Little Brown Dog

Hey, Can I play too? I'm in Olathe, Johnson County, aka, "the Land of the Lost". Count me in, wherever.

Dude, I'm in Kansas...its like 1 degree outside, and windy.

My real name is "Bandit" because I steal treats. Go with a personality name, which the dog will let you know before too long. As for a cacher name, how about "Russell" as in Rustle around in the leaves for a cache.?

Uh... Put a jacket on; turn on the Etrex; Get a Coke; Stand outside; Let the Etrex "initialize" (figure out where the hell it is); Drink the Coke; Check the Etrex agaion; it should now tell you where you are standing, mas-o-menos. If you are trying to do this inside a building, STOP WATCHING TV COMMERCIALS!!! IT DOESN"T WORK THAT WAY!!! Seriously, it sounds brand new, and probably needs to be initialized. Once this is done, it should work fine unless you leave it on the shelf with no batteries in it for about a month.

Okay....Map Datums. These are not for the light of heart. Basically, the Earth is not flat, but an ellipsoid of rotation. So, the braniac guys like vtpaddler create "datums" to mathematically approximate the shape of the earth. Stick with WGS84, or World Geodetic System 1984. It is the standard for Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinates, and essentially the basis for how GPS coordinates are calculated. That is a VERY simple explanation. I'll leave the details to the geodesy guys. And remember, there are cartesian coordinates (graph paper, like x,y, or UTMs, and there are polar coodinates, like LAT-LON . Stick with WGS84 Young Apprentice....play it safe.

Yes, Use the force, young Skywalker..... Also, go to the settings of the etrex and you can change the amount of detail that displays on the map as you zoom in and out. you will find that after a while, you start using less and less detail to reduce screen clutter, and speed up screen refresh rates. AND DON'T PLAY WITH THAT DARNED THING WHILE YOU ARE DRIVING!!! Just thought I'd say it before someone else does.

Remember not to mash down too hard on the click stick! It is durable, but its not like the clutch on a duece-and-a-half!! Just press and hold.

Easy... Etrex legend was agood choice, by the way, probably one of the best all-around receivers for the money and features. When the Etrex is on, simply press and hold the "click stick" until a waypoint appears. That will be your current location. You can navigate up-down-L-R with the click stick and change anything on screen. That is also where you change the icon. I use the geocache "GC----" numbers to identify geocache waypoints so they don't get mixed up with others. If you want to make life real fun, and really nerd out, get the Metroguide CD or Topo CD and a download cable, then you can add points easily, as well as detailed maps. No, I don't work for Garmin, but there office is 2 miles from my house. Purely coincidence.

Josey, (best Eastwood movie ever, by the way, great name) Have you keyed in coordinates into your GPS receiver? Once you have, on the Etrex legend, you can edit the icon for a waypoint entered by moving the cursor in the waypoint screen over the icon displayed, then click, and scroll through icons to select one you like. The Etrex comes with icons for "geocache" and "geocache found". Remember, the receiver is just a fancy radio and a clock , combined with a calculator, memory, and coordinate datums. You have to tell it where you want to go by entering a coordinate. Cool etrex tip: Once you have logged a point, or are navigating to a coord that you are trying to find, and feel that you are at the correct position, the etrex has the option to update the orginal position to your current position. You may find this useful if ever returning to previous caches. After a while, you will discover that some of the coords posted by people are not exactly close to the actual cache, but are actually good vantage points for spotting the cache.

VT, I know what the DOD needed a world-wide coordinate system for 1. Submarines 2. Things that take pictures of submarines 3. Things that go boom that come from submarines 4. Space Travel 5. "environmental" high-resolution radar mapping of the earths surface 6. Starting coordinates for high-speed low-drag single-use cylindrical sub-orbital flying objects with high mass, low volume and large atomic numbers 7. End ccordinates for high-speed low-drag single-use cylindrical objects And as we used to say in the USAF...Things that go bump in the night. Now, a trick question...why aren't GPS satellites Geosynchronous? (hint: What is the antenna angle at the north pole?) (Hint #2: Where is the antenna located on a submarine?)

USAF 83-87 30456 Satellite Communications Technician. Ground Mobile Forces. 5th MOB - Georgia Gators. Warner Robins, GA. Man, was it hot...and the bugs! Miss all you mobsters out there...Last one to log in is a Pork Patty!

Found #2 today...GCB04D. Looked for GC13E9, no luck. Win some, lose some.

I've had a Legend well over a year, no problems at all. Upgrades did appear to improve performance. Garmin is the way to go.

Yep! Bad screen. Return it immediately...most customer dissatisfaction/returns policies are about as time-tolerant as a carton of milk in the summer sun.

Vertical line running through the screen on every page displayed? Bad unit! Screen is damaged, return and replace immediately! Be sure to show the store the problem so they don't repackage and re-sell it without knowing there is a problem.

Good job, Etrex! You are a hero! Adopted pets make the best pets. Take good care of it, its part of the family now! LBD

<----- "Mr. B", a.k.a. Bandit. Newest Geocache rookie.

Thanks for the link. Just used a surveying-ese term from a friend, as in recover a benchmark or monument. What would be best? Found? Located? Acquired? what is the proper etiquitte/lengua franca?

<------ "Bandit" is a "Dobrador"; Half Lab, Half Doberman. Extremely smart, but territorial. Great little dog (only 52 lbs). Likes to travel looong distances on walks, good tracker, too. Adopted from an animal shelter. I recommend adopting from your local shelter.

I am totally new to this, and did my first recovery yesterday. I've done some browsing last nite, and noticed that there seems to be a lot of geocachers out there who enjoy exploring with their four-legged companions. So how many of you out there go caching with your dog, and what's its name? My dog (the avatar pic) is named Bandit (yes, he earned that name!).

Oh yeah, it was GC742A that we recovered.

Sorry, Yes, we found it, no problem. The dog nosed it out fairly quickly. Look forward to trying another this weekend. VT and I are considering establishing a cache at our business near our office. Non-commercial, of course; just easy to monitor.

Hey, Tried my first attempt at this today! The dog loved it. He is big on finding things. Looks like we found a new hobby! Thanks VTPADDLER for switching me on!