Iowa Tom

Page 12 at this http://www8.garmin.com/manuals/GPSMAP60CSx_OwnersManual.pdf site tells you how to do it. I believe that is the unit you have.

I wish that I could know when a picture is uploaded in a log to one of my caches w/o having to to go to the log on the web whenever a new one shows up; or is there a way? Anyway what do you people think about pictures that show up with the finder holding the cache, so now people know exactly what they are looking for, and even worse, with the hiding spot showing in the background. I don't want to delete the guy's messages but sure wish I could delete the pictures. I have just suggested to him that he is giving away too much information. -it

For a while I thought I was jinxed because about 30 seconds before I was going to hit the send button in another post about this problem, complaining about my bad luck, the power to a major part of my town went out. I confess, my bad luck cut the power to thousands of people.

I just made a cache that utilizes Terraserver Viewer yet when I now try to use it I don't get an image. My luck. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this is a temporary problem. Does anyone know who runs it and does it currently work for anyone else? -it

I have not read all the posts about this so I may be repeating what has already been said. About the human scent causing a parent to abandon the young; I once decided that that was probably something that was made up by a parent not wanting their kids to mess with an animal’s offspring. Many times I have proven that that statement is totally false. With rabbits and birds anyway, it has made virtually NO difference. I do not believe that the scent of a human will overcome the instinct of a parent to take care of its young. I will agree however, that it is always best not to touch any animal however unless you have a good reason to. I’ve read that the best defense of a fawn is to remain still because they have no scent. Apparently predators will walk right past them. This reminds me of the spiders in my house freezing when exposed to light because their usual predators respond best to movement. The one very young fawn I came across remained still even though several people were within touching distance of it. It was curled up on the ground. -it

I find bones all the time and in fact made a cow skull into a really neat cache container. I called it Dummkopf. That's German for "block-head." I remember my grandfather using the term on more than one occasion, usually when I was riding in a car he was driving. The last guy to find my cow head cache said it was the best cache container he had ever seen. That was the last time anyone saw it. It headed off somewhere right after that. -it

As far as I can tell it was the digital camera that was causing the problem. I have now mounted the camera about 15 inches away from the GPSr and see no signal degradation. I now use the telephoto setting to zoom in on the screen.

I wondered about that and did turn the camera on and off but wasn't able to come to a solid conclusion. I will try it again w/o the camera in place at all.

I have a Magellan Gold. It has a helix antennae. I just made a rig that enables me to photograph the screen the same way each time. I was experimenting with it tonight out in the wide open country here in NE Iowa. I noticed that when I first get a good signal that a lot of satellites have tall bars. Then before I know it they all go way down, then back up then down again. I also find that if I hold a metal plate over the top of the GPSr that the signal degrades a lot, like it should, but when I take the metal away the signals seem to spring back with a vengeance. I often get all tall bars again but then they waver like before. I believe this happens across the whole sky with all the GPS sats. I do not think that it's caused by fluctuations in the ionosphere because the distance is far too great to be happening simultaneously and the speed of variance just too fast. The only thing I can think of is my unit itself is causing the variation. Does anybody have any knowledge of why these rapid fluctuations occur? -it

I just tried using Google Earth to see the difference in longitude vs. latitude at my latitude (42˚ N) and up by Hudson Bay (60˚ N). I set three place marks at each location; two 1˚ of latitude apart while at the same longitude and one at the same latitude but separated by 1˚ longitude. There is definitely a difference, even at my latitude.

I'm getting 60.546 miles. I use GeoCalc. However, this is good too. -it

Technically, the distance for 0.001 minute longitude is not the same as 0.001 minute latitude. Longitude converges as we move from the equator but latitude does not. I don't know that I would worry about the difference though.

Are the external antennas only available for Garmins?

That is true based on what I have read in articles that were quite detailed about the subject. The error is compounded by the fact that the second person's unit is imperfect and conditions are different for them when they arrive. It’s error upon error so your initial reading is bound to be better than the next person’s. What I don't care for is the drop-n-click method used by some people that really don't know (or care) how to get a reasonably accurate coord of their cache when they leave it. Until recently I didn't realize that professional systems also have trouble with tree cover as well. They too have to let their unit sit for quite some time to get super accurate data. -it

I used to take a reading at the cache then walk off in a different direction 8 times, wait until my unit began to average, then move back to the cache and take a reading once it began to average. I finished by hand averaging all of those readings back home. That was quite a hassle and came to the conclusion that maybe just letting it sit and average once a second, or whatever it is, for 10 minutes, would do the same thing with a lot less work. I rarely get complaints about the accuracy of my readings done either way, and I own a lot of caches. Likewise the visitor should get close to the right spot, wait for their unit to average for a minute, look to see which direction and how far to move, move there and wait a minute again if necessary. I use Magellan and don’t remember if a Garmin averages automatically or not. -it

This may not help if your unit cannot average for an extended period of time. I myself always mount my GPS unit on a stand then let it average for 10 minutes, at least. On one cache that is a little ways into the woods I provide a coord outside the woods then say “walk straight east 20 feet to the cache.” -it

Greenbelt Lake GOTO Cache was my first. That was way back on 12/26/03; seemingly eons ago in geocaching years. In my DNA I had the infamous Geocaching Gene but didn't know it till that day. It had been dormant for years, waiting for the opportunity to express itself and geocaching did the trick. I'll never forget the feeling of being a newbie. It was awesome. -it

Maybe this is an off-topic thread even though it’s really not off-topic. If it is, feel free to move it. OK, let's figure out the genetics of the geocaching gene. Assume Mendelian genetics. *An individual’s genotype is heterozygous for the gene but the person does not express it in their phenotype at all. (1) Is this complete or incomplete dominance? (2) If it is complete dominance, is the gene dominant or recessive?

After I described geocaching to a friend of mine (by the way his last name is Friend), he said, “That sounds like a no-brainer. I’m not interested." I have since read that people that feel a need to geocache have the dreaded geocaching gene. Good thing it's recessive and not dominant. But hey, we can't help it! Now at least we have an excuse! My life would be easier without it. I wouldn't feel that constant compulsion to come up with a new sophisticated container and invent yet another puzzle for finding it. With gas prices the way they are and geocaches in some areas being so far apart, geocachers might be called upon to invent an alternative fuel to keep everyone going when the oil runs out. Pity us. -it

I wonder if they are going to watch for people dropping coins? A deep wishing well. How about the people that jump off cliffs with parachutes on their back? They might allow that for a price.

It took me quite a while before I decided to tackle the HTML. To save time I use the autocorrect feature in Word. I do everything in Word to start with. When I want to add a link for instance, I simply type "href.." [quotation marks not included] then this appears automatically: <a href="URL">X</a> I exchange the letters URL for a real URL and replace the X with words I want the link to be tied to. For an image I type in img.. and up comes <img src="URL" border="1" width="200" hspace="5" vspace="5" align="left"> Sometimes I get all kinds of junk HTML that I don't want once I add it to the webpage. E.g. I often get an extra set of " ". That has changed the font colors. One should be careful with exotic fonts. Some browsers don't show them as I recall. One problem I have is not knowing how big a picture is going to appear on someone else’s computer screen. Invariably it looks too big for others when it looks fine for me. Sometimes the webpage takes up more than a whole screen on another computer even though it looked good on mine. I have come to appreciate the suggestions that people sometimes make about how to set up your monitor to view their webpage correctly. If anyone wants my list of HTML shortcuts that I set up in autocorrect let me know and I’ll send you a Word document with them on it. It includes some instructions. -it

I think I will change the goal of my The Grand Canyon in 3D Traveling Cache TB to "take two pictures off that sky walk. Two shots taken straight down with a 20 foot separation might give some depth. It nearly made it to the Canyon once but then got hauled off by a person that didn't read the goal tag. At least it's back in AZ now.

For some reason I cannot get the TLEs I posted above to work in Orbitron. I did however find all these sats in the Orbitron TLE database already to go. Below is a screen capture (somewhat doctored by yours truly) showing the WAAS positions. My Magellan Meridian Gold satellite status screen only shows two Ws in the SW, one slightly lower and a little more west than the other. It does not tell me which ones my unit is set up to read. The lower, more westerly W must be INMARSAT 3F-4 and the higher, closer W must be GALAXY 15 (G-15).

I’m using a Magellan Meridian Gold. Like all GPSrs that I am aware of it does show me the position of all the GPS satellites that I believe are at least 5˚ above its horizon. Here http://www.calsky.com/cs.cgi/Satellites/12 is a current list of GPS sats above your IP address location. I just took the time to tabulate a lot of info about all the WAAS sats that I should be able to pick up. I did read that there are towers that are dedicated to sending correction info to these sats. If you are in a place which is not being monitored, like in South America, it doesn’t matter if you get the WAAS signal or not. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ AOR-W = Atlantic Ocean Region West Also called INMARSAT 3-F4 = International Marine/Maritime Satellite (organization) NORAD ID: 24819 Int'l Code: 1997-027A PRN #35 For live altitude and azimuth data see: http://www.n2yo.com/?s=24819 Other info: http://www.lyngsat.com/tracker/inmar3f4.shtml From Waterloo, Iowa Azimuth 240.13˚ Elevation: 20.3˚ TLE as of 3/21007 1 24819U 97027A 07079.45303355 .00000109 00000-0 10000-3 0 4629 2 24819 000.1103 083.8246 0005720 270.2688 204.5650 01.00270375 35958 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Galaxy 15 NORAD ID: 28884 Int'l Code: 2005-041A PRN #48 For live altitude and azimuth data see: http://www.n2yo.com/?s=28884 Other info: http://www.lyngsat.com/tracker/g15.html From Waterloo, Iowa Azimuth 132.93˚ Elevation: 26.29˚ TLE as of 3/21007 1 28884U 05041A 07075.20349486 .00000075 00000-0 10000-3 0 2523 2 28884 000.0092 332.2187 0001926 351.8599 149.5821 01.00272295 5235 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ANIK F1R = Canadian COMSAT NORAD ID: 28868 Int'l Code: 2005-036A PRN #51 For live altitude and azimuth data see: http://www.n2yo.com/?s=28868 Other info: http://www.lyngsat.com/tracker/anikf1r.html From Waterloo, Iowa Azimuth 201.68˚ Elevation: 38.69˚ TLE as of 3/21007 1 28868U 05036A 07077.23237603 -.00000080 +00000-0 +00000-0 0 03019 2 28868 000.0249 315.3022 0000341 090.4923 105.9531 01.00271618005667 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ INMARSAT 4-F2 NORAD ID: 28899 Int'l Code: 2005-044A PRN #34 For live altitude and azimuth data see: http://www.n2yo.com/?s=28899 Other info: http://www.lyngsat.com/tracker/inmar4f2.shtml From Waterloo, Iowa Azimuth 129.38˚ Elevation: 26.88˚ TLE as of 3/21007 1 28899U 05044A 07077.50566573 -.00000297 00000-0 10000-3 0 3006 2 28899 002.6278 297.1336 0002893 068.1144 299.6025 01.00270387 5028 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ By the way, small world NorthWes. I remembered that you once posted a note to a TB that I am watching. Your note is here: http://www.geocaching.com/track/log.aspx?L...2d-459933d08371 It's owned by a student of mine. It's a fossil brachiopod I collected myself near this cache of mine. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...7a-92d52417c886 I drilled a hole in it to attached the chain then gave it to my student to use in a TB race from a cache that I built for the kids here in Waterloo, IA. The cache is here: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...4f-f673533571cf That TB is now in the lead! It made it to Japan. Mine was in the lead being in Austria. -it

I have noticed that I am no longer receiving e-mails from another group I belong to. I will have to check into it. Thanks!