Birders

PDA etiquette? We usually cock our little finger in the air as we are using it, as one does when drinking tea from fine china! Seriously, we haven't a clue how to log anything using our PDA - we gave up trying to do that with GPXSonar years ago as it just doesn't work (for us). You might as well argue that using a GPS gives you an unfair advantage.... go right ahead and log your FTFs ASAP.. Now off with our clockwork GPS, parchment notebook and quill pen to do some caches.

<<Way, way back in my CB days, I once managed to talk to some guys on the west coast of Scotland from my home in Bedfordshire on a bog-standard 4 watt FM rig (without boots on >> When the sunspots peak up again in about 5 years you should do better than that. On the 10m amateur band I worked a guy in Australia one morning running just a few watts... he was standing on a yacht in Sydney Harbour using a handheld with a small whip aerial. On another occasion I worked a group on Spratly Island, in the China Sea. The signals were so strong I unplugged my antenna, shoved a screwdriver in instead and worked them on that! Great times... It sure would be good to mix two great hobbies - geocaching and ham radio - but I doubt there would be much interest except if a group of cachers used PMR when they were out together.

Problem with PMRs is that although you can use one of the "encoded" channels so that the radio stays silent when you are not talking to someone, if another party is using the same frequency close by you may not be guaranteed a solid conversation. With amateur radio there are far more frequencies available, but never a guarantee that the one you choose would be free. However, 2m and 70cms outclass 27mHz and PMR any day in terms of quality of equipment and communication reliability. I was interested to see that Eclectic Penguin had achieved "long" range with his PMR and have heard before of such contacts. However, we tried a line of sight contact from the Isle of Wight to our grandson in Fareham and heard nothing! We assume that our PMR receivers are adjusted to ensure only close range communication. Heck, they were only £16 for the pair - what do we expect?!! I am a licenced amateur but I'm not sure geocaching and amateur radio (or any radio - CB, PMR) go together as there is so little activity. The chances of making contact with another cacher out of the blue is, I suggest virtually nil. Otherwise, it would be a great idea.. If there are any licenced amateur geocachers wishing a sked on any band I'd be delighted to try I live to the southwest of Wokingham, Berks. There are several in Newbury, but the path from there to Finchampstead is blocked by high ground so it's not reliable. PS.. T-girls.. Tell Carolyn Bren would sure appreciate her QSL for their GJ4DYO/P-GM6WRW/M car-to-car QSO of last 26 June. Bren G4DYO

<<Maybe there should be some line on a new cache form that asks why you are placing the cache. If you can't come up with a good reason then it should not be allowed. >> We're still wholly baffled by this thread. The fundamnetal reason one lays a cache is, surely, for other cachers to find it?? What other reason can there be? Time to shut this thread and get on with geocaching..... and, thank goodness, there are plenty out there... and long may it continue.

<<There seems now to be a culture of placing caches for the sake of it.>> Errr... this game is called geocaching, not "Let's find the local churchyard", or something similar. Geocaching is the game of finding caches, hence lots are being placed "for the sake of it" - that's precisely why they are placed! Keep at it - let's place many, many, many more... and as long as they are in decent areas, free from danger than we have no problem...

Surely it is up to those laying the caches to avoid potentially dangerous sites? Several caches we have attempted over the years have been laid in the most dreadfully filthy areas, teeming with litter, beer cans and other junk (possibly needles). We would not dream of laying a cache in such an area.

Why on earth not?? We're in this for fun remember. We once told a friend where we were laying a cache so they could get san FTF. See nothing wrong in that at all.... no worse than people ringing around to get clues as to where caches are hidden (but something we don't subscribe to).

We'd be interested to hear why some people object to micros? We have 3 multis and we maintain two others which are parts of multis which start in New Zealand and the USA. All the starts are micros... in fact, for one of our multis the start, which contains the clue for the next part, isn't a container of any sort!!

OK, thanks Brian. Good news for us anyway.

Take a look at GCM5Q3 and GCMYD6. These are multis starting with a micro and the other part is thousands of miles away. We don't agree with Pharisee. Now Locationless caches have "gone" we really like micros...

We never used the GC site due to its inability to recognise our password. However, we did use the trigpoint site and hope it returns. We agree that it would be nice to be kept up to date in what's happening.

There will always be people who are dissatisfied. Garmin replaced two units for us free of charge. The first was one we had borrowed from friends and which had been bought several years earlier in Canada. A fault developed on the aerial socket. We took it to Romsey and they gave us a brand new replacement on the spot and even programmed in our friends waypoints. Second was our own GPS12XL - must have been around 10 years old when one of the pins in the connector came off. Didn't prevent the device working. They warned there may be a charge but s couple of days after we dropped it at Romsey a brand new replacement arrived by courier on a motorbike - all at no cost. Compare that to John Lewis. We bought a fairly expensive item of furniture from that company and about 18 months later a fault developed. We were basically told "it's out of guarantee; nothing we can do". Remember that Garmin must sell hundreds of thousands of GPS devices and we hear of a few which have broken - but 9/10 they replace them without a quibble.

<<Why does everyone rave about the "legendary Garmin aftercare" service>> Because that's what it is. End of argument.

dino-irl. You're right, but Garmin users know that the very best route is to go straight to Garmin and there's every chance that they'll end up with a brand new replacement at no cost. Garmin really are the tops in terms of customer support.

It's not Windows or the PDA which makes any difference... as long as you load the correct version of MM the 2004 maps will work. In fact, the older maps are better because the sectors are smaller than V5 maps which may be too big to load in. We use MM V4 on an IPAQ 2790 and it works very well. Your old maps will not work with MM V5 so make usre you load the right MM Navigator into the PDA.

Don't get too anxious - you're not missing much. It's "fixed" by GC so that it doesn't accurately show cache locations. If you do get it working you'll find the icons keep changing and jumping around.

In GSAK we use "Custom Export" to provide a file for MM. In the box which appears when you click "CE".. in the box marked "Waypoint name" insert this: %drop2%children %drop2%c_Prefix We think that's how we dropped the GC bit and all works fine on our GPS12XL now.

Anyone who has tried viewing caches using the GC link to Google earth would immediately bin GE. The positions change every few seconds so, IMHO, there is no accuracy at all. GPS is the only sensible method of locating/ laying caches. Just consider this - would you prefer an airline pilot to get you to destination using his electronics..... or GE on his laptop??!!

Locationless Caches were the ultimate caches as far as we were concerned. Heaven only knows why they messed them about...

Probably referring to GCMYWH and GCMYD6.

PMR will only give you very short range - a few dozen yards in a built up area. Amateur communications are far more reliable and getting a licence nowadays is pretty much a doddle.

We get the same message...

Looks interesting (caches on Google Earth as downloaded from GC.com jump around all over the place so you can't tell where they are). However, whenever we log to this clever prog, it only shows caches in Germany. Moving the map to the UK and zooming in shows no caches. Is there a simple answer please? Thanks

Looks interesting until you click "coverage area"..

Agree.. If there's ever a query about one of our caches we try to visit within hours or the following day but many people don't.. We then enter a "maintenance visit" with news of what's happened.