JDandDD

Ok JP, from your description I am going for a plane, and in this case US Military from the base near Buffalo or Buffalo airport. When you are in Niagara Falls you can see them take off directly toward Canada and then make an extremely tight turn to the south. Missing Canadian airspace is really a terrifically diffcult thing with a very strange takeoff pattern. When we have a room at the Sheraton Fallsview we can watch the pattern. Its very steep take off, and then a sharp turn which is also accompanied by a bit of a loss of altitude. BOth civilian and military craft do this. Really fascinating to watch. The reason I pick on the US military is that they also fly those huge Hercules out of there occasionally. Its also a B52 base and they fly missions directly to places like Iraq and Afghanistan from there. The extremely tight turn and relatively low altitude means they are visible sometimes from TO for very brief periods, 30 seconds or less at the top of their takeoff attitude. Add to that the lens effects in the atmosphere that occur over water and you could see it under the appropriate conditions on a bright sunny day. JD

Well... mine was perfectly stationary and around 1pm (7 hours before everyone else saw it) Sure, you can account for the refraction of light from the object, but can you account for time dilation? *queue spooky music* Question JP, how high above the horizon and in what direction did you see it? Through some coincidences there is a possible astronomical explanation but the specific one depends one the answers. JD

I think that only applies if you actually intend to answer the question... Once someone has given up, and wishes to know the answer, I don't think we have to regulate what they do on the internet. I guess it's time for another question... Should we impose a 3 day no answer time limit in the rules? (Uh, that's not the question, that's more of a general survey) TOMTEC It was just a gentle joke and rib on my part. Struck me as humorous that CA would google given the OP of this topic. I knew he wasn't answering. Like your suggestion about the 3 days as well. JD

Thought one of your original rules was "no googling"

Yep, usually. You have to transfer everything and remove any and all copies and any material that may have come from it (ie maps on your cards). So, yes that would be legal. JD

It's the set of 3 cd's Version 1.0 Not locked but licensed for only one GPSr. In reality, it allows two but will reject a third. That's likely to allow for buying a new receiver but you still are only licensed for one GPSr at a time. [edited to add] In the CD version you mut have CD 3 in your drive for it to run. JD

Let's hope so. But there is a provision in the legislation that allows DST to revert to the 1st weekend of April if not enough energy savings are not seen from the change. Yikes. Re-re-patching. Not fun, considering the issues with the patches this time around. JD

Keep em moving. They are not like normal swag. They are intended to travel around. Check on the traveller's pages for the coin's current goal and help it get there. In my opinion, it is never OK to keep a coin you find in a cache. You can only keep coins that you bought it yourself. If I really like a coin, I buy two, one to travel and one I keep. JD

5 to 7 meters? That's all!! That isn't badly off at all. 10m without WAAS is all that's promised with civilian GPS and 3m with WAAS. You were doing well. As has been discussed several times on these forums, we all have a certain amount of error in our GPS readings. The cacher who places it will have an error circle that you can't know. Perhaps, on the day they put it out the best they could get was 20m for all we know. When we go out, we also have around 3 to 10m under good conditions so we know we are going to less than perfect, especially factoring in the cache placers error. So, 5 to 7m is nothing to complaint about. In terms of comparing two GPS, I have a Platinum and my wife Gold and they always differ from each other. That depends on the satellites being received, where you are standing and the error rates again. If you are getting 10m error it can mean that both receivers can be off by 10m to each other. Nothing unusal there. JD

I use Fugawi on my T|X for off road. Shows the cache on screen, you can export cache waypoints from GSAK to it, it works with bluetooth GPS's and it does routing. By the way, can also be used on road. JD

I'd advise against giving up the game on this kind of experience. When we started out it took easily 2-3 times longer to find caches than it does now. We started to learn what to look for. Now we can spot depressions, stones oddly placed, branches that were oddly arranged, etc. etc. A lot of caches that we thought then were cleverly hidden we now realize are just pretty typical and we can spot them as we walk up to the site. That's one of the good things about the sport for us, it taught us to observe the nature around us. Its interesting now to take newbies out with us and watch how they work a site. We are usually standing around knowing where the cache likely is (usually it is) while they are crashing all over the place and looking in all kinds of strange spots. After a bit we show them where we think it is and then when we find it we explain why we thought it was there. The point is, as somebody else said here, there is a lot of learning to do and it makes you feel better about yourself when you get good at it. As well, when we have trouble with a cache, we limit ourselves in time and go off somewhere else. When we return, we often find the trouble cache right away. Clearing the head helps because you often keep looking over and over at the same spots without truly taking a fresh look and thereby overlooking the real obvious spot. JD

For a dead unit Magellan will provide a method to unlock the software. That is their policy. Topo will complain but likely let you change. JD

I'm a Londoner too...so I'm a little heartbroken that people don't know more about my home town...hehe... Oh Oh. Looks like all the Londoners are moving up to Central Ontario. We used to live in London as well so were also quite acquainted with the Bog. JD

As others have pointed out everything is acting normally. Your body is an excellent blocker of the signal. What hasn't been mentioned, you don't have to lose all satellites to lose lock. Just get below 3 satellites visible and satellite lock is lost and the unit will not be able to compute a location. You will also lose lock if satellites aren't seen long enough for the calculation to be made. In your scenario, turning around me let it see several satellites at different points in the sky, but only for a few seconds at a time so the GPS doesn't get the time to get lock. JD

Yeah, but the earthquake caused the tsunami. Techincally earthquakes don't kill anybody, the fallen building, the fires from broken gas lines, and tsunami's caused by the earthquakes do the killing. A bit hairsplitting in my opinion. JD

Animals will definitely go for anything scented. They have better sense of smell than us and of course cosmetics smell like flowers etc so they smell like food. If a racoon or dog etc. are interested they will work at getting that cache open until they succeed. JD

Well, I know there were quite a few killed in the one in Newfoundland so I'll guess 30. JD

Well, I'm agreeing with you for once. Yes, we have to make all geocachers more aware and there should also perhaps be some other things. One, look at parking lot caches, caches close to buildings, and under bridges etc. Perhaps the reviewers should ask for specific proof of permission from the property owner be forwarded by the cache placer before approving the listing. Two, we have time outs (temporary bannings) from the forums to emphasize and manage forum behaviour, perhaps a timeout system from the caching pages for flagrant violations of the guidelines. Three, specific guideline against any object (cache contatiner, TB etc.) made to look like an explosive device or could be reasonably construed as such. This is hard to define I realze and that isn't a good one, but the problem does have to be looked at. JD

Well, there may be a problem with caches being mis-perceived as bombs but I'm not sure that the bookmark list from the link makes the case for it being a problem of newbies. When I went through about 40 of those from the list, only 2 were by newbies less than three months. I think that list says more about people being unfamiliar with our activity than its does newbies. As a former newbie, I did wait some time before I put out a cache. I wanted to get an idea of what made for good one's in my area and what weren't so good. I think its useful to encourage waiting but am not sure that turning it into a rule is all that useful. JD

Actually, the ad is not really wrong. If you check the geocaching.com pages they are actually state only 'guidelines' not rule. Even where the give a guideline, such as no burying they state you can if permission is received. So there are no real rules by geocaching but by landowners. But, frankly, rather than picking on one phrase out of three pages of very positive info, I think we as a group should be very happy that a retailer is trying to embrace our sport and give it a boost. Sure, give them information, but keep them on our side and try to avoid the snide comments like 'don't give a fig' because its clear that they do. A bit of overeaction folks. JD

I operate very much like Briansnat. However, I will remove obvious junk like the dead cell phone you talk about. I also remove items like a mouldy dog biscuit I found once. That one goes because it will attract animals. When I do that kind of maintenance run I try to keep a reasonable number of items in the cache. JD

Not quite what I was looking for in degrees (frostnip, superficial and deep were what I was looking for) but this answer is so complete its got it all. So, bobbarley, your question next. JD

True to a point. I take care of a cache in my area for a group the is promoting health and fitness by putting out caches. They put out caches throughout our county (the largest in Ontario) and they cannot travel the distance easily so I vollunteered to help out. I am the closest cacher and do the maintenance when its needed and when it gets a 'needs maintenance' post. It would be much more efficient if I could change the needs maintenance status while the group retains ownership. JD

Yep, I'll accept that. WIth numb fingers you can't feel the heat. One shouldn't rub the area or anything else that might cause the further cell damage. The frostbit area should also not be warmed if the person is going to right back in the cold. Ok, that's part two. Anybody got part 1? JD

Nice try but of course its harder than that. There are specific names. JD