Happy Humphrey

Well done, Bill, on hitting the 100 mark yesterday with your tour of Bute. I hope the hospital bed is comfortable today... Pretty good going considering you only did your first in late April! Congratulations! HH

Hornet, Thanks for that - I'll try it out tonight. I might get a Bluetooth GPSu (as well!), as that would be good for in-car navigation and also useful when tree cover confuses the Foretrex. It would be better than a card-based one, as I can easily have the IPAQ 2210 inside a protective case when using it in the field and it won't drain the power from the PDA. HH

Hornet - can you tell me how to get that to appear on MM on the PDA? Mine just seems to show position and speed (MM OS Edition), which obviously limits the Geocaching usefulness of any card-based GPS. HH

Shouldn't Pharisee have something to say on this matter? HH

I have 1 remaining unlogged cache fairly close by (9.1 miles), and I've been saving that one, but will probably log it next weekend. After that, the nearest will be GCJ80Q which is 40.4 miles away in a country I have no plans to visit in the near future . The nearest ones in an area I'm likely to be able to get to (i.e. mainland UK) are 50.1 miles to the south (GCFD62) or GCG3WF (53.9 miles NE). Perhaps it will be simpler just to move house! HH

I'm trying to avoid cache advertising here, but I'd like the make the point that a Geocaching trip to the Isle of Man has recently become very worthwhile and (in my opinion) good value for money. The cheapest fares are via Emerald Airways from Liverpool at £37 return inclusive, or foot passenger ferry fares from Liverpool (£10 each way). There are plenty of other options: British Airways, FlyBE, Eastern Airways, Euromanx are the main airlines, or the IOM Steam Packet by sea. Bringing a car by sea is expensive at this time of year unfortunately, but there are car hire companies here (and bike hire). There are 28 geocaches (and rising) at present - quite a few more than when Seasider completed them in a day! Some are easy but several are quite time-consuming and difficult, and one has not yet been found (it is a 5/5 though!). All are top quality, mostly in the most fantastic countryside and coastal locations. Use GCH4FM for a search to see what's on offer. As there are only a few geocachers here we need the extra traffic (not many people are just passing through the area!). I hope you'll forgive the "plug" as I don't think that enough people realise what a good cache area this is, and how easy to get to. HH

I managed to log 8 caches last week in the south of France. They were mostly very good in quality (the Garrigues series was particularly good). I didn't find any dodgy items in them (pity) and they were the usual tupperware-type containers (except for the couple of micros), hidden in the conventional fashion. There does seem to be quite a bit of activity with them as well: lots of logs and new caches appearing. Hopefully a few other British geocachers will visit - although the numbers aren't enough for a really productive geocaching week, the approach of going there for a holiday and logging a few caches works quite well as the southern ones all seem to be located in places that you'd want to go anyway. HH

Well done that "Shire Horse" of a Geocacher!

I'm quite happy to do 2 or 3 caches in a day. Having said that, I don't mind at all that others want to do record-breaking numbers, and talk about it as well! It won't stop me taking my time, and the title of this thread warns off those who don't want to know about frantic super-caching. So I don't know why there should be a problem. One thing that surprises me about the numbers game, though, is that a cache find is regarded as the same (i.e. 1 find) whether it was an easy drive-by or an all-day multi. I would have thought that you'd have to count stars rather than cache numbers, otherwise the figures are not comparable. "Cacher of the month" should be reserved for the person who picked up the largest number of points, with 1 point for a difficulty star and 1 point for a terrain star. There would then be an extra level of tactics, as you'd have to judge whether (for instance) an isolated 4/4 cache is worth going for. No decision if it's just a "find" - it will be ignored if it appears time-consuming. HH

Thunderbird30, Fantastic, it worked perfectly: thanks. I have MM for the UK and this now shows all caches as promised. HH

There seems to have been a healthy number of new caches appearing in the South of France - I'll be down there at the beginning of July and hope to log a few "pour encourager les autres"!

I've just been reading about this new chipset, which seems to be available in only a very limited fashion at the moment. The Geocaching relevance is that it sounds like it's probably the most powerful and sensitive compact system you can buy - tree cover would be no problem at all. The limitation is that it can only be bought as a Compact Flash unit, which is fine in some uses as it can just be slotted in to an IPAQ 2210, for instance, and instantly show your position on Memory Maps and similar mapping software. All very good, and useful for in-car navigation (neat and compact and no external aerial required). Is there some software for Pocket PC which emulates the Garmin / Magellan hand-held approach though? Obviously the geocacher would be interested in downloading waypoints and then selecting one to be directed to, without fiddling about. If this is possible, you could have a "direction arrow" screen with distance to waypoint, and be able to flick across to your current position on an OS map, all in one lightweight unit. Great! A bluetooth version of the GPSr with XTrac II would be even better, as the PDA could be kept in a protective case. The only example of anything which comes close (as far as I can find) is the "SysOnChip GPS CF Plus II with XTrac II". See this link. Does anyone have any opinion on all this? HH

Nick & Ali, I'm not sure what causes your problem, but I suppose it must be at your end as the Groundspeak site works with a PDA as I've demonstrated. This might not seem to help much except that now you know it can be done! HH

I often write up the cache logs almost "live" on a PDA - when I get back to the car (but I'm not normally trying to do 20+ in a day!). I have the advantage of a folding (stowaway) keyboard which attaches to the PDA and gives a full size keyboard when folded out - sign on to the Internet and you've almost got the full access you have at home, and no restictions on typing speed. The nice thing about logging caches as you go, even if it's just taking notes, is that the notes are fresh and give an immediate reaction rather than the more considered and boring version you might come up with later on. Geocaching.com is not ideal for this really: a low-graphics, small cache-logging page would make it all much easier (key-in the waypoint in one box then write notes in the other). However, I've successfully logged caches directly from the PDA several times - with a little practice it's not too bad. Well done Shunra, anyway - no chance of Seasider breaking your record either as he seems to be in retirement from mad cache-logging now! HH

You can use GSAK on the PC to export HTML to the 2210 - works a treat! I've used the 2210 for a few months now, with Memory Maps and Pocket Queries you have all the tools without needing paper. A Bluetooth GPSr would be the ideal companion for it, as the lead gets in the way rather when out and about. I also use the 2210 to access the internet (using a Nokia 6310i mobile phone) - caches can be logged on site that way! I use a 512Mb CF card and a 128Mb SD card in the IPAQ all the time, and an Otter Box for heavy weather. Now I've set all that up, I'd better go and find some caches! Actually it has many uses for someone who gets around quite a bit. HH

The spec says "all of UK on one CD". So it can't have all the detail of Memory Maps, as that takes 12 CD's for the whole of the UK (and would require a huge memory card for the GPS to hold all the data). From the picture on the web site it looks like a simplified version of the OS map but at a useful scale. It's what we've been waiting for though - I considered buying the colour Magellan but was put off by the lack of available UK maps. I can link my Geko 201 to my PDA with Memory Maps runnning and this gives a better system, but is awkward in the field because you have to handle 2 units and a lead. This would be neater. HH

=^..^= Good to hear from you - there are a few new caches for you on the Island now (as you've heard), and several more on the way. I'm looking forward to collecting your new one(s) when you get around to planting them! I've only got 2 left to log here now so the sooner the better! Are you going to get Ellan Vannin back out there as well? HH.

Congratulations! A dozen in a day to take you up to the 1100 - exhausting. HH

We were robbed - absolutely robbed! HH

Seasider, Great report, and it was an honour to entertain you for a few hours! You'll be made most welcome on your return visit (hopefully taken at a more relaxed pace next time). There's already a new cache here, and probably a few more soon, so the 24-hour session will become impossible. Particularly after I tighten up Man Hunt after your valuable tips... HH

Oi!!!

Latest news is that Seasider has completed the Manx Challenge successfully! (returned to base about 23.45). Details to follow...

The last I heard, about 6.30. p.m., was that Seasider has 8 caches remaining, and is still keen to log the lot. That's a hell of a day's geocaching if he succeeds! HH

I'll be there. I can't wait to hear how they did. Seasider's schedule looked tough but just about feasible - if they've managed any 18 caches in the day then they succeeded in the Mission!

The number of IOM caches has crept up to 21 from the original 18 - the weather forecast looks excellent though, so the additional 3 should not be a problem. They're all pretty easy anyway , and most have been logged in the last couple of weeks so we know they are still there. There's not been much response from others here on the island, but it'll be a great event just the same....see you all tomorrow! HH