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MtnGoat50

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Everything posted by MtnGoat50

  1. This was a timely thread for me. I was out last night on a new cache trying for an FTF. I checked my email at about 9:00 PM and saw that a new cache had posted very close to my house. I noticed that the email was about 45 minutes old and it was 4/4, 5 stage multi with about a 3 mile hike but I decided to try it anyway. Grabbed a couple of flashlights and headed out. There was already a car at the parking spot and as I walked to Wpt 1 I could see a flashlight off in the woods. Just as I'd replaced the first waypoint another cacher appeared out of the darkness. I waited will he found #1 and we continued to the second waypoint together. We caught up with the first cacher at this point. We finished the cache as a team and agreed to share the FTF. It was great fun, I wouldn't have missed it for anything. Another time I went out to try for a micro in a city park. A neighbor, in a house by the park, came out and asked "What are you doing...can I help you". I told him I was geocaching and sure come on over and help me look, but all he did was go back inside. I assumed he was calling the police. Oh well. Some other cachers showed up and we looked for about an hour with no luck and left before the cops arrived. My first night adventure was on Christmas eve. I got home from dinner at the inlaws and checked my email. A new cache had just posted. It was a puzzle cache, I madly solved the puzzle in about an hour, and woke my wife up to tell her I was going caching. She saw the wild look in my eye and knew there was no chance of talking me out of it, so she got up, helped me grab a few things and off we went. Left the house at 10:00PM got home about 2:00AM Christmas morning, after a great adventure, with some great memories and a very special FTF prize. In my area, if you want to get First To Finds, some night caching is going to be part of the game. Chose your caches carefully, with regards to your abilities and I think you'll have alot of fun.
  2. In my area (the northwest) Walmart, Target and some of the local grocery stores carry Lock&Locks. I think they are almost as good as ammo cans and come in a variety of shapes and sizes that work where an ammo can wouldn't. On this Lock&Lock, I sanded the container and then painted with Krylon fusion. Sanded lightly again and painted with Krylon camo colors. It's held up well. My original attempt using just the camo paint and not sanding peeled almost immediately.
  3. Started with a Garmin legend. Bought a Vista to get the magnetic compass. Bought a LegendC to get better reception and color. Still enjoy using all of them.
  4. I have an b/w Legend and regularly use both programs. I can't imagine being without either one. I use EasyGPS to backup my waypoints from the gps to the computer and also to quickly load one or two waypoints to the gps (for example when a new cache comes out). I use GSAK to manage large numbers of waypoints which can be sorted and loaded into my old Handspring PDA or into the gps. I like that I can easily assign different waypoint icons to different cache types. I've loaded all the unfound caches in my local area into the gps so when I drive around and see a cache nearby I can tell if its a micro, vert, puzzle,multi or whatever. I've found alot more caches since a started doing this. I didn't have any trouble getting either program to connect to the gps, although I've seen issues with other programs tying up the serial port, USAPhotomaps and the pda hotsink can do this. For me, the $20 for GSAK was money well spent. Hope this helps.
  5. Last September I hid a new cache containing a Moun10Bike Coin. Within about 10 minutes of logging the coin into the cache I recieved an email from another cacher with the exact published coordinatess, asking if they were correct. He indicated that he was several hundred miles away and not interested in hunting the cache only in seeing if he was right. I had coordinated when the cache would publish with the reviewer and knew it would come out in a few minutes so I emailed him back with confimation and asked how he figured it out. He would only say that there was a bug on the site and he would notify gc.com. I have no clue how this happened but it is, or was, possible.
  6. It's very close, I'll email you exactly what I got and how I got there so you can compare. Thanks for starting this topic. I enjoyed working on the puzzle.
  7. Did you? Read his description of the tower location again. Anyway, I used a different value. I haven't heard back. I may be wrong.
  8. Here's how I approached the problem. The elevation given can be directly converted to distance from the cache. We have a bearing from our location to the cache. We know our coordinates. (be careful these are tricky) Now all that's necessary is to project a waypoint from our location, to the given bearing and distance. The answer I came up with was just less than .3 miles from the posted coords. I've emailed the cache owner to see if I'm right. Nice puzzle, I wish I lived closer.
  9. This is one of my cache containers that has been out for about 3 months. It's a lock&lock that I painted, pretty much, as Chance Encounter described. Except that I sanded the plastic before the Fusion paint and lightly sanded the Fusion paint before doing the camo. All the paint was Krylon. On my first attempt I just painted the plastic with camo. After only a few weeks, most of it had peeled off. This one's doing much better. There are a few scratches (it's hidden between some rocks) but no sign of peeling. I'm very pleased with the results.
  10. I paid $42.50 (including shipping), from Write-on-pencils.com, for 5 gross (720) which was the typical minimum every where I looked. This was the best price I could find on the web. I believe it was about $10 more to add erasers. It looks like StarBrand found a better deal I'd be curious where his came from, although I don't think I'll be needing any very soon.
  11. I think I've tried all of the above at one time or another. I remember getting some golf pencils and thinking it would be neat to have pencils with my geocaching name on them, so thats what I did. It makes a simple, cheap and useful signature item. I leave a few in each cache I visit.
  12. My wife and I really enjoyed this but now when I try the link for the current card, it doesn't work. Last years seems ok though. Any chance of getting it back?
  13. I tried a cache this fall that was about 60' up a tree. The cache was rated 4 for difficulty and 2 1/2 for terrain. It looked like easy climbing and a got about 15' up but as I was alone and the penalty for a mistake would have been severe.. I climbed back down. This one's at the top of my to do list for next spring. With my climbing rope some slings and a partner, I should be able to log it.
  14. I recieved some great presents this year but the most memorable thing I got this Christmas wasn't a present but something I found in a geocache. After coming home from dinner with my inlaws on Christmas eve I noticed a new cache had published nearby. A few of hours later, just a couple of minutes after midnight, on Christmas morning I was standing in the woods, with my wife opening the cache to find a Moun10Bike coin! Merry Christmas Everyone!
  15. I have a Radio Shack WX200/Oregon Scientific WM918 weather station. This station has some limitations with sample times and resolution but it is very reasonably priced. The big plus is FreeWX weather station software which only supports this station is freeware. I have many times considered upgrading to a Davis or PEET weather station but I can't imagine using different software. The program is great and the support the author provides is excellant. I guess this station has been discontinued but some may still be available and it is my understanding that FreeWX is being written to support the wireless version of this station WMR-918//928/96. You can get more information here....http://www.freewx.net/. I would suggest downloading and installing the FreeWX WebClient. You can connect to weather stations all over the world, view and graph data in real time.
  16. AAAArrrrGGGG!!! I'm fairly new to Geocaching and I've had some really frustrating searches..... . Today I actually found some, but when I go to log them I get this.... ExecuteNonQuery: CommandText property has not been initialized Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code. Exception Details: System.InvalidOperationException: ExecuteNonQuery: CommandText property has not been initialized Source Error: An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below. AAAARrrrGGGG! Well at least I'm not the only one....
  17. Thanks Jeremy. This really had me going the last couple of days. I'm new at this and since I didn't see any other posts on the problem, I figured it was something I was doing wrong. On the plus side I had never tried the <view map> link thinking it was the same as clicking on the map. I might never have tried it, if this hadn't happened. Thanks again!
  18. On a Cache page when I click on the map, to bring up a more detailed map, I get a page not found error. This was working fine until yesterday afternoon, and I've tried a couple of different computers.
  19. Thanks to everyone who responded to this question. I really appreciated all the good information!
  20. I have a Garmin etrex Legend that I plan to use skiing, mountain biking and hiking. I want to be able to record my trips on the GPS and transfer them to a topo map that I can print out. I've looked at the ExpertGPS software which appears to do what I want. Is this the way to go? Is there another software package I should look at? Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks!
  21. Hi Tim, I just bought a legend for the same purpose. The first thing I noticed is when I put the Legend in my pocket, the signals go away. I don't think any of the radio chest packs will work unless you wear them outside your coat. I like the shoulder strap mount for a pack put I usually don't wear a pack skiing. I'm looking for some kind of an arm mount, maybe something I can wear on my forearm, where it can be seen easily. Motorola makes an arm pack for their FRS radios but it doesn't look like it would hold the Legend very securely. If I come up with any thing that works well I'll post it.
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