Sky King 36

I think part of the contradiction here is defining "paperless." I use the "GarminCsvPoiExport-v2" GSAK macro to load caches into my 60csx. It's not nearly the same amount of info you'd find in a Dakota, for instance, where you'd have descriptions, hints, past logs, etc. On my 60 I have a basic entry for each cache, and also, the hint for each cache if there is one. I get the last 4 log summary in the form like "FFNF" but not the logs. i use this GSAK code string for the cache name and description: %Smart %typ=1/%con=1 %dif/%ter %code << This is the list entry %last4: %datelf Pl: %datepl %ownerName << This is the detail once I click on a cache in the list This might yield a list entry of: TheSerpent T/M 1.5/1.5 GC1XXXX And a detail of Last 4, date last found, date placed and owner: FFFF: 3/19/11 Pl: 5/1/09 Sky King 36 In concert with my Nuvi, which has full logs and descriptions, I have a very robust solution. But even by itself, I can still lookup, and search for a cache using ONLY my 60csx... And I often do... and so in that sense it really is paperless. I am actually data-laden... I also carry a Nuvi that has the full cache description and logs of the same caches in my 60... I also have the android app... AND the Trimble Navigator app on a blackberry. But I *can* get by on just my 60 when I need to.

If you ask a pilot, or a skydiver, or a scuba diver, or an avid outdoorsperson, or a soldier (I am all those things) how they manage risk, it will probably come down to this... Objective assessment. I do fairly dangerous things from time to time, and I do them only when I feel I have an accurate picture of the true risk, and that all the cards are in my favor. I might fly at night in marginal waether in a well equipped plane over familiar terrain, and not even consider the exact same risk profile when I don't know the plane well, am tired, or there's inhospitable terrain below. Same thing for wilderness caching. The width of a creek that I'll try jumping at night in good cell coverage is a whole lot wider than the one I'll jump when I don't have cell coverage. When I have my full pack--(and by virtue of that pack I have 3 sources of fire, survival supplies, water purification, 3 sources of light, extra batteries, and a minimum of two GPSrs) I will go anywhere, anytime. With one flashlight and one GPS and poor cell coverage, or a low cell battery-- I adjust the range accordingly. Setting personal minimums for yourself is really important... And having the objectivity to assess how close to those minimums you are today, is equally important. The combination of many years as a special operations soldier, a jillion hours in wilderness, and a well prepared pack, mean my personal minimums are extremely high. But I never, ever fool myself... I get close to a personal minimum and I retreat instantly, without hesitation. Stack the cards in your favor with equipment, preparation and knowledge. Be honest and objective about the risks and your readiness. Then go have fun, confident that you've prepared yourself well. For me, there is a relaxation, and thus enjoyment, of knowing I am well prepared for whatever lies over the next hill.

I should point out to another thought... I do some serious wilderness caching when I get a chance, and sometimes I visit a cache that takes 3-4 hours of rigorous hiking, climbing, or wading to get to, and may only be visited once or twice a year... In these circles, we all expect that we'll look out for each other's caches, they're simply too hard to get to just to replace an o-ring. Being willing to maintain urban caches that are hidden 6 blocks from a lazy caher's home encourages laziness. But being willing to perform maintenance on a cache deep in the badlands encourages people to place caches in places that even they can't get back to easily, and I'm OK with that.

They're not mutually exclusive. I can perform maintenance to benefit the next cacher AND post a NM or NA as appropriate to benefit the community. In the two states where I cache, an abandoned cache pretty much has to contain smallpox to get archived, simply marking it NM or NA is merely the start of a process that typically takes 6 months to a year to complete... and there will often be many visits in the mean time.

If I remember correctly, either party--the person adopting, or the person yielding ownership--can initiate the transfer. If there's a problem, have the adopter go to the page instead and have them initiate it and then you'll get the confirmation email.

Just visited your log, it worked perfectly. The image of your log QR is attached to your log entry, as it should be. Everything worked as you wanted it to. I was able to read your QR just fine too.

I agree in principle, but, in practice... The people for whom I am doing a favor by maintaining a cache are the next finders, not the hider. I do agree that maintenance is a hider responsibility, and that a lot of hiders shirk that responsibility. I also agree that container quality is quite often totally inappropriate for the hide environment. But, it is what it is. If a lazy irresponsible hider wants to put a crappy cache out and never maintain it, that cacher's behavior is not affected in any way by my decision to, or not to, do maintenance. He or she won't care one bit if I just put a broken, moldy cache back when I am done. In fact, they'll probably never see the cache again, ever. The next finder, however, will.

I actually carry a pretty robust repair kit. It sounds like a lot but it all slides into a mesh pouch that's probably 5x 7 inches and weighs 6 ounces maybe: About 25 feet of duct tape A couple each of gallon, quart, sandwich, and snack size baggies Probably 5-10 each of 1x2 inch, 2x2 inch, and 2x4 inch baggies for logs Prepared logs--I carry 2-3 each of 1x2, 2x2 and 2x4 inch baggies with printed, folded logs already inside them that I can just drop and go A nano - I have found a couple of nanos that had lost magnets and needed them 2-3 nano log scolls About 12 various o-rings, with the common sizes for nanos and various bisons. A couple of short pencils About 6 paper towel sheets A pouch of cleaning wipes (a little 10-pack you buy in stores will last a couple of months) An orange match tube that I will drop in a cache the gets very wet and needs a true waterproof log container inside the cache A couple of small replacement magnets If I am going to trash out moldy, mildewy items, or items that have been burned, like in a grass fire, I double bag them before they go in my pack, the mold and mildew smell will escape a single bag layer. I have thought about maybe carrying armor-all wipes too, to freshen up the rubber gaskets on ammo cans.

I echo what others have said... There are always balances between options that have to be made on a case-by case basis. There is a balance between prserving older caches so that we have some long-lived legacy caches for the future... vs. the opportunity that replacing an old cache with a new one creates for all local cachers to get a new find. There is a balance between the "proper" interpretation of ownership and a practical community interest. By that I mean, on one hand, the cache IS the private property of the owner and who knows, even if archived he/she may want to go fetch it someday, or may have it cross-posted on a web site you don't know about. But on the other hand, I am a member of my local community and I may want to pick up the abandoned "trash" of my own volition as an act of ecological resonsibility that transcends the owner's right to leave trash in a public space. Only you can choose, but for a variety of reasons, forced adoptions are a non-starter.

I have gone with a group to Muther's Challenge... who knows, it's hard to believe given the clues that we're not being messed with, but I assume that unless someone places a wildlife tracking cam in the woods and catches pics of the hider checking on it, we'll never know. At one point the FTF prize was like a $400 survival beacon system. I would suspect that there's probably thousands of caches that have more DNFs than finds. One of the seed caches I made and another cacher put out was "upside down" in find count for over a year, it just went positive for the first time ever a coupleof weeks ago. I cant believe knowschad's Little Chameleon has over 4:1 finds. Maybe it's easier now due to wear and tear, but it was my 61st find and my first foray into evil organic camo. I'll bet that there's easily 50-100 unlogged DNFs on it. Almost 2,000 caches later, still on my top five favorites of all times list.

For me, that link "craps out" at 1,095 finds. Odd number. If you are a GSAK user and have your finds flagged in GSAK... I use a great mapping macro called Google_Map_V3. Whatever caches you have selected in GSAK will be shown in google maps. When you have a lot (over 1000 or so finds, you may have to answer "no" to the "stop running scripts" pop up in IE because it takes a few seconds to run.) You select the "my finds" filter and run the macro. I really like the clustering model the macro uses, it should be used on GC.com as well.

This shouldn't be moved. The CITO forum is the right place to discuss all things CITO. But this is the right forum to post things of broad interest to all cachers that may not otherwise visit the CITO forum, and this announcement certainly warrants exposure to all cachers, not just CITO enthusiasts.

I hate to be a hardliner, I am usually not like that, but... Perhaps Groundspeak should publish an objective guideline... " When finders post corrected coordinates and the consensus of those coordinates are more than XX feet/metres from the published coord, the CO is expected to validate and correct the coordinates. If the coordinates are not corrected in a timely fashion, it is appropriate to flag the cache 'needs archived', and for a reviewer to disable the cache until corrected." 99% of the guidance from Groundspeak is vague and open to interpretation, and reviewers are given broad discretion to interpret guidelines. But on this, no such discretion exists, the coordinates for a cache must be accurate, it is a mandatory element of publication.

I'm not getting what you mean by this. Contrary to your "hence the thread title Mystery cache idea", I am talking about a mystery cache. There are several criteria that a cache can meet in order to qualify for publication as a mystery cache. One of those criteria is 4.14, the "challenge cache" provision of the guidelines. The cache idea the OP is proposing has an ALR which is prohibited unless the ALR requires the cacher to "meet a geocaching-related qualification or series of tasks" prior to finding this cache. Either the DNF requirement will be deemed an ALR and denied, or it will be deemed a challenge and possibly published as a mystery cache. There is no challenge cache "type." But the guidelines explictly discourage the requirement to post a DNF, so the chances of this cache making it onto the runway are slim.

This is not technically correct. Per current guidelines: But, here's where the reviewer's discretion comes in to play and likely puts the "kybosh" on this particular cahce, but not other challenge caches... Bullet point four of the same Challenge Guideline: The reviewers discretion will also probably be influenced by two additional points specific to this cache concept, points 8 and 9:

Here's why I would say it has to be a puzzle. When I see a multi icon on my GPSr, or in GSAK, I should be able to assume that all the information I need in order to navigate from the published coordinate to the final is available on "the course." I should be able to use a GPSr and information gleaned from each progressive stage to navigate to the final. To me, the puzzle icon by definition means "this cache may have stages, ALRs, etc. that require information that is not available along the way. Just your presence and a GPSr will probably not be ebough to solve this bad boy." I do understand that the line between multi and puzzle has become blurred, but to me, the tie breaker really is, "is all the navigational data required available on site." This is my own interpretation, not anything published in a guideline.

Ordinarily, if each of the first 7 caches are actual caches, not stages, then the final cache MUST be a puzzle (mystery). These are not at all that unusual. There are lots of series where you have to find a series of traditionals and each has a clue to find a final. But that final stage MUST be a puzzle, as you will not want the icon representing the final cache to be on the map in the actual location. It's 6 and 7 that make things hairy. Once virtuals are back, I think you'd probably have 5 traditionals, 1 virtual, 1 earthcache, and a puzzle final for the reasons above. If you want 7 to be an earth cache and 6 will go out before virtuals come back, you'll need to flip them. 1-5 will be traditional. 6 will be the earth cache. 7 will be a PUZZLE with the posted coords of what was originally 6... I think it has to be a puzzle, it doesn't seem like a multi if finding its first stage (now 6) isn't enough to get you to the final. It technically becomes a challenge cache as it requires other finds and can't be solved in any other way but finding them.

Well, reflector, lens and emitter design all come in to play... Light leaves a Cree LED in one direction, where it leaves a bulb nearly isotropically, in all directions. That means that in an incandescent light, the reflector design is critical. A lot of LED lights are un-reflected, including the Coast "Lenser" series I am familiar with. The emitter (the LED) is completely surrounded by the plastic lens--100% of the light energy is captured by the lens system and refracted out the business end. In an incandescent, there's typically no lensing... Usually half the light comes right from the bulb and is dispersed at the mercy of the bulb design, and the other half is reflected, at the mercy of the reflector's design. The longer the filament in the bulb, the more erratic the projected light pattern. This is why the bulbs in a mini-mag, for instance, are kept so tiny, so the projected image is still nice and round when at maximum "zoom." Also, "orange-peel" reflectors are common to help cut down on the light and dark spots that can be seen in some glossy reflected patterns of a bigger bulb. The artifact of reflection that you may be seeing is that you have one cone of light in an LED flashlight, but two separate cones of concentric light in an incandescent--a direct cone and a reflected cone, and the relfector may be designed to align the hot spots of these two circles at a much longer focal point. Strictly conjecture on my part.

I just go into app settings and verify that it's not running, and if it is, I force close it. Are you sure you really need to uninstall?

Veering off-topic, but waddup wif dat??? Man, some of the crap I have found in caches... Last year I found someone's used boarding passes from an airline flight, with their full names on them.

I often put very shiny, uncirculated US dollar coins in a cache as the FTF prize... There's something about shiny, metal bling that a paper bill can't capture, kind of a throw back to this being a treasure hunt. But the amounts involved must be trivial for all the reasons others have already discussed. As for buying a slurpee... That's the whole point. I don't have any illusions that if you FTF one of my caches, you'll spend the $1 on a new GPS or invest in renewable energy. I'm pretty much hoping you'll use it to buy a slurpee, on me.

I find the 2-axis in my 60csx to be very useful, otherwise once you stop at a GZ you have to move a ways to get it oriented again. I'd recommend it. The altimeter is very useful if you have experience navigating mountainous terrain using a topo map, but not much use to most people otherwise.

Dangit, that made me go back and clean up all the typos!

BTW, what many people do is use an intermediary program, GSAK. I load my PQs into GSAK and let GSAK get them into one big file to go onto my GPS.

About 25% with others, 75% alone. The two are very different experiences... In fact, caching with kids, caching with other experienced cachers, and caching alone are three entirely different sports.