Iowa Tom

I find that there are not many natural "hunter and gatherer " people out there so even if they are exposed to this "sport" they are not going to get interested anyway. By hunter and gatherer I mean that there are definitely those that like to look for and hide things and those that have no interest in doing such a thing. For example, I made a cache for my students to put travel bugs in and told each class that for $5.00 they could get a TB dog tag and attach it to a toy (bug) that may travel the world. I said we would make it into a contest to see which person’s “bug” goes the farthest. We would keep track of everybody’s bugs by using pins on a map. It’ll be a blast to see where they go, I told them! I only got about a 20% response. How disappointing. Oh well, it’s fun watching the ones that are going places. Then again, maybe the nonparticipants might get interested once they see where the bugs are going. -it

I suppose this has come up before (but I don't think recently) so I'm taking a shot at bringing it up again. It's about finding and taking advantage of benchmarks that are "GPS adjusted." First of all, to find what benchmarks are in your immediate area you can go here. Once there click on "DATASHEETS" then "Radial Search" If desired pick "Change Input Format" Type in your desired "Radius" For "Data Type Desired" I chose "Any Horz. and/or Vert. Control" Under, "Stability Desired" I chose "Any Stability" Click "Submit" If desired, place a dot on "Re-Sort-By" "Dist" or whatever. I choose "Dist." Click on a line of interest to highlight. Click on "Get Datasheets" Now you will have a lot to look at. I found that under the letter "H" if there is an "A," that that marker has been "scaled" using what are called, "GPS observations" and so must be especially accurate [ I assume]. I may be wrong in the H being a good sign in all cases. I definitely like to see "GPS OBS" in the "Vert Source" column. Under The NGS Data Sheet, seeing, "Msg=FATAL_ERROR - No Marks found" is a hint to try another one. Here is something bad to watch for. If the horizontal coordinates were scaled from a topographic map they may have an estimated accuracy of +/- 6 seconds. Not good. If you know the NK number, i.e. two numbers followed by four letters, the "PID - Permanent Identifier" number, you can get the info that you want easier by going here.. Once you get accurate GPS adjusted info for a marker you can locate, you should be able to use that info to check the accuracy and precision of your GPSr, as long as you are using the same coordinate system. I use a GPS coordinated marker placed by Aerial Services near my town to check my own GPSr, especially after I drop it....knock on wood. I let the GPSr average over that spot for 5 minutes to make the check. I obtained permission to hide a cache in the chamber where the marker is. Now I use that spot as the first part to a multi-cache I have. Any visiting geocacher then has the opportunity to check their own unit when they find that cache. Opinions? Advice? Disagreements? -it

I find that the map maker at lostoutdoors.com works about as well or better than a GPSr much of the time. Plus it's fun to use! Klatch says this is a good one to use too. Glad you in one piece. I'll be watching for the pick-up driver when he has his turn at the plate on Judgment day. -it

Using lostoutdoors.com is a lot easier than using terraserver by itself, at least in my experience. Lostoutdoors is awesome! -it

I’m curious about what people think about using LostOutdoors.com Aerial Photos to help locate geocaches or at least using it to check the coordinates that you think are correct before going out after solving a puzzle cache. I find that it easily gets me to within 10 feet of every waypoint that's accurate to begin with. To me it's quite enjoyable to use the pictures. Many times, in my area anyway, one can go out without a GPSr and find caches as easily as with a GPSr if not easier! That is as long as they are in an area that has distinctive features and has not changed since the photo was taken. If I use B&W printing I prefer to choose the small orange dot cuz it shows up better. As a person who loves to work with images, I really like messing around with it. I let my students know about it. Few of them can afford a GPSr right now so it is a salvation to them. -it

In this forum I tried using the search feature for the first time to see if anyone had written about the origin of each person's geocaching nickname. I see this thread, although started a long time ago, fits the bill. So here goes. Rather than start a duplicate I will chime in on this one. I joined a Yahoo astronomy group a few years ago then after I signed up, at least two other Tom's came in as well. To distinguish myself from the other Toms I started to call myself Iowa Tom. There was a NY Tom as well. When I joined the geocachers group I wanted a name that sounded like a friendly teacher, so I chose Iowa Tom. Besides, I was able to get IOWATOM on my license plate. Then again I like being able to abbreviate my nickname as "it." As many mistakes I make when typing, I feel like calling myself "Ctrl Alt Delete." I have never learned to type. I use the Columbus Method. When I find a key I land on it. [!] -it

I'll take a GPSr implant please.

The Vault of Kaidoz looks good! I really like the plumbing one by Mystery Ink too. I hope others (I know I have) can learn from these two examples and from the responses that have been made so far. I have updated my TB VAULT page requesting that cachers not seek the box when kids are in the area. Thanks for the great advice DocDiTTo! -it

Should I have asked each question one per post? Just curious. Terribly sorry for any annoyance. I try to tread lightly. The school where I teach is a private school. Having been teaching here for 11 years I have a pretty good feel for what can and cannot be done and what is OK and what is not. The tree where the cache is hidden is near a far corner of the property past the parkinglot and in full sight of a main road about 100 feet away. I also was very concerned about somebody wandering around. I made sure I got the approval of the top authority in our establishment and showed him the box and so on. I will add to the cache page that I do not want anyone visiting the cache when students are in the parking lot. Thanks! I made the container out of 2 x 4's, bolted together with lag bolts and glued. I know it's not impervious but it would at least take some work to get into. A bolt cutters would suffice quite well. If that happens I will probably make a new unit and move it into the woods nearby. Thanks for answering some of my 7 questions!

I am sure a zillion questions have been asked about cache containers but I hope to approach it in a little different way here. I am curious about what other geocachers use for cache containers. For instance, if you don't mind sharing, do you make some of them or adapt ready made objects obtainable at the store and so on and so forth. Please share by answering some are all of the following questions. Thank you! Here are the questions I am proposing. Feel free to add some of your own to this list if you like. (1) Do you make or significantly modify any of your own geocache containers? (2) What have you used for containers: like PVC, barn wood, small logs, metal pipes, plastic jars, other plastic containers - other than the everyday Tupperware and ice cream buckets etc. etc.? (3) Do you or how do you waterproof the lid’s seal? (4) Have you put a lock onto a cache? For all that have: ....(a.) where and how do you hide the key or ....(b.) in what way does the user determine the combination of a combination lock? (5) Have you made a geocache container that someone needs to figure out how to open once it’s found? (6) Have you used an electronic device as part of your geocache? (7) Please describe the most creative cache container like that you’ve run across. Pictured below is the most recent cache container I've made. I tried to make it as much muggle proof as I could, being I figured that one would eventually discover it within the big Arbivitae tree in the corner of the school yard. It's called the WRBA TB VAULT. It's back side is cabled to a tree with a bike cable locked in place. The lid is locked via a combination bike cable lock in the front. The front cable also wraps around part of the same tree. The geocacher needs to come up with the combination as per instructions at the cache site. To seal the lid, I used a mouse pad that gets crushed against a thin layer of silicone rubber. When they are not too thick I have often used a mouse pad to seal a lid of even a peanut butter jar. ......................................

We are encouraged, last I looked, to describe or list the original contents of a cache. That is a good idea however, once the cache has been visited many times, we can assume that the original contents are gone. I personally don't keep track. I am wondering if anyone deletes this information after a time. I have occasionally. If not, what purpose does it have to remain? -it

Hey Ambrosia, Speaking of an avatar, how do I change the caption of sorts below my avatar from the word geocacher to something else? -it

Since 1969, thirteen times (actually 13.5 times) I’ve had the police ask me what I am doing. No, it’s not what you think! E.g. long ago, twice they paid me a visit when I was at a quarry, in the dark, alone, at 1 AM. They asked me what was up. The stars, that’s what was up, and the meteors I was counting at the time! Then one time they said, “Yeah, counting meteors, that’s what a couple a few miles over said they were doing.” Every one of the 13+ times they have approached me I was doing something having to do with the hobbies I have that take me out of doors. Around here in NE Iowa I wonder just how aware the police are of our hobby. Once when a policeman came to my door for me to report something stolen, he left with more info than he came to get. I asked him if he knew about geocaching and he said no. I told him he should find out so that when he sees someone aimlessly wandering about while holding a small item (a GPSr) he might suspect they are doing nothing dishonest. I gave him a printout describing geocaching. Another time when geocachers were looking for my son’s cache in a pile of logs, on several occasions they found one or more purses that had been dumped there. I called the sheriff about it and they said, “Oh yeah, that must be the work of the beaver.” Apparently a certain local thief has a thing for log piles. When I showed them the spot they asked me how “I” knew about it. Of course I asked them, “Are you aware of the sport called geocaching?” They were not. It just so “happened” that I had a printout of the webpage for that cache reading to give to them. One time I was questioned indirectly. I call that a half of a time, hence the 13.5. I was out in the woods a couple hundred yards from the school bus that I had driven to the location. “Why a bus,” you ask? I had just dropped off the basketball players and headed out to hide a cache, in the dark, in the woods, in the snow. I was expecting that someone would wonder why there was a big yellow bus parked next to a marsh at night. Sure enough, I was way back in the woods when I heard the siren. He was trying to call me in. Needles to say I headed back to the bus shining a flashlight to my face and saying, It’s me!” After walking 100 feet or so I thought, “Oh no! I forgot the geocache!” I needed that as evidence that I indeed was on the straight and narrow. Of course I couldn’t find it! I hadn’t made a waypoint yet and my tracks lead everywhere. By the time I did, and got back to the bus the officer was gone. Only his tracks proved to me that it was indeed for me that the siren wailed. When I rolled back into town I began watching the game. Then some of my students excitedly asked, “Why was a cop talking to coach about you?” The policeman had asked why our bus was out near the marsh. The coach told the officer, “Yeah that’s our science teacher. I don’t know what he’s do’n. Probly fish/n or somthin.” The last time a policeman made the all to familiar inquiry was recently when I was trying to set up my “See the Light” cache. He asked my student and myself in a parking lot at 10 PM, “What are you guys up to?” As always, I excitedly told him the truth. I asked him if he wanted to see the blinking light off in the distance. He didn’t take up my offer, nor did he seem to be aware of geocaching! -it

I will copy and paste my post and submit it in the other discussion. Now I have to figure out how to lock this one with an explanation as to why I'm "locking" it. Any help in that regard would be appreciated. -it

Since 1969, thirteen times (actually 13.5 times) I’ve had the police ask me what I am doing. No, it’s not what you think! E.g. long ago, twice they paid me a visit when I was at a quarry, in the dark, alone, at 1 AM. They asked me what was up. The stars, that’s what was up, and the meteors I was counting at the time! Then one time they said, “Yeah, counting meteors, that’s what a couple a few miles over said they were doing.” Every one of the 13+ times they have approached me I was doing something having to do with the hobbies I have that take me out of doors. I would like to know if others have been questioned while geocaching. I ask because I wonder just how aware the police are of our new hobby. Once when a policeman came to my door for me to report something stolen, he left with more info than he came to get. I asked him if he knew about geocaching and he said no. I told him he should find out so that when he sees someone aimlessly wandering about while holding a small item (a GPSr) he might suspect they are doing nothing dishonest. I gave him a printout describing geocaching. Another time when geocachers were looking for my son’s cache in a pile of logs, on several occasions they found one or more purses that had been dumped there. I called the sheriff about it and they said, “Oh yeah, that must be the work of the beaver.” Apparently a certain local thief has a thing for log piles. When I showed them the spot they asked me how “I” knew about it. Of course I asked them, “Are you aware of the sport called geocaching?” They were not. It just so “happened” that I had a printout of the webpage for that cache reading to give to them. One time I was questioned indirectly. I call that a half of a time, hence the 13.5. I was out in the woods a couple hundred yards from the school bus that I had driven to the location. “Why a bus,” you ask? I had just dropped off the basketball players and headed out to hide a cache, in the dark, in the woods, in the snow. I was expecting that someone would wonder why there was a big yellow bus parked next to a marsh at night. Sure enough, I was way back in the woods when I heard the siren. He was trying to call me in. Needles to say I headed back to the bus shining a flashlight to my face and saying, It’s me!” After walking 100 feet or so I thought, “Oh no! I forgot the geocache!” I needed that as evidence that I indeed was on the straight and narrow. Of course I couldn’t find it! I hadn’t made a waypoint yet and my tracks lead everywhere. By the time I did, and got back to the bus the officer was gone. Only his tracks proved to me that it was indeed for me that the siren wailed. When I rolled back into town I began watching the game. Then some of my students excitedly asked, “Why was a cop talking to coach about you?” The policeman had asked why our bus was out near the marsh. The coach told the officer, “Yeah that’s our science teacher. I don’t know what he’s do’n. Probly fish/n or somthin.” The last time a policeman made the all to familiar inquiry was recently when I was trying to set up my “See the Light” cache. He asked my student and myself in a parking lot at 10 PM, “What are you guys up to?” As always, I excitedly told him the truth. I asked him if he wanted to see the blinking light off in the distance. He didn’t take up my offer, nor did he seem to be aware of geocaching! If you have stories to tell, please do.

I am liking what I have seen! Thank You! -it By the way, I have wanted to make a t-shirt that says, Don't worry, I'm looking for agates. The reason is, I am sure people wonder what the hey that guy (yours truly) is doing whenever he walks past any river gravel he finds in town. Lake Superior agates are a little bit of heaven to me. -it

While reading about bogleman’s cache a "where were you when Kennedy was shot" moment came to me. I was driving by Payless Cashways years ago, rolling along W Ridgeway, heading due east [that’d be an azimuth of 90 degrees] listening to the perpetually scratchy Iowa Public Radio station when I heard the sad sad news; the creator of the first smiley face had died!!! [i didn’t know there was a first creator of the smiley face up that that point! I had assumed, I guess, that it had simply evolved somehow.] W/o taking the time to look it up, I'll just say I remember hearing that he made the first one to cheer up his employees and it took off from there. Only in America, in the US of that is! By the way, I smiled big when I looked at your cache. -it

I am not aware of any t-shirt that says in BIG bold letters anything like, GEOCACHING, or anything like that. Have I missed seeing that? I would like make one myself but it would cost too much for one, that's of any quality anyway. -it

I don't know if this is going to help at all but here goes. I will confess that I am not totally sure when a cache sequence I design should be called a mystery cache or a puzzle cache, not that it matters I suppose. I do always make my own designs though. I make more than I find actually. When I used to play hide-n-seek as a kid I always liked to hide. I never liked to find. That's not to say that I don't like finding caches however! It seems like when I think I’m running out of ideas I come up with yet another one. The process builds upon itself. That's just the way my brain works. Ask Welch. At the beginning of the school year I tell my new students, "I'm weird, get used to it." Being a teacher and wanting to make almost every cache count toward that means I almost always try to think of something that a player might learn while solving the “puzzle.” I personally don’t get off on counting letters in a sign or adding numbers and subtracting numbers to come up a coordinate unless I can think of no other way to do it. In beginning a puzzler I usually sit down with my hamburger and senior coke at Burger King, AKA my think-tank, and think about what I want to try to teach somebody. From there I try to think of a way to get the geocacher to unwittingly take part in a learning process while working toward the coordinates they need. Here is an example of one such cache. It deals with the popular misconception that crickets chirp by rubbing their legs together. THEY DON’T! In a couple other puzzlers I try to introduce people to various websites that they may not already be aware of. Like my “Find Me If You Can!” cache requires people to pay careful attention to satellite photos and coordinates that go with them. When I discovered that website I thought to myself, “here is another opportunity to introduce people to a neat website!” As I designed, “Big Rock”, an offshoot of "Find Me If You Can" but closer to my home, I decided that I wanted to require players to use some unique features of Black Hawk County Online, like how to measure a distance in the way that you would with a tape measure, except on a computer screen. That measured distance is used as part of the puzzle that leads to another aerial photo which in turn leads to the final coordinate. In using all kinds of different services on the Web I feel that I’m teaching things to people that accept the challenge. When I put together “Hello ISS” I finally figured out how to use some old buildings in the sequence. I stewed over how to employ those places for months. I also got to tell a story about an unusual incident I had that involved an astronaut aboard the Space Station. Loving to take pictures, for a geocache I figured out how to employ nice images of my community in what I called “My Waterloo.” In that cache sequence I try to introduce people to the finer aspects of my home town. Making caches have a good purpose is itself good. So that’s how I do it and why I do it. To have fun and teach and learn, all at the same time! Teaching and learning, that’s what it’s all about to me! I feel like the Internet has become my extended classroom!! And oh by the way, in my opinion feel free to learn from what other people do. No need to reinvent the wheel entirely. I will say this however; one guy asked me how I made a certain electronic cache where you bring the battery. I told him but asked that he give me credit for the idea. If he understood what I did and made one himself, or whether he gave me any credit, I will probably never know. I do know that he never responded with a thanks or any acknowledgement after I sent him the instructions. Ouch.

Hi Welch. The first person to cause me some grief was a student! He thought it would be cute to say that he was going to "geosmash" my caches, in word only of course. He was jealous that I was giving more attantion to another student that was getting into geocaching a lot. Not a smart move.

Hey briansnat, I like your choice of terms for the problem makers. Your "Then and Now: Boonton, NJ" cache is neato. Nice work! Tahosa and Sons, your Images I, is good too. By the way, when I'm honest with myself I think I make the puzzles and hard to get open containers just because it's a creative outlet for me. -it

There is something about introducing geocaching to the populous that seems like a quandary to me. I am enthusiastic about it and want to tell everybody yet I feel if I do I might regret it later. Advertising via the media will allow anyone to learn that there are many things out there to find and take. I guess that’s the chance we obviously need to take. Any opinions? To sift out at least some of the geopoachers I began designing multi, mystery and puzzle caches to make it harder to find the final cache container. Sometimes the coordinate I give on the webpage is not the real one. I say so in the description then tell the player how to find the true coord via some sort of process, often involving pictures. A geocache sequence that uses pictures in the process of finding the final unit I call a pictocache. [i myself am visually oriented and have found that pictures open up a veritable ocean of ways to be creative. [/i] This pictocache is my favorite of the several that I have done. It may take a few hours to complete and only one person has taken the time to do that.] With a multipart cache, potential geopoachers will have to work for their bread. Another Iowan once said, "trouble makers are notoriously lazy." That is what I depending upon!! To further frustrate would-be thieves, I make many of my containers a puzzle to get open even if they do find it. This one is the most complex in that regard. It's a PVC pipe cache hidden in a very old rusty pipe. In the long hint I tell peiple how to open it etc. Two other caches I had there were taken from that location so it became a contest of wits to see if I could make it hard enough to find and for all practical purposes impossible to get out of its hiding place even IF found…unless they have a coat hanger wire and THE KEY. After finally figuring out how to get the mechanism apart, the player finds they need a key to open a lock. The key is hidden about 100 yards away. I needed to make something to block and lock the tube into the rusty pipe. It needed to match the rusty tube the cache is hidden in. I dug around in my garage and found an old iron plumbing coupling. Just big enough, once drilled out, to hide the small lock. I torched it to burn off any residual paint then I soaked it in muriatic (hydrochloric) acid to encourage rusting. The coupling fits onto the ends of a rusted rod that is inserted through an original opening in the pipe. Making containers that don’t come open simply has proven to be a real boon to me in that it has opened up a whole new vista of variety that can go into making a cache container. Since I really enjoy designing and making specialized containers this has proven to be nothing but fun!!!! I usually give at least a hint so that when a person does find the cache they can get it open without too much frustration. As an example, the lid on one of my geo-birdhouses requires lifting a single nail in the lid. That would be no big deal except that that one nail looks an awful lot like all the others that don’t lift up! The nail is indirectly hooked to a part which includes a spring. Finally, someone might wonder why I use birdhouses because they are so “out there.” Well, I myself tend to ignore the ones I find because they are so ubiquitous. I try to use old wood or make them look old. Because I make them hard to open even if a muggler did find it, the cache will hopefully not be robbed. -it

I too tried the spray adhesive but only to try to give a texture to the PVC caches I've made. Neat! However, as I recall, the paint’s flat luster became a bit glossier after mixing a little bit with the adhesive and did not truly harden up in the time that I chose to give it the test. I found that the paint scraped off after a couple hours of drying time. For now I rough up the PVC with coarse sandpaper before I paint it. I have tried automotive body putty. That technique I have yet to perfect. It holds a lot of promise in that it can be carved with a Dremel tool once hardened. I do wish I knew how the fake bark texture on those plastic tree decorations to put in a garden is made. I suspect they start out with wax to make the initial model with. I’m having trouble visualizing the simple tools they must use to give the material such a good “bark look.” I have tried taking a piece of the PVC pipe and running it over a table saw blade, with the blade up only about 1/16th inch. I didn't cut the very ends of the 12 inch piece of pipe so that the blade would always cut to a certain depth. I ran the blade across the pipe as the tube was moved around. That really tore into the plastic and gave quite a coarse texture. After I textured it I cut off the smooth ends. I have to actually use the technique for a cache however. Another thing I do is put a lock on some of my caches. The cache is often fastened to a tree too so it's not at all easy to walk off with. Then I hide the key inside a secret compartment in a piece of a red cedar branch that I fastened to the base of a fence post or another tree. The cedar branch looks like a sucker (so-called) that grew up beside the other tree. I use cedar because it takes forever to rot.

I'm glad to know of the other colors that are available. Thanks! I have wished that I could find a brighter green to imitate lichens. Now I see it IS available! It is quite a bit more $ than the Rustoleum. However, I would only need one or two of the specialty colors anyway. I'm planning on contacting a local paint store to ask them if they can mix flat colored enamel paints. Theoretically, if they can mix any enamel paint, color-wise, they should be able to create a whole range of brush on colors. We'll see. I myself have stayed away from gluing things onto my caches that will rot off in time. The bark idea is great if the owner is willing to check on it often. I own so many caches and have so much else to do that I try to give them as much immortality as I can. I would think that, unless the bark is perforated to help fasten it on, that it's adherence to the cache may be somewhat tenuous over the long haul. Great idea though! Gotta go eat some turkey! -it

Another problem to consider is that the inaccuracy that is inherent in the waypoint gets multiplied by the next GPS reading when a person tries to find it. E.g. a 9 foot radius gets knocked up to an 18 foot radius in the first try. -it