root1657

I totally agree with you on that. There is absolutley no reason why a fair number of micros can not contain travel bugs and coins. I personally happen to own a series of 20 such trackables that fit very well inside a 35mm film container along with the log and pencil stub. (go to my profile and find them if you are interested) I also agree and think that maybe the reason so many people are burned out on micros is because they contain nothing but the log, and there is no real sense of discovery and suprise at what might be in there.

Still trying to figure out how to find 'em? j/k I often get tongue in cheek complaints about all the trouble people have closing one of my ammo can hides. I have a couple of fifty cal. cans in stock. They are so darn hard to fill. It is amazing how much crap they hold. Just fill it up with those peanut brittle spring snakes...

If you really want your ammo can to get a lot of traffic, you could also make it a book crossing and trow in a few old books. Totally different game, but it's pretty much the same, but people trade books at thier containers.

OK, I've seen a lot and had a few conversations about the importance of removing 'military markings' from military type containers, so I thought I'd throw this ittle tidbit out there for the sake of education. In addition to the importance of helping to keep the unknowing from being bothered by any military marks on an ammo can, there is a very valid and important military reason to make sure that the lot number on the ammo can specifically is 'destroyed'. If there is ever any kind of 'accident' involving ammo, the entire lot may be pulled from service world wide until the ammo has been tested and deemed not to be the cause of the accident. On firing lines this is a big deal because any ammo from any open lot number may have been involved, so all open lots are considered suspect. When ammo from a can is expended the lot number should then be obliterated to indicate that the ammo from that can was fine, and to prevent any issue where the entire lot could be pulled from service without proper cause. I dont know how so many ammo cans get out on the market with the lot numbers still on them, but please please please, if you have an ammo can with the lot number still on it, paint over, scratch out, or otherwise 'obliterate' the lot number. I know there is an astronomical improbability of one of these cache cans ever being involved in some type of incident that would get ammo pulled from service, but still, not impossible, and easy to prevent. Thanks, and keep on cachin!

Let this be a lesson to anyone who ever wondered why the military over engineers things to be so darn solid. 3 1/2 years out in the elements and it was still dry inside! awesome....

I think this is going to be an easy fix for you. The thing is, there are as many ways to measure the planet as people who have ever found a need to measure it. Each time someone makes a new way to do it, the number systems are enevitably different. Some of them are deceptively similar.... your unit and the web site arent rounding off digits, they are using different ways of measuring the planet. All you need to do is to set your unit to display coords in the same format that geocaching uses and you should be back in business. Mine unit shows it is set to use WGS 84, so try that and see if it doesnt fix your problem. It has another setting for display format, which on mine is set to hddd mm.mmm, but if you have extra digits, then it is probably set incorrectly to some other way of measuring, or another way of displaying the location. I work with a civil engineer who gets seriously bent anytime someone brings this up, because he wishes everyone could just settle on one standard and let the others die. Happy hunting (and hiding)!

Stick with it, you definitely develope a new set of senses fast. My first cache with my brother, we stomped around in a circle for at least an hour, and no kidding, I sat on the cache at least once to tie my boot. Now, not really so many caches later, I can spot the most likely hiding place from a hundred feet off, and have a pretty good average for being right. Even the ones I have to look for, it doesnt take long. I'd say first be careful which ones you go for. Until you get practiced up, stick with a few that have been found fairly recently and where the logs arent bogged down with DNFs ( like the notorious cache 'Wedding Crashers' in San Diego that probably runs 50% DNF). Recent finds indicate a high probability that it is still there (and maybe you can follow foot prints) and if there arent many DNFs, then it's probably not a b**ch to find. Dont feel shame for using the hints, and if there are any pictures on the cache, you might get valuable hints that you dont even know you are getting until you see the location. No shame in a DNF, like I said, check out wedding crashers logs! everything from strange GPS behavior to brides falling down stairs...

In rural areas I would think it best to get the town cop into geocaching. That guy can walk anywhere and no one ever stops him.... no better geobuddy. To scale this to slightly larger towns (with more than just the one cop) I might suggest that you focus your efforts on the Chief of Police. Same reasons, plus, all the minons work for him, so again, no problems. To all the threads about geocaching armed, well, how much easier could it be to call a cop than to just yell "hey Tom" and not even have to dial or anything.... and if the situation goes south fast and you use your own weapon to protect yourself, you've got the best witness you could hope for!

I cant believe I had to read so far to get to another skydiver! You know, one of the funny things though is at the drop zone when someone talks about how expensive it's getting because of the cost of feul going up, we remind eachother that it is still cheaper than golf...

Scubasteve has some good underwater caches here in San Diego. At the depth you are talking about a pelican case should be fine, but a case that nice may disappear on you...

Not so long ago I had to learn WAY more than most people would ever want to about the actual workings of GPS for work... I was working a GPS project. Long answer short, that little yellow do-dad you have is doing the same math on the same satellite signals as the rest of us and the fancier models. The only way you are getting a different signal is if you have one of the military recievers that recieves different signals, and includes the super cool crypto to use the military only super accurate signal. The simpilest thing that can throw you off accuracy is weather. Radio waves bend when they go through the air (actually the water in the air), and if they bend one way one day, and the other way the other day, you can get double the error from the actual spot, if he was off one way when he placed it and you were off the other way when you were looking. WAAS can help this, by measuring the local effects of the distortion on the signal, and broadcasting a signal from a fixed point that tells your reciever "hey, if you are close enough to get this signal, correct yourself x feet in that direction". There is also a canyon effect where a signal bouncing off one side of a canyon can mess you up pretty good. Usually it is a drastic and very powerful effect where the GPSr clearly has no idea where it is anymore and will bounce wildly around in large measures (way more than the typical few feet when you get to GZ). Those of us who cache in the city often have to deal with 'urban canyon effect' when we get close to big buildings, especially the ones with metal that can bounce signals. Trees and stuff like that overhead messes with you because of the water in the plant. GPS signals are actually amazingly weak, and it's a wonder it works at all, so the water in plants can sheiled it pretty effectively. So back to the short answer.... your unit is fine. All the extra bells and whistle options are nice, but in the end it's the same math on the same signals, so you should end up at the same zero. Best advice I could give is to go close to zero (unit will usually bounce within 10 feet or so on a beautiful clear day), then start a search out to about 20 feet in all directions. If that doesnt do it, step back about 50 feet and see where the arrow points, then go off to one side and do it again. Sometimes it's easier to see where those two lines cross than to actually find zero. Lastly, yes, there is something that they can do with the satellites that will ruin a good day of caching for all of us. There is a function called selective availability where they can actually degrade the accuracy of the unencrypted GPS signals by some amount they want to, and only the encrypted military units will get high precision data. Usually this would be reserved for combat, and can be done by region, to deny the enemy the use of our own GPS system while we still get to use it for our guys. I am only fairly certain that I have observed this one time, and it wasnt subtle... I was actually in a place where GPS had been working fine, then suddenly a dozen different GPSr of a few different types were all way off, in the same wrong location, but the military recievers that had the key loaded were still dead on accurate. Only lasted a few hours, so fear not, and cache again another day. At the end of the day, just have fun! it's about the searching, not the finding.

On the batteries thing... I leave brand new batteries from time to time, as a karma nod to the time I was out in the stix and my batteries died and ended my day. I wonder then, are you finding batteries that had been traded dead for new (in wich case, just take the good batteries, say thanks, and take your dead ones with you) or perhaps AA batteries do in fact die over time even when not used out in a cache...

If you left that last one in a cache and I found it...I'd be a very happy cacher. You can have the last one, and I'll take that second one, if only we can find a cache big enough to put it in.....

Well for starters, the first cache is gone. You might check out this list, but I understand it is a bit out of date. There is a replacement, The Original Stash Tribute, placed at the exact spot of the first cache. Awesome, and thanks for the links. I think for my purpose, the replacement plaque will do just fine, and with that other list, maybe I can work on the oldest active cache in KS for my 200!

The almanac data is repeated in it's entirety by the satelittes every 20 minutes, so you were close... Me, the GPS engineer...

In this area it is more likely that the hole will contain a rattlesnake. Definitely not something you want biting you on the hand/wrist. Imagine if there was a cat and a snake in there! I bet that would really suck. Unless the cat and the snake are very good friends, I would imagethe ruckuss would keep most hands out of the hole.

Of course it's in the last place you look. Once you find it, it would be silly to continue looking!

The two obvious options are to find a geocacher and hope you can be friends, or take a friend you already have, and trick them into geocaching. I've done both, and both work. In fact, I'd say that getting friends to cache works better, but every time I do that, they outcache me!

I'm 'one of those'. Been geocaching for a couple of years, and have a whopping 49 finds!!! woo hoo!!! ok, enough of that... I'm planning to do the oldest active cache in the state for my 50, and am thinking ahead that I want to do cache number 1 for my number 100. The first snag in my plan seems to be that I need to figure out where that is.... Does anyone happen to know which cache was the first cache so I can plan the road trip? Thanks!!

So there I was, in front of a movie theater with my old room mate... We plucked the micro from the flower box by the fountain and moved to another area to log it and prep it to be replaced. While we had the cache in hand, a 'roving group of rebellious youths' (you know, 10 kids that got dropped off by thier parents to see a movie) had taken up station on our flower box.... Dignity aside, and knowing I had a mission to complete, I handed him the cache, said "I only get one shot at this, make it count" and started running around the plaza flapping my arms and making animal noises. Long story short, ache was replaced and the kids never even noticed him.

I'm not sure that would work well, unless you were in a 'remote' area where you didnt expect a lot of traffic to the cache, else you would have a lot of people logging a DNF while the parts are in motion and arent where they 'should have been'.

That's fine but I would like the option of hiding them. I would like the option of riding past the disabled caches on a Pony. Nate??? Seriously, in most areas, if there's more than 5% of the caches out of 500 on a map view that are temporarily disabled, there is likely a shortage of "needs archived" logs. Eliminate the annoyance by being proactive. I'll take your 5% challenge and raise you a San Diego. We are so cache dense out here that at 5% there would be 25 disabled caches in an area only a few miles wide. I do understand that rural areas are a whole different animal, but dont forget about us simple city folk and our unique challenges.... A bit off the point, but just the other day I was explaining to someone that in Ohio I could stand out at a cache and see that there were no people around for miles. Here in San Diego I often find that I have to undertake specific acts of distraction and subterfuge to confuse the muggles. Hint to urban cachers, get a small cute dog. People will stand there petting him and talking to you and not even notice you retrieving or replacing the magnetic container from the back side of the rail you are sitting on.

Hi, it's me again, the malcontent.... OK, so I saw the splotches and I thought I'd give it a fair shot... it only took a few seconds to fail me, and for reasons that no one here has touched on yet... The tool is not geographically aware. What I mean by that is that it is grouping caches that just dont make any sense. Take a look at san diego. No seriously, take a look. As the crow flies sucks here. We have rivers and canyons and bays and islands and bridges and mesa cliffs that make the splotches almost a statement of 'pick one cache in the area, and you cant go to the others'. So here is my suggestion, and I know this one is a giant technical hurdle... set boundaries on rivers and cliffs and stuff so that it sees them as hard boundaries and doesnt group across them.

The pitfall of that is that many Geocachers simply load up thier GPSr and take off to go caching without reading anything. Hunting for a cache that a landowner requested archival could lead to serious problems. I think you have some valid points, however. It would be nice if some mechinism allowed at least an overview of where archived caches once were. I think you are dead on about the land owner concerns, so how about showing where these dead caches are until someone logs it 'removed'. Surely if the land owner wants the cache to be archived he may also be open to the possibility of that one last person comming to remove the cache and repair any sign of it's existance. Maybe our efforts to clean up after our community and respect the land owner could improve the general image of geocaching and persuade some land oweners to allow is in.

No, you dont have to be a premium member to use gsak, but if you are, it opens up a lot of cool new options. As a 'free' member, when you do the cache search you talked about, do the check all, and download the .loc file, there are several programs that can read the loc file, and GSAK is one of them. Many of these programs can also take that list of caches and then send it into your GPS unit. Once you become a premium member of the geocaching website, you get the option of geting gpx files, which are similar to loc files, and work with many of the same programs, except that they contain oodles more info about the cache, like the description and some of the recent logs. I'd say if you are interested in something like GSAK, or easyGPS, or geobuddy, or what ever else, go ahead and download them and try them out. All the good geocaching software is either totally free, or lets you try before you buy. Load up some programs, throw some waypoint files at them, and have some fun pushing buttons to see what they do!