GeoZ0mbie

Hi I assume you are just using the basemap? if this is the case, the the roads could be that far out. These are only approximate possitions to my knowledge, these maps are the same as the ones on your version of the Mapsource software that came with your GPSr. When i plotted some of my caches on this it showed them about 1/4 mile out. Have a look for Openstreet Maps for your area and use Mapupload software from www.mapwel.biz I have used this to add detailed maps free of charge to my venture HC. Hope this helps Could you point me in the right direction on howto get the Openstreetmap to my Venture HC. I have looked and looked and have not found any directions. Would I be importing them to the Garmin supplied software and then uploading them to handheld? Would I be deleteing the maps from the handheld and replaceing them with maps from openstreetmap? To the best of my knowledge my Venture HC has all of the lower 48 on it, but with limited streets, I would assume it could not hold all on the USA from openstreetmap with its multitude on streets? Just a little nudge in the right direction is what I need.

All the roads/streets on my eTrex Venture HC are approximately 200-500 feet West of where they should be. I have no problems with geocaching as the eTrex Venture HC will put me withing 10 feet of ground zero. It just appears that the map of the streets is shifted West. I had tried it in at least 4 States on the East Coast, all location are the same. Do all the eTrex Ventures have this same problem?

Lock n lock containers from retail stores, buy some Krylon Fusion paint the color of the area your gonna place in and your good. TC mentioned about making your own, I am all into that. Spend and hours walking around Walmart, Home Depot, Michaels, Ace Hardware or AC Moores and you can come up with all kinds of fun containers. I check discount stores like Ollie's, Big lots and sometimes the Dollar store. I got some sort of Resin Treasure Chest for $3 at some off the wall discount store. Its had a battery box in the bottom and not sure what it did. I striped it of the box and wires and found I had a nice box with 3 chambers :-). The thing is far from water proof, I put the log in a zip lock baggy and that in a tight container and hid sealed up log it in one of the chambers. The trick here is not finding the Cache, it sticks out like a sore thumb. The trick is to find the log and sign it. Everyone loves it. If you make your own just take your time and put it together right. Test it out, open and close it a few dozen times. Leave it out in your back yard for a few days and see how it holds up in the rain wind snow sun ect... When you think you got it just right and it is a cache you would like to see then put it out. As far as a one stop shop, PM me when you find it, Good luck and have fun.

Thanks tripleH that would about cover it.

I am getting ready to assemble some cache containers from various objects. I would need to attach magnets and other objects to containers. What sort of "Glue" would I use? Also I am in need of very strong Magnets. I know nothing about magnets, what do I need to look for? Where can one buy magnets locally or retail. Is there a good website that sells magnets? Thanks in advance.

You refuse to buy your kids Happy Meals because the car is aready filled with those darn toys.

I started a thread like this the other day. A nice guy/person pointed me to this link so I am returning the favor, Playing it forward as they say, http://www.markwell.us/pq.htm Enjoy

Wouldn't this be considered a FTF :-) Welcome aboard, be careful it can become addictive.

I have an eTrex Venture HC and it is a fine unit. I was getting discouraged when going to Cache locations and the coordinates were off by 15-20 feet for like 10 caches in a row. We went to a Geocache meet and greet and I asked around and everyone agreed that its not the unit but the Hiders not averaging there reading before posting it. Half the people at the meet and greet had high end GPS's and over 1000+ finds so I tend to believe what they say when it comes to coordinates being off.

Your DA MAN!!! That was exactly what I was looking for. Thank you all for your help.

I was thinking of that too instead of the Yard sale sign. Thank you all for the tips and Ideas. There would be no pressure to purchase anything from this small family shop, but to be honest mom and pop store like these need all the help they can get these days. If the bulletin Board was outside do any of you think it would be in violation of the "Rules"? What if it was in a Laundry Mat, yes we still have these in our little neck of the woods :-)

I am planning out a Multi cache and was thinking of posting co-ords on a bulletin board at the local sub shop owed by a friend. The Board is inside the store and would be watched by the owner daily. I was also thinking at one leg of the of the cache of tacking a laminated sign to an abandon falling down structure in the middle of the woods. There are no "no trespassing" signs and to the best of my knowledge the property is unowned county land. Another Idea was to put up a Phony yard sale sign on a telephone pole. How about hiding a piece of paper inside an obscure book in the library? Opinion on these and suggestions on places to put Coordinates would be appreciated.

Awesome didn't know this, this tip will come in handy. Is there a Sticky post somewhere with useful tips and tricks for PQ's?

That is exacly what would happen to me the, the results pages would be full with 500 caches listed but I wouldn't receive an email with the results. I run the email system where it was sent and can confirm that it never hit my server. I also have never had any geocaching.com email blocked or reported as spam on my gmail account, yet sometimes I do not get the results when I have them sent there as well.

Don't know why my Delaware test PQ didn't work for me before, going to chalk it up to user error. Thank you for the link. I will now refine it to to types of caches in hopes to get most of the ones in DE. Maybe to a 50 mile Radius from 3 to 4 known zip codes (Delaware is small). Any suggestions on getting all the caches posted in DE? Also I am assuming that I would want to run each of the queries once a week to keep the info up to date? Is that the way to do it? As to "You could pull all that you can and then use a polygon from Google Earth and bring that into GSAK using the Delaware boundaries as the polygon lines." You lost me on that one????

Thanks for the reply. You are right it will list 500 if I search by name but only show 49 if I search by nearest. This makes it a bit easier.

I did select Delaware with no radius as in my first example and it returned no results.

the forums burped and I double posted sorry.

I agree %100 with the above statement I was told it not the size of the cache that matters its how you hide it. but then again all the guys with small caches say that

I live in a small state Delaware. I would like to set up a PQ for just Delaware. I know there are more then 500 (PQ Limit) so I would have to set up a few pocket queries to cover the whole state. I will tell you what I have done in the past and the result I have gotten. I tried this Show me 500 caches of "Any type" Any Container that "I haven't found" and Terrain is greater than or equal to 1 Difficulty is greater than or equal to 1 within States / Provinces "Delaware" From Origin "none selected" place during "None Selected" My result is I get nothing back, I would at least think that I should get 500 in Delaware. So I try this I tried this Show me 500 caches of "Any type" Any Container that "I haven't found" and Terrain is greater than or equal to 1 Difficulty is greater than or equal to 1 within States / Provinces "Delaware" From Origin "My Home Coordinates" Within radius of 25 Miles place during "None Selected" Now this produces results but instead of just giving me the Caches in Delaware I get 200 in New Jersey (across the bay) and about 100 in Maryland. I don't mind the Maryland ones as they are withing 25 miles to drive to the ones in Jersey would take 2 hours to drive to. I know I could get all the caches in DE if I could confined the results to just Delaware. Any help would be great.

We just got a Delorme PN-40 from Amazon (best price we could find) http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00...47-20/ref=nosim We took it out last Sunday for the first time, all I have to say is this is an awesome unit. It took maybe 2-3 hours of fooling around with it on Saturday night to get it ready for Sundays Geocaching trip. Like stated above the $30 for a all the unlimited maps for a year is just amazing. I Download all the color Aieral maps and Satalite maps for my entire state. Out in the field the day went like this: We Picked the first Geocach we wanted to do and then selected the "Route" function and picked "Drive to" and it gave us accurate driving directions to the cache. Once we would get to the point of no roads to follow we would switch the "Route" to "Hike to" and walk right up to it. We were able to use Aerial imagery to see what was up ahead of us and take the best path to the caches, vs walking in a straight line to them. After we loged the find we would rinse and repeat. It felt like cheating vs the old way with eTrax palm combo. So anyways he are some of the pros and cons: Pros: One unit does it all, with the 2.5 firmware you get all the info from each cache including the description, hint and user logs up to 15,000 characters. No need to print out Aerial maps as you can Download them to the GPS Supports up to 32 GB SD memory card All the maps you could ever want for $29.99 Driving Directions Price Feature rich Cons Need a reasonably powerful PC to do 3D Topo maps Learning curve No direct upload from GSAK as of yet but they are working on it

We bought my Wife a New Delorme PN-40 and I got the hand me down eTrex Venture HC. We were never able to get more then 49 Geocaches on the eTrex Venture HC. I went to the garmin website yesterday and it clearly states Waypoints/favorites/locations: 500 I updated the firmware yesterday, loaded up GSAK and did a Pocket Query and got 500 geocaches. Up loaded it to the eTrex Venture HC and sure enough only 49 went onto the garmin. Deleted all the Geocaches and then went to Geocaching.com and loaded them 1 at a time and still only 49. Am I reading the description wrong or doing something wrong? Anyone else with a eTrex Venture HC have any ideas?

I remember the first week of Caching and we had Ground Zero in the middle of a parking lot. We thought for sure the co-ords must be off. After 20 minutes I examined the Light Post and found that the square cover lifted up and BAMB there it was. My wife and I discussed who the hinder must be an electrician and what a clever hide. By the end of the months we realized how wrong we were. Every Light post has a base that slides up :-( The point is, once you start finding them the easier it gets.