geoSquid
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Posts posted by geoSquid
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Coins of mine that disappear get renamed to *** STOLEN ***
Strangely enough, they seem to have a good rate of reappearance.
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When I create a puzzle cache, it's generally with the intention that the finders have to either know some esoteric bit of knowledge, or have to LEARN something. They're not meant to be rattled through in a couple of minutes unless you have the specific knowledge.
It doesn't bother me that some people find the effort too taxing. That's their choice. The list of finds I have indicates that enough people are interested.
The only thing that irks me about puzzles is when the puzzle is made very difficult, then the cache hide is also made excruciatingly difficult. But that's just my taste in caching.
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Terrain or difficulty:
A cache placed right next to various large hornet nests.. intentionally
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]Not sure how serious that is, but just in case...
The answer is: Neither. That would be rated on the "Stupid" and "Dangerous" scales. I'd call it about an S4 D4. S4 - Hide is placed deliberately in a high-risk area. D4 - High likelihood of injury with injuries that may be life threatening to some individuals.
As a person allergic to stings, geocaching is always a bit dangerous, but I can take preventive actions.
If a cache were deliberately placed somewhere like that and didn't say so in the description (so I could avoid it), I'd be furious. In any case, I'd hit "Needs archiving" on such a cache, regardless of what it says in the description, if for no other reason than to force the owner to explain why such a dangerous hide is worthy of being listed.
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Not all of the bomb squads blow them up:
There's definitely some education needed with law enforcement agencies...and geocachers being mindful of where they're placing caches and how it may look if someone stumbles upon it.
Cool your cops have cool toys (X-Ray) that ours don't have, we have to wait for the robot to be flown in from one of a few central centres, not in this province. Please remember our military uses SeaKing (most in use since the 1950's) and older choppers and those things are the way the robot flies to our area
We are generally lucky if our police (RCMP) even have a police dog unit available within a few hours drive.Actually, they have a robot with X-ray in Ottawa. However, the last person to replace the cache kind of wedged it in there, so they couldn't extract it safely for X-ray. It was decided by the site commander to just blast it with the water cannon and be done with it.
The site commander also said that if he could have seen inside it (with X-ray or because the container was transparent), he wouldn't have blasted it. However, it was an unknown package on a transitway bridge and couldn't be safely pulled out, so it got the cannon.
If you assume it wasn't blasted, OC Transpo would have removed it anyway.
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Fake coins and TBs are generally not permitted in my caches. That's not a big deal, because i don't have many hides, but nevertheless.
The exception is for a replacement for an item that is stolen. A paper or other representation of a coin/TB that has been stolen is permitted in my caches provided it is clearly named as such so that visitors are not misled.
If you're afraid to lose your coin/TB, don't send it out.
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Yes, the pipe/wire thing was a bit over the top. Worse, I know for a fact that Ottawa police have been informed about geocaching, although that doesn't mean that any individual has been specifically briefed.
it really boils down to:
1. the hide was in a spot that was, as I see it, in contravention of the hide guidelines put forward by geocaching.com.
2. the hide was in a spot on a piece of public infrastructure in a place that was in full view of "muggles"
On the strength of those two things alone, there's a huge issue. Compound that with someone who calls 911 and says "I think there's a bomb on the Hurdman bridge over riverside" and the bomb squad gets a live exercise. I don't know what was said, of course, but I bet if the call was soemthing more like "I saw some guys skulking around a lamppost on the bridge and it looks like they left something" then I would imagine a more measured response.
The fact that we, as geocachers, might think that some members of the public are overly paranoid is largely irrelevant. The public IS paranoid, and we have to guide our actions accordingly.
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Well, it isn't a good idea, because little children might play with them. Since this one has a sheath on it, and isn't a dangerous deadly knife, there isn't much you can do. It isn't the first one either. Keep the cover on it.
Wow. Bad answer. If I put an unloaded actual gun TB (complete with a trigger lock, and a cover on it) in a cache it isn't dangerous? And there isn't much you could do about it?
Guns are illegal, jacknives are not.
Instead of worrying about bizarre opportunities for unknown children to injure themselves in highly unlikely ways, wouldn't the energy be better spent teaching your own children about the proper handling of things like a jacknife so that your own children definitely won't hurt themselves?
There are things in geocaching that are vastly more dangerous or wrong than a little jacknife, and are commonly accepted - even when they are against the rules:
1. Caches on private property. How many caches are in mall parking lots, or on other land that is, in fact, private property without the knowledge, let alone permission of the land owner?
2. Caches on electrical transformers/boxes.
2a. Caches on under street light skirts. Both this and 2 are essentially the same, very real danger.
On the walk to a cache, a child could injure themselves in so many ways, that the remote chance that a child would injure themselves on a jacknife in the cache is truly irrelevant.
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The less the number of mailbox micros in the world, the better IMO. Any chance there is some sort of law about tampering with lamp posts as well???
Personally, I would like people to stop tampering with lamp posts because it's dangerous.. as is sticking a cache on an electrical transformer. In both cases caches of that nature will certainly be removed by maintenance crews if they're noticed.
I wonder who will be held responsible when a wayward cacher is killed by the 600+ volts running up a lamppost when they are shocked trying to retrieve a cache? It's just a matter of time before that happens.
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Maybe you need to create a virtual cache out there (if they were still available) to log the coin. I can just imagine TPTB reviewing it
Travel 22K miles straight up into geosynchronous orbit. Look behind you - which planet do you see :-) take a photo
Special equipment needed - space shuttle or rocket
Handicap access - yes once you have the special equipment
Terrain - none
Off-road vehicle - essential
Scenic view - Yes
Takes less than an hour - No
or maybe the first real cache in the interntional space station. Wonder what any aliens finding it would think of our "coinage" :-)
Sue
As an FYI, the shuttle doesn't get anywhere near geosynchronous orbit
It typically runs at an altitude below 500 km, in a roughly 90 minute low-earth orbit.However, I'm told that the photography opportunities are extraordinary from there.
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Yes, it probably does need to be addressed in a public forum.
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A question I have for reviewers. Is there a point at which you would quit being an approver based solely on policy made by Groundspeak? I am not talking about getting too much grief from cachers over the issue, but the simply, “I don’t agree with Groundspeak and I quit.”
If I was a reviewer, I wouldn't answer that. It's nobody's business, and providing an answer could only be used against the person in some future message board trolling thread.
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For an event with a 12:00 start time, arriving at 12:15 meant we could not join the rest of the group.
I must admit, I'd be pretty torqued to see a log like that.
Not much p***es me off more than to be at something on time and wait 15 mintues for people who don't have the common courtesy and respect for other people to be punctual. Emergencies happen - people get injured, tires get flat - and sometimes people have to be late, but you can't expect the world to bow down to accommodate you. You're late, you miss out, no hard feelings... it's not a personal slight to start something on time. The onus is on participants to be on time, not on the event to wait. It's unfortunate when someone has to miss out because they can't be on time, but that's life. If someone wrote a log entry like that, I'd not want them around anything I was involved in.
However, I agree in principle with Keith. If you want to slag a cache, it's probably best to do the bulk of it in private.
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Cool, I'll check out the "fuzzy" checkers.
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You would think the coordinate checker would be a blessing for those people putting out puzzle caches. Answer XX amount of emails or send those users to a site to see if their right/wrong.
The few people who do have the "checker link", I have praised in my logs after a successful caching trip. I don't understand why more people aren't using this service
I love a geochecker.com puzzle cache! I use it with my puzzle caches (when I remember) and think it's great! I do know someone who doesn't like it because she thinks that some people just sit there and plug in likely coordinates until they get the right one. Personally, I don't have time to do that but I guess there are those that do.
One of the problems with checkers, that I have noticed, is that they seem to allow an exact match only. This can be an issue if a puzzle is mathematical and involves any rounding - the person solving it may get an answer that is slightly different from what is in the checker, but is more than good enough to find the cache... a difference in the thousandths of minutes, for example. Consequently, a checker can cause frustration.
I know this because I have this issue with one of my caches.
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Discovering a bunch of bugs or coins from a printed list, without people ever seeing the bug or coin can possibly get your bug or coin locked if you are the one passing out the list. Don't let your bug or coin get on a list.
What if the list is only 1 coin long? Lots of people pass out paper lists of 1 coin.
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I don't keep track of trades beyond the transaction, and I just do it via email.
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One thing I've noticed is that, over time, cache containers tend to migrate. I recently corrected one of my cache containers that had moved about 15m from its initial hide over the 3 years it has been out there.
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One of my caches has a somewhat complex puzzle, and the initial few finders asked a lot of questions of me - questions that helped me refine the puzzle to be unambiguous.
I have a coordinate checker on that cache, but usually people just email me, and I'm cool with that.
I won't give someone the final coordinates though unless they can demonstrate that they've at least TRIED to figure it out in an intelligent way (my judgement). There are plenty of traditional caches to find without getting a bye on puzzles.
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May want to look at the Kenwood TH-F6A. I love mine! Small, 5 watts, Tri-band, general coverage receive, Lithium Ion battery for great talk/ listen time, banks of memories, NOAA weather.
Steve..........N3GOV
I love mine as well.
My usual geocaching radio setup is:
In-hand, the TH-F6A. One band on 146.52, other band on 446.200 with a tone. Power set to whatever is needed to hit my car.
In the car, the D-700A set to a 2m repeater I can hit from the car on one band, and 446.200 with the tone on the other. Radio is placed in cross-band repeat mode, with appropriate (usually high) power on the 2m side and low or medium power on the 70 cm side.
That gives me the ability to walk around with the hand held, and have access to a repeater without having to be able to hit it directly with the handheld.
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As I get further into this hobby, I can feel myself drawn to helping the little TB buggers along. That said, a cache that lists contents with TBs gets my notice. If I made the effort to find a cache in order to give a TB a boost, and find that the bug had not been there for days (but not logged as taken), I'd most likely feel a little miffed.
IMHO, ASAP for logging. If I find a TB and retrieve it, I feel I owe it to the owner to log it as accurately and up-to-date as I can. I'd also feel I owe it to the folks seeking out TBs in caches. ESPECIALLY things like jeeps, which folks may plan entire GC trips to seek out.
IMHO/YMMV
Yep, I log immediately as well. I don't see what the big deal is.
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Wonder why they don't use thrir GC names over there?
Because they registered ebay accounts before they started geocaching?
I had an eBay account 5 years before I started geocaching. Why would I change the name to match some new hobby?
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Caches are approved such as GCVP4D, GCX1DJ, or GC1402N? The last one there is full-cache advertisement for a Christian radio station.
I can guarantee that the last one was changed after being listed. That one isn't going to stay that way long. The second one has been changed from the way the description reads. Just because you see something on a cache page doesn't mean it was listed exactly as you see it. This has been proven over and over.
Still, it is apples and oranges. Looking at those cache owners, their logs on found caches don't scream a Christian agenda. Every one of PB's logs on caches screamed his agenda. Apples and oranges.
No Mtn... apples and apples. An agenda is an agenda. If it's wrong in the log, it's wrong on the cache page. In fact, it's WORSE on the cache page because logs get buried after 5 or so finds.
If the rule is that you don't flog an agenda, that's cool. The rule should be enforced consistently. If the rule isn't going to be applied consistently, then it should be dropped.
If those caches were changed after being listed, that's fine. Consider them officially complained about, and I ask that the rules on such matters please be enforced with the same zeal that is being shown toward Plasma-boy. I'll probably have a few more to report in the next while.
I think that's a fair request.
And make no mistake - I think you are absolutely correct about his tag promoting an agenda, and I do think he should stop using it... but to centre him out and ask him to do something you're not willing to do (manually change 1000 logs, when a simple "stop using that tag" and "you must edit any logs that a cache owner requests to be edited" would suffice) when there are obvious cache page violations that can be found with simple searches of caches strikes me as highly unfair. From a pure optics point of view, it might look better just to say "yes, we're being unfair but that's the way it is" rather than try and couch it.
I guess my point is that I do find that rules are not enforced consistently by gc.com, and that it sometimes appears that many agenda are winked at or even allowed. As I'm trying to point out here, I don't see an uproar over obvious Christian agenda on CACHE PAGES, but someone clearly got in a snit about log contents. To me, that's a cart-before-the-horse situation. Or maybe it's just that these rules are only enforced when someone complains? In that case, the real rule is some kind of "tyranny of the minority" thing where we all have to be careful of the most unreasonably sensitive person who might complain.
The best part is that I'm not even allowed to give blood because I passed out once while they drew 8 vials for a test.
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Maybe you need to create a virtual cache out there (if they were still available) to log the coin. I can just imagine TPTB reviewing it
Travel 22K miles straight up into geosynchronous orbit. Look behind you - which planet do you see :-) take a photo
Special equipment needed - space shuttle or rocket
Handicap access - yes once you have the special equipment
Terrain - none
Off-road vehicle - essential
Scenic view - Yes
Takes less than an hour - No
or maybe the first real cache in the interntional space station. Wonder what any aliens finding it would think of our "coinage" :-)
Sue
Sadly, the space shuttle never gets much more than 500km (300 mi) up
but it travels far in horizontal (well, elliptical) distance.
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We are generally lucky if our police (RCMP) even have a police dog unit available within a few hours drive.
It typically runs at an altitude below 500 km, in a roughly 90 minute low-earth orbit.
but it travels far in horizontal (well, elliptical) distance.
is there a national simplex used for geocaching?
in Ham Radio
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If 146.52 was actually busy, I'd QSY, but if there's only me and one other person on it, I see no overpowering reason to QSY anywhere. In fact, there's something positive to be said for staying on freq so a third person might actually be able to contact someone.
In Ottawa, you're more likely to hear people on 146.595 than .520 in any case.