Curioddity

The CR123A is a 3V battery. The 18650 is a 3.7V nominal battery with a fully-charged resting voltage of 4.1V. Typical dimensions for the CR123A are 17x34.5mm and dimensions for the 18650 are 18x65mm. So a single 18650 will fit where 2 CR123A cells do if a ~4mm filler plug is used or the spring is stretched, but under a best case situation the single 18650 will be at a 1.9V disadvantage and that will quickly drop to a 2.3V disadvantage once 10 to 15% of the 18650's capacity has been used. That's not half, but close.

One of the most amazing things I've ever seen was the evening mass-exit of bats from the May Lundy Mine in the Inyo National Forest above Mono Lake. It blackened the sky for several minutes in a very 'Steven King' kind of way. The closest cache I can find to the May Lundy Mine is the GCH3NA Beaver Heaven cache which is a little upstream from Lundy Lake. The Lundy Lake Resort was a favorite camping destination for my family when I was still a youngster. The mine is an easy (but steep) ~3-1/2 mile hike up the Lake Canyon Creek trail from Lundy Lake and it's well worth the effort if you enjoy spectacular scenery and historical 'ghost' mines. Check out THIS WEB PAGE (by others) to see what I'm talking about. I suppose I should add that my last visit to the area was years before the advent of geocaching. I should also add that you don't want to forget your fly rod and creel if you visit the area. There aren't many caches, but there's lots of trout! Pete

If a FTF is at stake and it's important to you, you could simply mention in your online log that your sig was the first one on the blank cache log and leave it at that. Then it's a matter of record and it's up to the CO to decide how (or whether) to handle the situation. Otherwise, just be true to your own ethics and beware the people you suspect are cheaters. Pete

I have a fairly good friend who has been battling Lyme Disease for over a year. To paraphrase him, there are days he's afraid he'll die and days he's afraid he won't. It's treatable enough if you catch it early, but he waited far too long before he sought treatment. The thing to watch for is an expanding ring of raised redness around the bite area. This can appear days to a couple of weeks after the bite. That's when to see the doctor. It's important to note, though, that about 1 in 4 people don't get this inflamation. It's also important to note that the inflamation and early symptoms will usually clear up after about a month which leads many people to think that it's over. But untreated, the disease starts in earnest on the joints, heart, and nervous system in another few weeks or months. Pete

Heh .. I don't need no stinking ion storm to be odd. Pete

OK, time for another point: I have three GPS devices listed in my profile: An Oregon 400t, a nuvi 500, and a GPS12; all Garmin. The Oregon is my newest, and the GPSr I use almost exclusively for geocaching. The nuvi lives in the car, and I've had the GPS12 since 2000. I bought the nuvi to replace the GPS12 when I started caching, and shortly thereafter I purchased the Oregon because while the nuvi works great for on-road navigation, I was dissatisfied with how it worked as a geocaching tool. I still use the nuvi while I'm driving to where I want to cache hunt and I've been out "nostalga caching" a couple of times with the GPS12 just for the fun of it, but for all practical purposes my Oregon is my geocaching GPS. Yet I have all three listed in my geocaching.com profile. While this may say something about brand-loyalty, many would also say that it statistically flaws the matrix being discussed in this thread. Heck, I also have a Garmin 'aviation' GPS which cost more than twice what all three of the others cost combined. Theoretically I could geocache with it too, so maybe it should be listed in my profile as well. Pete

Do the caches you're finding have any commonality, like a single hider? We have a cacher around here who has a large number of hides and his posted coordinates are notorious for being off by 25 feet or so. He's much better now at providing accurate coordinates, but there are still a hundred or so of his old caches in play with 'loose" coordinates, and you can get into areas where that's just about all you'll find. Pete

The last time I was deep in a 'real' forest for any significant amount of time I was dropping and limbing big sugarpine and white fir in a steep canyon with 6 other fallers and 9 choker-setters working around me. There were lots of rattlesnakes and white-faced hornet nests in the area and we had a high-lead rig yarding logs out of the canyon over our heads. Do you think I spent much time worrying about ticks? Pete

I stand by my observation that for all practical purposes, the reading is meaningless and certainly not something which should be considered when comparing the real-world performance of one GPSr to another. Pete

I always try to consider the ultimate cost of an item, be it a toy or a tool. By "ultimate" cost, I'm referring to how much I have to spend to be satisfied. Take my R/C Transmitter for example: I recently purchased a Futaba 12FGA FASST system and I'm finally satisfied that I have the ultimate radio for all the R/C disciplines I fly. The 12FGA has a street price of around $1000, but if I amalgamate the cost of all the lesser radios I bought on my way to that satisfaction, I figure I spent about $2500 for it. When I started geocaching I finally replaced my old Garmin GPS12 which I've had since around 2000, and I didn't make the same mistake I made with my R/C transmitters. Pete

Not necessary. I'm quite satisfied with the GPS units I own and it doesn't matter to me how many others own the same or would if they could. My input may have looked like a question, but it was really little more than a point. Pete

I've always felt that a gun will get you through times of no club much better than a club will get you through times of no gun, so in situations like you cite I'd rather have a little Streamlight TLR-1 hanging from the barrel of a Desert Eagle. Pete

If you're referring to the little display in your GPS application that says how accurate your device is at the time, it's pretty much junk information. The same holds true for every dedicated GPS unit I've ever used. Take my Oregon 400t for example. I saved a waypoint with it held right over a U.S. Geological Survey benchmark on a local peak last weekend. I had waypoint averaging and WAAS turned on and my Oregon was reporting a 40' accuracy right before and after I saved the waypoint. When I got home I compared the waypoint coordinates with the official benchmark datasheet in ngs.noaa.gov and my waypoint was within .01 seconds longitude and .03 seconds latitude or, in layman's terms, less than 3 feet from being exactly on the money. So much for 40' accuracy! I've lost track of the times I've performed this same test and gotten the same results with the Oregon and several other GPS devices I've owned over the years. I don't participate in online benchmarking (like I should), but I've been documenting all the benchmarks I've found since the Garmin GPS12 was the newest thing on the market and this discrepancy between saved coordinates and that silly accuracy display seems to be the rule instead of the exception. I've also lost track of the times that my GPSr has led me right to a cache when the accuracy display was saying 50-70 feet or more acuracy. The bottom line is that accuracy display on most consumer-grade GPS units is meaningless and unimportant, yet people insist on making a big deal about it. It's also important to understand that no GPSr has ever found a cache. The GPSr simply leads a human to where he or she should start the search. Pete

I think the biggest problem with this poll is it fails to ask one of the most important questions: If all these people had a choice (read: an ample supply of discretionary funds), would they keep the GPSr they have or replace it with something else? Pete

Yup. An experienced geocacher is a lot quicker to put the GPS device away and use their geosenses to find a cache once they have a reasonable idea where GZ is. A GPS won't find a cache for you and it doesn't much matter what kind you're using. A GPS will only show you roughly where to look, and then experience (geosenses) needs to take over. And the only way I know to gain experience is to keep finding caches. I didn't really start "getting it" until I had 50 finds or so, and it's gotten easier and easier with every find since then. Some hides still stump me, but as often as not it's because I'm not paying attention or assumptions are clouding my mind. Once I clear my mind of all the junk and focus on the job at hand, I can usually find most caches in pretty short order now. Pete

I already mentioned this, but I think it bears repeating: When it comes to geocaching, you can definitely have too much light. My most powerful flashlight is a Pelican 7060 which is rated at 130 lumins, and far more often than not, it's too bright. First off, it attracts the attention of people I'd rather have not notice me like the police, security guards, and other muggles. I'm not a scofflaw, especially when I'm out caching, but I still prefer to not generate any unnecessary curiosity. The Pelican also tends to illuminate outer layers foliage too brightly which makes it hard to see into the interior of bushes and trees. Finally, when I turn it off, I can't see diddly-squat for a minute or so while my eyes adjust to the dark again. I'm not saying that there's never a time or place for a powerful flashlight and when you need one a wimpy one won't do, but those situations are the exception instead of the rule. The rest of the time a low to moderate power AAA or AA light will actually serve you better than a flamethrower. Pete

I just love my Pelican 7060. It's a little smaller than a double-D cell flashlight but it's unbelievably bright. My caching partner calls it the flamethrower. Truth be known, my Pelican so bright that it occasionally draws unwanted attention to my caching activities, so I've gotten in the habit of using a little 2-AAA LED flashlight most of the time. I got one of the Eveready Hard Case Professional 2 AAA Inspection Lights from Home depot for less than $10; more as a "disposable" (read: loseable) light, but I've really come to like it a lot. Perhaps it's best attribute is it doesn't roll, so it stays where you put it when you set it down. That, and it slips very comfortably into a pants pocket. I've been using it almost nightly for a couple of months now and it still has the original batteries in it. Pete

I personally feel that some of the caches I've found were litter the moment the CO placed them and walked away. That said, I'm also surprised that some of those have lasted as long as they have. 'Nuff outta me. Gots to find my asbestos underwear now. Pete

That will depend entirely on what kind of antenna. In the case of R/C TX-RX communication, point a telescoping whip antenna at plane = bad, but point loaded "rubber duck" style antenna at plane = good. I haven't taken my 400t apart but I'll bet dollars to donuts that the antenna is etched onto a circuit board and if that's the case, it's probably quite directional. I don't recall having any problem transferring data with them pointing nose-to-nose, though. That's how my caching partner and I typically do it with about a foot between devices. Pete (also a rabid R/C pilot and amateur radio operator) And HeliGeek, check out my videos at www.vimeo.com/pgr/videos and www.youtube.com/LowAltidude. I'm one of the team who runs the Indoor Flight Venue at the AMA Convention every year and I've managed to get some real good video of some of the best fixed-wing and heli pilots in the world flying their routines and just horsing around. rePete

Again? Heck, I've been chasing girls since my voice started to change and that was more moons ago than I'm prepared to fess up to. And in my book that's still, not again. Pete

I tried sending a cache to a friend's GPS in a busy Starbucks once but it wouldn't work no matter what we tried. We tried again later on the bike path and it worked perfectly first time. That leads me to believe that RF interference was playing a role in the Starbucks. There were at least a dozen people wirelessly surfing the Internet and everyone seemed to have a gizmo with a blinking blue LED plugged into the side of their head. 'Course that also meant there was at least one cell phone in the room for each of those gizmos with a blinking blue LED. With all that RF energy in the room, I'm surprised everyone's coffee wasn't at a rolling boil. Pete

Oregon 400. Neck lanyard if I'm wearing a shirt with a pocket, carabiner clip to a belt loop if I'm not. I recently saw a cacher with his GPSr attached to a heavy-duty keyback (self-retracting reel doodad) and I thought that was pretty slick. Pete

These things are what I suspected, but it sounds like there are no serious consequences. Thanks again. Pete

Are there any any consequences, complications, abnormal behavior, etc. that will result from loading two overlapping pocket queries with some of the same caches in them into an Oregon 400t at the same time? Thanks ahead of time. Pete

Put the hint in Morse Code. Pete the Troublesome