DaveA

Thank you for clarifying. That was what I wanted. My denigrating a race caused you some offense and that was my goal. I don't actually hold that opinion of any race, of course. My intent was to get you to see that insulting a group is just as offensive (to the members of the group) as insulting an individual. Those who are members of the group will all take offense. What you have made clear is that when premium members refer to the other users of this site derogatively, you do not care. Certainly it is your right to care or not care. My goal was to determine only if you did care or not. Now that I have the answer there is no point in continuing the discussion.

I have never heard of ghost cachers as an organized group. Certainly it stands to reason that there are those who will seek a cache and not bother to sign the log or report the find on the website, but as far as those folks actually organizing and taking pride in not signing the logbook or not logging the find on the site that is news to me. I can't fathom why anyone would wish to do that as a point of principle. Laziness or apathy? Sure, but to organize it just seems odd. I don't really care that people do it, I just can't wrap my brain around why anyone would want to form a group that specializes in it. It kind of seems to me like a rebel without a cause.

I don't understand your point. Are you saying that insulting some groups in a general fashion is wrong, but insulting other groups in a gneral fashion is OK? If so is it your position that those who don't pay to use the services of your site that you offer for free are OK to insult as long as all people are insulted generally rather than by name? While I am not a premium member, I have made purchases from the store and I have introduced others to this site. As such I think I am supporting the site and don't care to be called a mooch. I do take offense at the comment. Are you saying you just don't give a hoot?

If that's the reference, it isn't a personal insult but a general opinion about users who don't become Premium Members. I haven't seen anyone post a direct insult about someone else. Hmmm... I see the point, but at the same time labelling users of the site who don't become premium members as mooches is not meaningfully different than saying DaveA is a user that isn't a premium member therefore he is a mootch. If calling me a mooch directly is an insult, then why wouldn't calling me and numerous others mooches indirectly be an insult? I know that I generally don't appreciate being called derogatory names regardless of whether I am singled out or included in a group. If I say "Christians are mindless twits" is that OK because I didn't single out a specific Christian? How about if I say "Blacks are subhuman"? Is that OK because I didn't single out a specific person? I think you get my point. Giving derogatory labels to groups of people isn't meaningfully different than singling out individuals. If anything it is worse due to the wholesale predjudice involved. There are websites I have subscribed to and GC.com is one I have considered subscribing to, but as a general rule I am not interested in paying money to sites where people get away with denigrating others while the ownership/administration appears indifferent. My 2 cents

My 5 year old likes small stuffed animals, McToys and pretty much the kind of stuff adult cachers get sick of seeing. An army man (the little one) are always a "ooooh!" generator as is pretty much any kind of action figure. With little kids you just don't need to be very picky cuz pretty much any "junkie" thing will be a neat treasure for a little kid. That said if you want to fill up the cache with goodies quickly just go to the local dollar store and grab whatever looks like it will fit into the cache container.

glad I found this post. I ordered from the ebay guy. bought 50 of the 1/2" circular mags. Words can not describe how fed up I was getting with magnets that could barely hold themselves up. These should be fun to play with. Probably a good swag item for a cache too, who wouldn't appreciate a strong magnet or two?

Well your choices are fairly limitted if you want an in and out of the car unit. You need a handheld that does autorouting. I don't think any of them have voice directions, but they will beep when you need to turn. I use the Magellan Color with the Direct Route software and I am happy with it, but Garmin also makes a comparable unit and software. You didn't mention your budget. If cost isn't an option your in car navigational needs will be better served by a dedicated, in dash unit. Many new cars have them as factory installed options, but you can also buy dash mounted ones after the fact. These are better as they have larger screens and generally more choices in route selection and some offer voice directions. To just do caching any GPS on the market is fine. I like the autorouting feature because it helps me figure out where I need to drive to and I can see the street that will get me through and the ones that are dead ends pretty easily. When actually caching though I rarely use anything other than the navigation screen that has an arrow pointing the direction I need to go and the distance remaining.

Wow, I didn't realize this. Thanks for the info. Shoots my idea full of holes

I can afford it, but I am a tightwad. I see no personal value in the stuff I get for paying and am quite content with what is offered to all for free. Forget about whether I have 2 finds or 2,000, it makes no difference to me. The service is free. I like what is offered for free, but I could care less about what is offered for $30/yr. If GC.com goes under due to lack of finances I really don't care. There are enough people caching these days for another entity to set up a site and make money through voluntary purchase of goods rather than asking for people to pay a membership fee. I can understand those who find a sense of community based around GC.com wanting to support it, but I don't find that sense of community so don't really care about it. Just my 2 cents.

I have noticed that micro caches are somewhat controversial here. I think one reason why micros kind of stink is that the GC.com rules stipulate a minimum distance must exist between caches and makes no distinction between regular and micro caches. That kind of stinks. Personally I think micros should only be allowed in areas where a regular sized cache would surely get muggled within minutes. One way to get around the GC rule on minimum distances is to create a multi leg cache. This way you find an out of the way, muggle safe (as it can be) location for the regular sized cache with the swag items and you can hide micros all along the way wherever you please. since those micros are simply legs in the multicache, they aren't listed by GC.com and therefore won't prevent someone from placing a regular cache in an area that is ideal for it. I am not really against micros, I have found some that have been hidden in ways that brought a smile to my face such as one that was along a highway inside a simple plastic post with a reflector on it. The city put those in place to aid drivers at night. Who would have thought they were hollow and had easily removable caps? I thought the hide was clever and clearly a regular sized cache wouldn't work. That is a good micro cache. But really, why place a micro in the middle of a 1,000 acre park? Wouldn't it be better to place 5 micros there as legs enroute to the final?

I am not familiar with the Garmin units so I can't answer what various things on your display mean. If you have an owners manual it should say. If you don't have an owners manual there is probably a downloadable version on Garmin's website. WAAS is simply a ground based station that recieves data from the GPS satellites the same way your GPSr does. The difference is that the ground station also knows it's own location with precision. As a result the ground station knows exactly how long the data should take to reach it from every satellite. If the data is reaching the ground station at a slower or faster rate this will throw of your GPSr's accuracy. The ground station then communicates with the WAAS satellite and informs the WAAS sat of how much each GPS satellite is off by. The WAAS sat then communicates with WAAS enabled GPSr units and tells them to add or subtract x amount of time from the data being received from each satellite. There are various above earth factors than can slightly impact the speed at which the GPS sat data makes it to earth. WAAS simply corrects for this. Your GPSr is not using differential data unless Garmin has started adding differential radio recievers in their units. Like I said, I don't know much about Garmin units, but it is much more likely that Garmin makes a seperate reciever and your unit might be able to connect to it. That kind of data is obtained by setting up a ground station whose location is precisely surveyed. It then receives data from the GPS sats to determine what it's location is. It compares it's known location to where the GPS satellites indicate it is. The difference is the "differential". This information is transmited to units setup for it to improve positional accuracy. There are more and more ground stations being set up and anyone can receive these signals if you have equipment capable of it. WAAS does not make readings less accurate, it makes them more accurate. A hobby model GPSr is capable or 20-30ft accuracy without WAAS and 7-10ft accuracy with it. The only way WAAS could adversely impact your readings is if the ground station is so far away from you that the time error from the sat to the ground station is different than the time error between you and the sat. Possibly this is an issue for those outside the US since WAAS is only intended, at this point, for use inside the US (although it is effective beyond the borders). Nevertheless, WAAS doesn't normally reduce accuracy, it improves it. There are a lot of myths about WAAS that many who should know better accept as facts. One such myth is that GPSr operation is slower with WAAS enabled. If that is true for a particular GPSr, I suggest returning it for a new one as it is defective. As far as good links to explain general GPS topics you can check out this site

The bar you are speaking of indicates how strong the reception of the signal from that satellite is. It happens quite frequently that a solid black bar will raise and lower in height as well as go from black to grey or disappear altogether. Every satellite contains the information on the location of all others. If it was true that the almanac, when needed, isn't updated from the first satellite then the GPSr would have to manually search for each satellite rather than knowing where it is and only having to try and receive it

I have been using firefox for awhile. In the early days I used the netscape browser while the early versions of IE were far inferior to it. Then IE surpassed Netscape and the browser went under. For a few years I used IE while occasionally trying other browsers and finding them inferior. I gave up on anything other than IE and web sites started getting developed to work with only IE due to MS customizing stuff to control the market. Then someone recommended Firefox to me. I tried it and was surprised how familiar it felt. Then I discovered the extensions for it and found I could make FF do things IE never could. These days the only time I use IE is when I encounter the rare site (like some at work) where they only work correctly with IE. I cannot believe the difference in spyware. I used to run spyware progs daily and find 20-30 items. Now that I use firefox I can go for a month without running spyware progs and the machine is still clean. I have also switched email from Outlook to Thunderbird. Time will tell what MS's response to FF will be, but for the time being FF is taking market share away from MS at a rapid rate and I am happy to be part of the trend. FF is a darned good browser and it seems to have none of the security issues that have plagued IE since it's inception. The conspiracy theorist in me thinks MS made IE for folks who wanted to have a means to spy on people as it doesn't seem to matter how one sets the security settings, spyware and tracking cookies get through. Not so with FF.

I have been to Kingman, what a wonderful place to explore. I hope you take the time to drive out to the mountains and explore the long abandoned mineshafts. Just be careful, there are some "bottomless pits". Anyway, if you wish to return to a cache to get a TB then do so. Simply refrain from logging the cache as a find again. You can go to the TB page and log that you grabbed it and log it again when you place it. No worries. In fact if you are heavily into TBs then finding caches and adding them to your watch list is a good way to get and move as many as possible since the instant someone logs that they placed a TB you will know and you don't have to hunt for the cache since you know exactly where it is. Logging cache finds and logging TBs are seperate things. More importantly though I do hope you can visit the mineshafts in the mountains. They are dangerous, (see the bottomless pit comment), but they are like time capsules. The further you venture into them the greater the risk, but the more untouched you will find the time capsule.

Congrats! Even after finding a few I still enjoy that. "Yes! I found it" My personal advice. Stick to the trail. At least long enough to confirm it doesn't cut back towards the cache. More than once I've started bushwacking only to find the trail again. D'oh! very good advice. been there, done that

Another opinion - I'm using a Magellan SporTrak Pro and have never had to do this. I do give the unit about 5 minutes or so before I head out to "get it's bearings". Never had a problem being off except for the $^@% redwood cover. I agree that this does not need to be done every time you go out, but if you do not use your GPS frequently, this is a surefire way to eliminate errors due to an old or incomplete almanac and you will get a lot less "lost signal" errors. Magellans as I recall have to be set to alert you when you have lost signal, otherwise they will continue to average your location for a much longer time before it finally says "Hey bud...I think were lost"!! kar2n101 The very first thing any GPSr does upon booting up is communicate with the very first sat it finds. From this it gets the 'almanac' if it needs to. On a Magellan Meridian this is seen if you go to the "Position" screen upon boot up you will find it does one of 2 things. If the GPSr has been on recently and isn't far away from where it was last turned on it will find sats 1-4 and then will go to "collecting data" which means it is downloading info from the sats, the almanac and position info. It doesn't seek the almanac right away because it doesn't need to. If the GPSr is being cold booted, meaning you are far away from the location it was last on or it has been a long time since being turned on it will find Sat 1 and then go to 'collecting data' which means it is refreshing the almanac because it has to, or thinks it has to. Either way it doesn't take 30 minutes to figure out where you are with maximum capable accuracy. Even with an incomplete almanac if 4 sats are locked the GPSr is as accurate as GPSrs can be. If WAAS is locked then it is as accurate as it can be with WAAS. The idea that a GPSr has to be left on for 30 minutes to become accurate is just a myth. If your GPSr is locked onto 4 sats you are all set. The only thing that can improve the accuracy is a WAAS lock. Time isn't going to do anything for accuracy.

With my WAAS enabled Magellan Meridian, assuming I have a WAAS lock and assuming I am in an area where the sat reception isn't getting bounced around (as happens around lots of rock) I generally have accuracy to about 7-10 feet, sometimes less. Without WAAS I have 20-30 foot accuracy. However, there are a lot of caveats. First, you should test your unit under controlled conditions to see what it's accuracy is. Make sure your unit is setup to receive WAAS signals when available. Some units you have to turn this on, other units it is always on. Go sit in a clear, open area and confirm you are getting at least 4 strong sat signals and a WAAS lock. Let your GPSr average for a minute or two. Save the location as a waypoint. Turn your GPS off. Turn it back on and wait for it to reaquire the sats and WAAS lock. Set a waypoint destination to be the waypoint you just saved. Let it average for a minute or two. Look at the distance to the waypoint the unit displays. That is your accuracy under ideal conditions since your GPSr hasn't moved. The distance should be 0ft if perfectly accurate. It won't be. Second, you have to accept that the signals your GPSr recieves are not exact. There are things in the stratosphere that will throw it off a bit (WAAS does a reasonable job of correcting for this) and there are things on the earth that throw it off (water, rocks trees) Unless you are right next to a ground WAAS station there is no correction for this unless you have 10s of thousands of dollars to spend. Your accuracy will vary from one location to the next as a result, but it should always be within 30ft or something is wrong. Might be your GPS, the hider's GPS or an error entering coords, but 30' should be a practical maximum error except under really goofy conditions (like you are in the middle of 2 rock cliffs that go up hundred of feet in which case just turn the GPSr off ;-) ) Lastly you have to accept that the person who hides a cache may not have recorded the coords to the degree of accuracy you would like. A person might go to a general area, save the location as a waypoint and then look around for a hiding spot. Of course the coords will be off a bit. A person might go into a forest and hide a cache when the leaves are on the trees and a WAAS lock is elusive. You might seek the cache in the winter when the trees are bare and you have a WAAS lock. The hider may have an old GPSr that isn't WAAS capable. Today I found 5 caches. In one case I was standing 1ft from the cache and the GPSr, after averaging said I was 1ft away and pointed in the correct direction. That is rare, but it happened. In another case I was walking on a narrow island with tons of rock and the GPS couldn't decide which side of the trail the cache was on. There was a 20-30 foot area the GPS indicated I would have to search, 10-15' on each side of the trail. In a third case I was in the clear, nothing obvious to interfere with the sat signals and the cache was 30' from the coords according to my GPSr. Looking at the logs for this cache, others indicated that the coords appeared to put the cache on private property. That matches what I experienced so more than likely the hider had some poor coords. That's just how it goes. Test your unit to determine it's accuracy under ideal conditions and when out in the field as you use your GPS you wil get a feel for how accurate it will be in various conditions. Always keep in mind the coords listed by the cache placer have their own margin of error and there is nothing you can do about it.

I think you need to find less than 5 to get the hang of it. Find a micro, a normal one and do a multi. It doesn't take long before you develop cacher's eyes and can spot 90% of the cache hide locations pretty easily once the GPSr gets you in the general area. Those that still make you search awhile will be among your most memorable.