover a traditional sized Rubbermaid container, last time I checked. Expense aside, a compromised cache and the preventable loss of a log book is heartbreaking.
Providing actual coordinates without login is an inherently exploitable and preventable security flaw that seems the equivolent of putting my unshredded bank statements or credit card invoices in the curbside trash.
I can admit it. I should have done the research I did after your challenge before I responded at all. I can see now exactly how such a device works, and I can understand how accurate it would be.
Cursed Micro
in General geocaching topics
Posted
You'll have to keep us posted.... now that WE all just read it, too!