kbootb

Actually, that's what we did. I had set up a course around the site on one unit, saved the waypoints on the computer and uploaded them to all units so they were identical. The students had one GPS for each pair and to start them off we did the first one together. They were all crowded round me as they were 'trained' in going through the pages, so the units were not more than a metre apart. The distance to go varied by a max of 3 metres and when we got to the first waypoint they ended up about 2 metres apart when they declared they were at 'zero' (some of course never got to zero, but all got to 1 metre to go). We were running the activity over 3 days and had similar variation each day. They all clustered with the same accuracy, but interesting to note that the point that they all got to varied by about 5 metres from one day to the next. Certainly accurate enough for them to work out which 'feature' of the site we were trying to get them to. They were pretty impressed by the accuracy.

I hope this picture is readable. I happened to have 10 identical Garmins, fresh out of their boxes. I configured each one and put it on the grass bank while waiting for the children I was training to arrive. After 20 mins they were still showing slightly different readings, so I took a picture to show you. In case you can't read the numbers they range from N 52 deg 15.174 to .178 E01deg 37.577 70 .588 No two units ever had the same co-ordinates. This is a very open site, heathland at the top of a cliff, great view of the sky and lots of satellites visible. Just goes to show how much variation there can be.

And so were premium members consulted before this, rather profound, change of policy? I can't understand how such a decision could have be made without the fee paying membership given the chance of their input. I for one feel steam-rollered into accepting these 'ads' without due consultation to the very people who keep Groundspeak alive. Jon We weren't consulted because this is not a club, it's a business. Jeremy can do what he likes, legally. He only 'consults' to make sure he doesn't upset people so much that we leave in droves. He is lucky that he has the forum which allows him to do some quick market research and gauge opinion at no cost. Personally, I think most people are now 'advert blind' and won't even spot them.

Done (bump!)

Once again, a BBC article with one small bit of info missing. What's the datum for the height. 3000 ft above what? I don't know the answer, but I bet the original definition was 'above mean sea level'. When they used the GPS was it then calculated for that, or the now more standard WGS84. Incidentally, if sea levels rise, when will TPTB update their definition of mean sea level, and which Munro will drop off the list first?

Tonibunny, just looked at your profile and tried to follow the link to the site you run, but there is an extra comma in the link that prevents it working.

Interesting that this post has had no replies. But reading it I must say I find it a bit confusing Looking at the original topic, do I think the inventive ways of hiding a cache have been exhausted? - no. There are some cache hiders out there that are so devious their inventiveness beggars belief. You don't want to pinch another cacher's ideas? - but this thread, if answered, would produce a list of ideas already put into practice - how would you gain from that? If you alrady have an idea for an inventive cache would you just cross it off your list if someone else had done something similar? If you have an inventive idea just go for it, even if it has been done somewhere else I doubt that someone in you area will have done it. But to sort of answer your question - inventive cache that made me laugh out load - one hidden in a decoy bird perched in a tree (Thanks Alibags) pity it was nicked. I'll not give the game away - but the cache pure GPS wins my award for the boldest, hide it in plain site, can't find the s***ing thing, found it, how clever.... I'll kill the setter.... cache that we have done recently. Hmm.... telling you which cache I thought was inventive, but without giving the game away perhaps explains why this thread hasn't had any replies yet. This cache is also a clever and inventive way of hiding a micro.... but again, I can't give the game away in this thread, so you've neither gained an idea you can use, or one you should avoid. To be honest, I'm not above nicking an idea and I'm looking to to use one of the 2 techniques I've just not told you about to replace a micro that keeps getting muggled.

The article also says she was totally reliant on her satnav. Not too bright... GPS units have been known to fail. 'Led me directly into the path of a speeding train' no it didn't, it led her to a level crossing, she put her car in the path of the train. 'there was a little sign saying, if the light is green, open the gates and drive through' perhaps the sign should have said something about it being a level crossing.. open both gates, drive right across the lines, come back close gates. The green light is in question, but if she opned the gate, drove through and then shut the gate and returned, that might be long enough for the light to go to red with the car still in the way. Either the timing of the light needs to be chaged, or the procedure made clearer. Can't see much to blame the satnav for here. Rather like the local story here of a driver that blamed the satnav for the fact that they drove straight out onto a roundabout without stopping as they were just following the instructions, 'enter roundabout and take 2nd exit'. They weren't actually saying that the SatNav had omitted to tell them to look out for traffic, but the satnav had made them lazy and lulled them into a false sense of security.

The BBC site has an update on the latest position with the Galileo system. It doesn't look positive. Perhaps we are going to be faced with a huge bill? How much would you pay to hunt the tupperware?

Usually cache as a pair, 1 male 1 female. Occasionally it's just me (male) but never just the other half. Very occasionally the team is augmented by the elder daughter, but she is at uni now and hardly see her. Very very occasionally joined by the younger one, but she hates caching.

I assume that you're referring to the Geocaching.com Google Maps. Unfortunately, not all functionality is available to non-paying members. I assume they are filled for premium members. They certainly are filled in for me. I had never noticed that. O F B = Owned, found and bookmarked

Totally agree, co-ords for final cache location. Co-ords for parking offered as an 'extra'. Some people may get the cache by other routes and methods. I usually check out the final cache location on memory map so like to see what sort of area I'm going to be caching in. This helps with deciding who to invite on the day out.

I thought that, checked their logs and I don't think they were in the area that day.

I've just been through a bit of an update. It was a bit fiddly but I got it working so I thought I would post my experience here. Sorry it's a bit long. I have been using an Ipaq hx2100 for ‘paperless’ caching for a while. It had Navman Smart Nav which at the time was more comprehensive than the Tom Tom offering. However, over time, the mapping was getting very out of date, Tom Tom had improved, and the ability to add your own POIs was quite tempting. Also the SmartNav was suffering from more and more lock ups. I was also a little fed up with the Bluetooth connected GPSr. When in the car it really needed a power connecter, so was hardly wireless. When out in the hunt it meant juggling PDA running memory map, the Bluetooth receiver and the Etrex that I actually use to locate the cache. Every time I turned off the PDA to save batteries it broke the connection to the GPSr so checking position on memory map meant a lot of fiddling around. So I spotted this compact flash GPSr that also had an SD slot in. Add to that TomTom on SD card and I thought I had the perfect solution. First step, according to the manual, was to plug in the CF unit. As soon as I did, I got an error message saying unknown device, install drivers. Read further through the manual and it eventually mentioned drivers on the CD. Hunt through the CD, no drivers for that model! Hunt down the website and find the driver, download it to find it is in RAR compressed format, which I couldn’t extract. So back to Internet and find an RAR utility. Download, extract, install, look at PDA and it says these drivers were written for an older OS and may not work. Plug in CF GPSr and no error message. Now to test it so start up memory map and fiddle with settings but no good. Back to website and find a GPS info test program, download, install, fiddle and get connection. Turns out the Baud rate must be 4800 for it to work. Back to memory map, replicate settings and success! Now on to TomTom. Put SD card into slot in side of CF GPSr and it fires up. There’s a fairly long registration and set up procedure but it goes without a hitch. So out to the car to try it. It’s a disaster, the update it so slow, about every 5 seconds, that I’m past a junction before it spots it. Doom and gloom all round. Any way, plug on and see if I can get the cache details installed. I fiddled with the macro for GSAK mentioned in this thread and got the POIs with no problem. So installed TomTom Home, the software that is meant to connect to PDA, connect up the PDA and it tries to connect but fails. After many failures, trawl the internet and find that my model can’t connect to TomTom Home as active sync takes over the com port. So use activesync to explore the TomTom SD card and work out where the POI go. I extracted icons from here, renamed them to take the place of the standard icons that were generated by the macro and copied the files onto the SD card. Started up TomTom and the POI were there! Then I had a thought! If the CF card was only working at 4800 Baud then this would slow down the reading of the map data from the SD slot in the CF unit. So what would happen if I put the TomTom SD card into the slot on the PDA? So CF GPSr in one slot, TomTom SD card in the other and off to the car. Update was smooth as silk. Really impressive. So now I have a working SatNav, working memory map, less ‘clutter’ and much more reliable. Also, the GPSr is very good, I'm getting satellite lock in the house, about 15 foot from the window! If only my Etrex was that good under trees. Can’t get TomTom home to connect so can’t use the ‘plus’ services but I can upload POI generated from GSAK so I’m pretty happy.

Report on BBC News site

I've been using Smartnav by Navman (was better than TomTom at the time but I think TT is winning the race now) and Memory Map. Both use the bluetooth GPSr that came with the Navman. It took a bit of setting up the coms ports etc to get the GPS to work with MM. Until recently I used to go into bluetooth, into manager and there was a shortcut set up for the GPS. Click on that to connect and then fire up MM and it worked. Recently I've been getting a lot of lock ups on SmartNav and although the bluetooth connection to the GPSr seems to be made, memory map doesn't seem to be getting the data. Always happens when I'm out with someone else who is ... how shall I put it?... less tolerant of the technology. 'Come on let's just walk then'. So I haven't had a quite moment to work out what's going wrong. I'm tempted to buy a compact flash GPSr with an SD slot and buy TomTom on SD. One less bit to carry around.

6 days in a row for me, on the gower, would have been 7 but for a DNF on the last day. Excellent holiday.

That explains the 'ghostly glow'. (I didn't give people the coords... wanted to make it a hunt ) Nice to see that Arsenal are contributing to global warming....

I was looking for evidence of when the pictures were taken. So I was looking for local building projects and came across the Arsenal Stadium. The new one hasn't got the pitch laid yet and the old one is still in use. But then I looked closely at the old stadium.... what one earth is on the pitch? Suggestions please.

The Forester beat me to it as usual. But just to re-inforce, if the signal area is poor, then an hour is not unusual. We just took delivery of some shiny new Garmins and they took about 40 mins to locate. Not all GPS units allow you to input an approximation. Ours ask if you are indoors, have moved over 600 miles, and then checks the date and time. I assume that telling it you have moved outside the 600 mile radius shortcuts it trying to search out the expected satellites and kick starts the cold start procedure. Having said that, took my gps to Cyprus and Crete and it locked in about as quickly as it does in Epping Forest about 10 miles from home.

Mines booked for next Tuesday....by coincidence... as I'm off for a week working in Hong Kong and I need the 'full range'. My appointment is with 'Nurse Christine'.... conjours up all sorts of images. I hope to get some time for a quick cache....well you never know. I'll certainly have a fully loaded GPS and PDA with me.

Liked that a lot

I use a Navman product on my PDA... does similar odd things to TT so you are not alone. Some parts of the map must be 30 years out of date. It tries to direct my across the golf course where the road used to be when I was at school, but that was removed in about 1980. She's called Hilary, after a headteacher with a no-nonsense imperious tone - 'perform a legal U turn' is said in such an authorative tone you just couldn't disobey.

You can set the CX up to behave just the same, ie with the cardinal points moving around. You can also turn this page off by default, as I do, so that you dont have to look at it once the satellites have been acquired. Speak to me if you have any more CX questions and I will try to help. Thanks, I've now got mine set the same, once the sats are found, page disappears. This is a great GPS. We're setting it up for school children and technophile teachers to use and I can turn so many menus off and hide so much that I can get it down to 2 button, 3 pages and 4 tiny help cards. Not cheapr though when you have to buy 6.

Thanks guys....can I justify a third GPS? (Or a 4th, just played with a Vista CX and loved it)