WinnieThePoohNL

Sorry to jump in like this but this has made me curious, does the oregon actually not allow you to load gpx (premium member) info that you downloaded prior to your PM expiring, if it has since expired?? Seems odd to me.

I feel the main point is that by violating local rules or laws in order to find a cache (FTF or not) you risk the continuation of that cache - if it happens and land owners or authorities get wind of it the cache will most likely have to be removed. In my opinion, stating on the cache page that a cache location has opening hours is not an ALR, it's simply helping the cacher by notifying them of the local laws so they don't go out there only to find a sign prohibiting them from entering. So maybe you can't delete those logs based on that either, according to the GS rules, but I do feel the behavior should be strongly discouraged. The CO spend time and money on a cache that could be destroyed by the first find if the cacher doesn't abide by the area's rules and laws. I do feel that a cache is at it's most vulnerable during the FTF hunt. I've gotten 2 FTF's when a series of local caches was published just as I got to my car to go to another cache and I decided to give it a try. At the second cache a family of 4 jumped out of the car just as I was walking back from the cache location and I heard one of the boys yell "It's here!" This was a public place where I had had to wait a while to be stealthy and not be noticed by muggles, and that effort was squandered by these people trying to get a FTF. This has nothing to do with opening hours or other laws but it does seriously increase the risk of ripping. I know I'll be worried about this if I am to place a cache in the future..... We can go back and forth about rules, regulations, and so on for ages on this matter but isn't the main point to keep geocaching fun for everyone, cache owners and finders alike, and thus to do our best to try and not endanger the hobby (and the caches)?

If anything, you gave me a good idea to somehow mark my GPS with some contact details, 'cause if anyone finds it now (cacher or no) they would have no idea who's it might be if they are decent enough. I actually found a gift certificate while caching, on a picnic bench, and tried to leave my details with a restaurant a little further down the path but they didn't see any use in taking my phone number I think a lost & found page would only be used when someone either finds or loses something, I don't think people would go out looking for things on the lost page (unless they are not decent and trying to 'steal' the stuff). Odds are someone comes across the lost item before others have a chance to go looking for it after it's posted on the website. I think the best bet when you do lose something and you somehow can't go back to the location where you probably lost it is contacting the cache owner to see if they can go and have a look. p.s. I hope your GPS will be found & returned to you!

Thanks for the great How-to, had no idea about this feature! Second on the metric system, will go to the fb forum and add my vote.

I've seen a number of locked caches, also all combination locks where the combi was found in the multi answers or in other caches in the series. While the caches where ammo boxes, the locks where not on the ammo box itself but on the box that contained it which where fixed to the environment somehow, one was dug in the ground, the lock on the lid on top, one was in a big bird house, and one was in a big mailbox. That way any muggles that don't know the combination can't take it home to break the lock open. And I found it adds a little extra to find them that way. I loved finding these caches, though I sometimes forget to put the combination back to something like 000, once I remembered when i got home i forgot to change the combination, went back (40 min drive and 10 min walk) the next day to put the lock on properly. But that's just me

I've been geocaching with my Android T-mobile G1 for over a year but I finally got fed up with it's drawbacks Like NordicMan said battery life, vulnerability, did drop my phone a couple of times while caching but didn't break it, but also no map if internet connection fails, and the GPS, though certainly not bad, is too often off, unreliable when you need it. This can vary from being off by 20 meters to a couple 100 meters, and on rare occassions miles and miles. Usually fixed by 1 or 2 reboots but it's just all so time consuming. I've just bought a Satmap Active 10 (price range of the Oregon 450, great maps for more and more European countries) and I'm loving the ease with which I can geocache now. Sure I sometimes still grab my phone to check, say, older logs or to navigate to a cache but it stays in my pocket most of the time while caching.

It is quite a lot of money, I did have to think a lot about it but now that I have the Satmap and a local 1:25k map I don't regret it at all, it's so much easier to find my way around than using Google Maps/Sat view on my phone.

Personally I wouldn't go for a camera just because it has GPS built in. If you have a GPS (or even an android phone or something else that can record a gpx file of your track) you can tag any digital photos on your PC using something like GeoSetter.

Since you're in the UK you may want to have a good look at the Satmap Active 10, they have OS maps and get rave reviews from UK users. My parents bought one a couple of months ago for hiking in the UK and I've just gotten myself one for geocaching in the Netherlands. It is a bit of an investment, the unit itself has a RRP close to 400 GBP and the maps are costly (you get a base map in the UK on the unit but you'll want at least a 1:50k local map for your area, 1:25k is also available, identical to the 1:50k and 1:25k OS mapping). I come from geocaching on my android phone using various apps and ran into problems myself (battery life, no connection=no map, and so on). Main reason for choosing the Satmap was the mapping and good screen. I've put up some info on my GPS decision on my new geocaching blog.

It's pretty good, I was expecting it to be worse. I have a garmin HC device to try from a friend and I'm going to do a side by side test but so far it's been good to get to caches. I think the bluetooth GPS I have (keychain 2000) might be a little better but unfortunately Android doesn't support bluetooth GPS's at the moment.

I can onderstand the OP, I don't really get it either. I had a TB recently that came from a Technical museum in the Czech Republic, it wanted to visit technical or historical landmarks and museum and take photos there. I didn't have much time to go to a museum so the other day I set out a nice route along the tech university in Delft, and the old site of the technical museum there where I'd been once. There was a micro cache there which I logged, I took pictures of the TB there but hadn't thought about dipping it at all. I left the TB in a cache near the tech university where it fitted and posted the pics and cache numbers I took it to in the TB log. I get confused when I see that there's been TB's and (normal sized) coins in micro caches. When I see that the cache has a history of having TB's I assume that they fit. Now I know that doesn't have to be true if there's dipping involved. But I don't really get it. I keep my GSAK/Findstatsgen statistics and that's fine with me.

I don't have any caches on my ignore list. I have given up on a few puzzle caches, too hard and too much guesswork with no way to check coords is a no-no for me, I have sat down today to look at the multi's in my area to see if I could find a solution and have solved a few but if I really don't get it I might try again some later time but if it's just to hard to figure out it's no fun for me, I like puzzles but there are limits to how far I'll go for a cache. And yesterday I went to a cache that was in the cache creator's parent's front yard that I turned around and left on because someone was inside looking at me when I passed in front of the house. They know about the cache but I don't like having to talk to people or searching in front of their eyes. If I meet another cacher that's a different story.

Really depends on how much I want to get to the cache and how likely/easy it would be for me to go back later. Yesterday I spend a total of about half an hour divided between looking for a cache and waiting for people at the busstop across the street to be picked up by their bus. First them ever I wished for a bus to come and not getting on it The reason I was so adamant is that I'd set up a round of mciro/nano caches to visit with a TB with a goal, and then wanted to leave it in the nearest cache it would fit in, and it was across the street from something to do with it's origin and goal so it was perfect. I almost gave up in the end (it was dark and I was using a flashlight trying very hard not to be conspicuous) and I found it by chance, thankfully. Other times I've waited between 5-10 minutes a few hundred yards away from the cache, again in the car, for a vehicle to move from the perfect spot to stop and start looking from, it was the only parking spot that didn't involve climbing up a slippery hill (plus I would have been searching right in front of the driver). I've also walked away from the waypoint sometimes because of passing by muggles and not wanting to attract attention, then turning back a minute or so later. Just once I left a waypoint because of muggles hanging around, that was really close to my house (closest cache to my coords) and I wasn't going to do this one (night multi) at that time anyway but we tried before to find the clue there and failed, and I wanted to see if I could find it then. But the 2 guys nearby didn't seem intend on moving soon so after a couple of minutes I gave up and went home.

Good to hear Geodroid's import is fixed. What I don't like about the updated version (of the demo, I don't have access to paid apps in Europe ) is that it doesn't seem to work until it has a GPS fix, so I can't use it at home....

Please try uploading your large gpx file in the latest version of GeoBeagle and let me know if there any problems. (Note that GeoBeagle can only import/sync one file, but this should be fixed shortly....) --Steve I tried importing the 500 cache gpx file in 0.26 yesterday and it worked fine, no problems (except of course it only showed the last 100 imported), and then tried some 100 cache files, also no problems. It's showing the lists quickly sorted by distance from my location, perfect! One thing that would be nice is if you could see the type (traditional, multi, mystery) of cache in the list somehow, if only indicated by a letter. For inspiration, I suggest you look at SmartGPX, it's an app I used on the Nokia 9500, it had some very nice filtering options for listing caches. I could send you some screenshots if you like.

I activated mine before departure, but I did have internet at the hotel (and a laptop with me) so I could log it at the end of the day. Maybe you can get a relative or friend to log it, send them a text message by phone? As for other bugs, you could check just before departure which bugs/coins are in the caches you plan to visit and their goals, in case there still there when you get to the cache, and if the goal fits with your return home take it, otherwise leave it or maybe move it between caches there only.

Nice! Looks like GeoBeagle might be the way to go for me, I'm a programmer (PHP, Java is about 10 years ago but I can try!) so I might even be able to contribute. Very nice work!!

Apparantly you can move it to an unknown location: http://www.geocaching.com/track/faq.aspx

Geobeagle worked well for me for doing multis, because you can enter coordinates by hand to get to the next point. I used the radar mostly to follow it to the points. I've used geodroid demo but I'm not impressed, trouble importing gpx files larger then 600k, no search ability in the list, nearby geocaches is very slow (shows a "force close" window because of not responding before showing results), and the map only shows the selected cache. I'm anxious to try geocacher but being in europe I don't have access to paid apps atm

There's quite a bit of info on geocacher here: http://androidforums.com/showthread.php?p=23358#post23358 I've been using geodroid demo (free, I can't get to paid apps yet unfortunately in Europe) but honestly, I don't think it's well programmed. It has a lot of trouble import gpx files larger then 6-700k (a 500 cache gpx pocket query is about 4-5 mb! and loaded perfectly fine in smartgpx for symbian I was using before), and it's really slow in loading nearby waypoints/geocaches from your list. I've used Geobeagle for multi's cause you can enter the coordinates by hand, much faster. I'm anxious to try geocacher, but since it's a paid app I can't, but from the screen shots it does look good.

I found a TB here in the Netherlands shortly before I was going to the US, and decided to take it along. It wanted to go to Australia but had only been travelling in the Netherlands for 18 months, so I thought it might have a better shot from the US. I travelled with a friend who didn't know about geocaching yet but is now addicted (passed me by 5 caches already). We found a cache in a lovely park where the TB fitted in (just) and that was nice and full with little toys. The cache had been there since mid 2007, though it was a busy park it seemed the cache was pretty safe. We put it back carefully. No visit for 2 weeks and on Feb 15 someone logged it as being completely empty, suffered a muggle attack. I feel so bad, I left it there and now it's gone... What are the odds of a TB gone missing like this to surface again?

Well my G1 is in and I've been playing around with it a while now, really like the phone. I also found an app on android market (Location Log) that plans to do GPX files in the future, it shows your current position and the location you're heading on a radar. I'll fiddle around with it more to see what geocaching stuff I can do on it and keep this post updated (assuming some people might be interested!)

I've been searching the forums and Googling for quite a while now but can't find anything to tell me if anyone is using the T-Mobile G1 (aka HTC Dream aka the Google phone) for geocaching. I currently own an 'ancient' Nokia 9500 and use this combined with a GPS Keychain for geocaching, which works very nicely. But outside of geocaching the 9500 is very slow for internet and just a little outdated everywhere else, so I'm thinking very hard of getting a G1, but am wondering how I'll be able to use it for geocaching. I'll have a data subscription so I'll be able to access the website but I was hoping, especially considering it runs an open source OS, to find some geocaching application to load GPX files and such (like smartGPX which I use on the 9500) Anyone?