Astro_D

Logs have been checked. All validated finds have been added to the database as of 02 May 2006 @ 0745 hrs CT. I apologize for the long delay folks. Work and illness have gotten in the way of things. The stats page will be updated late Friday, 05 May 2006. Katrina AstroD-Team

All logs have been checked, verified, and entered into the database 20 April 06 @ 2114 hrs CT Katrina AstroD-Team

The stats page is now updated as of 16 April 06 @ 1120 CT Katrina AstroD-Team

All finds checked, verified, and logged into the database 16 Apr 06 @ 1120 CT. (The stats page is being uploaded as I write this). Katrina AstroD-team

All logs checked, verified, and recorded into database 13 April 2006 @ 1430 hours. Katrina AstroD-Team

We will be attending a Seder tonight. If we get home at a reasonable hour, my hubby will attempt to get the updated stats page uploaded. If not, we'll get to it tommorrow. Sorry for any inconvenience to anyone. Hope you all enjoy your holiday weeeknd!!! Katrina AstroD-Team

All logs checked and entered: 11 April 2006 @ 1425 hours CT. Katrina AstroD-Team

We download several counties at a time from the NGS site. Then with the programs mentioned by others, we dump the county file into GSAK on our laptop (which always goes with us in the car). To get a view of all the BMs in a given county, we export the GSAK file into Microsoft Streets and Trips. This certainly helps in navigation (unless the coords are way off) and determining which areas of a county have a higher concentration of BMs. As we find each BM, we delete it off the map and check it off in GSAK. To be totally paperless, we load the NGS datasheets (via GSAK) into our PPC. We have all the BM information at our fingertips when we decide to go out. Using this set up we can plan on a good 6 -7 hour day of BMing and, if we're lucky, we come home with 12+ finds for the day. Katrina

Awesome design!!! As a female, I don't mind having the guy on the pin. Everything does not need to be 'politically correct' or gender nuetral. Can't wait to get mine. It'll make my hubby jealous! Katrina AstroD-Team

Welcome to the 2006 Benchmark Contest Stats Page. Here it is, the official posting of the webpage where all the 2006 Benchmark Contest stats will be placed for your viewing. The stats page on the website will be updated every Thursday night. PLEASE NOTE: There are two tabs on the bottom of the web page: Full Stats tab is an ALPHABETICAL listing of particiapnts Top Ranking tab is a NUMERICAL lsiting of total finds. The stats page can be found at: http://personalpages.tds.net/~ddewitt/ If you have any questions, let me know. Katrina AstroD-team

All logs verified and entered into database 06 April 2006 at 2039 hours CT. katrina

Hmm...I think we're contributing some to Wisconsin's stats. We found nearly 70 in the last two months. But not much number wise to report to the NGS though.... sigh... Please stay away and leave them all for us!!! Thanks. Katrina AstroD-Team

Entries added to database: 05 April 2006 at 0900 hrs CT. Katrina

All entries checked and added to database.

That's what I love about the BM forums - you are all so nice and helpful!! I will be sure to grab the distance shots from now on. Is it better to take the distant shots from the BM or taken from a distant point looking towards the BM? Should the BM be easily identifible in the photo? Thanks for the advice. Katrina AstroD-Team

Glad you got it to work! We never could GPXSonar to download properly. Enjoy your paperless BMing! Now you can be 'professional' as we had someone tell us recently. Good Luck and Have fun! Katrina

Yes. The NGS datasheets on the PPC are exactly the same if you were to download and view them directly from the NGS website. (Don't know how to download the GC.com sheets - and don't care - as they do not have up to date info on them). Then using PPC, we can add logs and notes for each individual BM while out in the field, thus eliminating the need to actually carry pen and paper (although we still do just in case). Hope this helps. If you have any other questions, we'll try and help! Katrina

Thanks for the info! We'll use this new format next time. When posting our photos, we put the PID (in caps), the designation, and the county and state in the photo caption. We have not done many 'distance' shots, but see that they do add something to the log. We'll try some of these shots next time we're in the field as well. Katrina

Yeah! Another PPC user! First we download the datasheets for the county we want from NGS website. (This is a zipped file). Then we dump the zipped file into the BMGPX.exe program to create the GPX file. The GPX file gets loaded into GSAK. In GSAK, we export it to .LOC file and upload into cachemate for PPC. Maybe there is an easier way to do it, but it works and takes all of 5 minutes from start to end. We have been happily paperless benchmarking for about a month and absolutely love it!

4 leafclover: This thread is the list of participants. I have everyone who has posted prior to this here post, added into the official contest database. Katrina AstroD-team

How scoring will work: Contestents will post their finds (as per 2 old farts criteria) in the appropiate BM thread. PLEASE - keep this only for logging your finds! Monday morning, I will begin going through this thread and entering each teams finds into my database. This could take some time -especially the first week until I get things to my liking - so please be patient! However, it is my goal to post the standings each Thursday so you all can make your plans of attack for the upcoming weekend. The first week, I will create a topic in the BM forums for the sole purpose of listing the standings. I will propably use this for one or two weeks until the webpage I'm working on for this contest is up and running. I will then provide a link so you can check the stats anytime. Hopefully, it will be more current. Any questions? Katrina

QUOTE: AstroD-Team, it really sounds like you should sign up for the contest. The is no objections from the ruling judges for letting you participate. We think you can handle finding & then logging the benchmarks you find and still keep score accurately. You have ONE WEEK to get your name in the hat! You Know you really want to! You will really have fun doing it! Why wait? Go ahead and give us some competition! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sorry - haven't quite figurted out this quote thingy yet. Thanks for the vote of confidence Old Farts, but we are sitting out of this one. We are afraid the competing will take the fun out of BMing for us. We made that mistake geocaching. I am happy to participate by keeping the tallies on all these great finds everyone is going to post. I did put our team name in the database just for comparison though. But our stats will not be published nor count in the standings. Good Luck everyone - 5 days to go!!! Katrina

I hope you have a quick recovery and will not be laid up for too long a period of time. I tore several muscles and put a hairline crack in one of my vertabre at the tender age of 16 rearranging my bedroom furniture. Then had a major lumbar strain a few years after that. My back has never been the same since. (I won't even begin to mention the few geocaching injuries....) Enjoy the drugs and hopefully, the first class service of being waited on hand and foot. Katrina

Boy, I hate being stupid!! After further digging into our records, the reset BM is listed under PID: DF6339 and not recordable on GC.com. So I'm guessing PM0077 (1953 BM) on GC.com should be marked by us as 'not found' adding that it's probably destroyed. As well as make mention the new PID number for the reset? Thoughts?

Went out again yesterday (ahh, the joys of not participating in the contest ). We came across this BM: PM0077. The description refers to the original 1953 station. However at the location, what we found was a 1985 reset station. Consulting the NGS datasheet for this PID, we could find no mention of a reset. The last recovery of the original BM was 1972. In 2004, The Power Squadron mentions recovering the 1985 reset. We were also able to recover the two 1953 reference marks and 1953 azimuth mark in good condition as described. So should this 1985 reset station be logged as the BM? Thanks for putting up with all these questions. I just don't want to improperly log a BM even if it is only on GC.com. Katrina