rdw

Hmm, it was a well hidden cache when I found it. Not likely to be accidentally found. But... BruceS doesn't miss much and that makes me a little nervous. I might be able to check on it tomorrow. rdw

1. Label it clearly as a Geocache. 2. Hide it well. Less chance of accidental finds. 3. Use it only in appropriate areas. An ammo box for an urban cache is pretty stupid, but it's good for a middle-of-the-forest cache. rdw

quote:Originally posted by Markwell:[Clayjar will] hike over mountains, through the burning desert and wade a 3 foot deep swamp, but wants to have the cache in a day-glo 5 gallon drum with a neon sign saying "The Cache Is HERE!!!". Amen brother, amen! rdw

quote:Originally posted by Markwell:[Clayjar will] hike over mountains, through the burning desert and wade a 3 foot deep swamp, but wants to have the cache in a day-glo 5 gallon drum with a neon sign saying "The Cache Is HERE!!!". Amen brother, amen! rdw

The Garmin website says that the GPS V can use Bluechart. http://www.garmin.com/cartography/mapSource/bluechartCD.html rdw

The Garmin website says that the GPS V can use Bluechart. http://www.garmin.com/cartography/mapSource/bluechartCD.html rdw

I didn't see this mentioned yet in the groups anywhere. Sorry if this is redundant. Check out: http://www.gpsinformation.net/gpsmapper/gpsmapper.htm rdw

There is a difference, but it is negligible. More often, benchmarks are off because the coordinates are interpolated from a map with an accuracy of +/- 6 seconds. I have personally seen markers off by more than 100ft. Use the coords to get you close, but use the description to actually find it. rdw

The zip code search results are listed by distance first, then subdivided into groups. The groups are caches you have not found, then caches you have found, caches you have hidden, and caches that have been temporarily disabled. You may have to go through many pages to see all of you finds listed. rdw

You'd miss the burning feeling in your legs after climbing a long steep hill. No thorny brush scratching you to death. No ticks. No wet feet from crossing creeks. No getting lost and racing back to your car as the sun races for the horizon. No bizarre adventures. Etc,etc,etc. I'll stick with the real thing thank you very much. rdw

You'd miss the burning feeling in your legs after climbing a long steep hill. No thorny brush scratching you to death. No ticks. No wet feet from crossing creeks. No getting lost and racing back to your car as the sun races for the horizon. No bizarre adventures. Etc,etc,etc. I'll stick with the real thing thank you very much. rdw

quote:Originally posted by leatherman: The GPS V has an external antenna. I've never seen it listed as Quad Helix like the GPS Map76. The GPS V has a quad helix antenna. The only GPSRs that have patch antennas are the eTrex line. Everything else is QH. My GPS V has performed very well in bad conditions and acceptably in horrible conditions. Leatherman's story strikes me as being more exception than rule. rdw

Always take the readings as close to the cache as possible as accurately as possible. Just like you did. It sounds like you got good coordinates and the finders got lucky. Also, it is a 1/1. Five minutes is enough time to find an easy cache. IMHO, you should never post bad coordinates on purpose. If you want to make your cache harder to find, make it smaller or put it in a place with more potential hiding spots. If I were you, I'd be happy that 4 people have found my cache already. rdw

Always take the readings as close to the cache as possible as accurately as possible. Just like you did. It sounds like you got good coordinates and the finders got lucky. Also, it is a 1/1. Five minutes is enough time to find an easy cache. IMHO, you should never post bad coordinates on purpose. If you want to make your cache harder to find, make it smaller or put it in a place with more potential hiding spots. If I were you, I'd be happy that 4 people have found my cache already. rdw

I use the Proxomitron, which somebody suggested a few months ago in these forums. It can be set to kill just about any webpage audio. It will display a link to the sound if you want it to. Proxomitron can kill pop-ups, frames, tables, backgrounds, javascript, animated GIFs, flash animations, and much more. You can customize it to do almost anything. It's free too. In the end, I don't care whether webpages have sounds or not, because I'll never hear it anyways. rdw

The GPS needs two sets of data to work. First is the almanac data. This is rough position data for all of the satellites so the GPS can calculate what sats will be visible at a particular time and place. This data is good for many weeks once it is received. Second is ephemeris data. This is the precise position of the satellites that is used for the position calculation. Once received, this data is good for 20-30 minutes. If you turn on the GPS in a canyon after being off for a while, it can't get the ephemeris data and therefore can't calculate your position. If you get a lock outside of the canyon, it has received the data, and can keep a lock down in the canyon. rdw

The Garmin GPSV is an excellent GPS for geocaching and many other purposes. The autorouting occasionally does some stupid things like routing you across a lake for the final step, but you will learn when to check it and when to trust it. And once in a while, it will unexpectedly shut off when the batteries are shaken an lose contact. Other than these two issues, mine has never failed me. It is good at pulling in signals under difficult conditions. It is waterproof so you don't have to worry about the weather or dropping it in water. The display is large and very easy to read. The battery life is good. I could go on and on. Two other things you should buy: 1. Rechargeable batteries and a charger. This will save you alot of money in the long term. 2. A magnetic compass. The GPS V doesn't have a built-in compass, and even if it did you still need to have a way out of the woods that doesn't depend on batteries. rdw

The Garmin GPSV is an excellent GPS for geocaching and many other purposes. The autorouting occasionally does some stupid things like routing you across a lake for the final step, but you will learn when to check it and when to trust it. And once in a while, it will unexpectedly shut off when the batteries are shaken an lose contact. Other than these two issues, mine has never failed me. It is good at pulling in signals under difficult conditions. It is waterproof so you don't have to worry about the weather or dropping it in water. The display is large and very easy to read. The battery life is good. I could go on and on. Two other things you should buy: 1. Rechargeable batteries and a charger. This will save you alot of money in the long term. 2. A magnetic compass. The GPS V doesn't have a built-in compass, and even if it did you still need to have a way out of the woods that doesn't depend on batteries. rdw

quote:Originally posted by Markwell: So no, GPS manufacturers are not falling over themselves to advertise on the site. AKA -- We need them more than they need us. We know it, they know it. And there you have it. rdw

Place it. As long as you inform people about what they are getting into before they get there. Let them know it's not meant for kids and that may be a physical challenge for some people. Somebody will try it and succeed. As for the trash... as long as it is not a dump (literally), it's OK. rdw

quote:Originally posted by solohiker: I still get updates and I don't belong to any charter. What are the benefits of being a charter member? I thought it was just a money making scam. Well, for starters, charter members got to test drive the benchmarking system for weeks before it went public. We get to change our titles in the forums. Etc, etc. And there are probably more benefits coming our way. rdw

Alan2's advice is good. Just get out and play with it. The manual is not the best, but it will help. There's nothing you can do to a GPS (besides kicking or throwing it) that does irreversible damage. rdw

If you use software like Easy- or ExpertGPS to keep track of your waypoints, you don't need to hold many. My GPS rarely has more than 50 waypoints in it. There are about 20 that are not geocaching related that are always in there. The coordinates for the caches I have hidden are in there, including the intermediate points for multis. Then load in the caches for a particular day, or for an entire trip if it's multi-day. Maybe a few points of interest along the way. While on the trip, I will invariably find a few things worth waypointing for future interest. But that's about it. I tried the 'load all the geocaches within a hundred miles' thing once, but it made it quite a pain to navigate through all the points. Once I forgot to load coordinates because I just assumed they were already in there. I didn't carry the printouts back then so I was far from home and out of luck. Got back home that night and immediately reverted to the old system. It has worked well. You can also use ExpertGPS for route transfer/storage/manipulation duties. In that case you shouldn't need many at once. One detail worth noting. Most GPSs worth buying have 500+ waypoint storage and multiple routes. Anything that doesn't is probably old, and might suffer from inferior technology. I suggest you peruse these forums for recommendations. There are numerous threads relating to "Which GPS should I buy?" Whatever you choose, welcome to the addiction. rdw

I'm confused as to whether we are talking about found/not found on the geocaching website or the NGS website. My thoughts on the standards for the geocaching website are in an earlier post to this thread. For the NGS website, the standards are different. I have never seen a good description of what is considered good, poor, destroyed, not found, mutilated, etc. For this reason, I report only marks that clearly fall into one category or another, usually good or destroyed. If I'm not sure, I don't report it. I found one marker, a metal rod with access cover, where the rod was gone. That I reported to Deb Brown as destroyed. My report was accepted and the datasheet is no longer displayed. Another station I reported as destroyed. It was a municpal water tower that had been torn down. Only the concrete footings remained. There are many benchmark discs that I have looked for but not found. These were NOT reported missing/destroyed/etc because I did't feel my search was thorough enough. The search was GPS based because I'm not good at estimating "7 rails east of the east curb of 17th street and 27 ft south of the south rail of the southernmost track" when the tracks are no longer there. Maybe if I had a big tape measure, I would be more confident that I was checking the right place. But I don't so I'm not. As for finding "missing" marks, been there done that. I found one in 2001 that was reported missing in the early 80's by the USGS. It was sitting in the front lawn of city hall where it had been since 1935. Why did they miss it? There coordinates were off. By a quarter or half mile. Weird thing was, the BM was located in the right place on the topo map. Gotta read those despcriptions. They may be outdated, but they're usually right. rdw

The PID is the permanent identifier. It is a unique ID code for a station. It is the easiest way to look up a specific mark. The designation is what is on the mark or a description for the object. For benchmark discs, it is usually a letter and then a number. But for other things it can be different. For example, water towers will have a PID such as KB1034, but the designation would be something like Carbondale Municipal Water Tower East. (BTW, this is a made up example. I have no idea what KB1034 is.) Hope this helps. rdw