Frodo_Underhill

Hello Brussels from Camden, We hope to join you soon! Thanks to everyone so far in your support and assistance. We'll post a note here and on the appropriate caches when we go live.

Greeting folks, I am indeed the cacher of which kewfriend is speaking. To answer some questions - initially I forgot to check the "listing is active" box for this cache. I caught that early and its been in the queue a week now with the box checked with no response. Usually we get cache approvals within 2-3 days so the delay on this cache is unusual. Several emails have been sent to the reviewer in the past few days and today they were forwarded to some of the alternate reviewers and other interested parties in our locality. There has been no reponse on the emails. Other caches continue to get approval in our area so the reviewer is active. (25 were approved on Monday by my count) Not sure what the issue is at this point. But the silence is deafening. To inform cachers in our area as to what is going on with the Peter Pan caches, I posted a note on the Northeast USA forum (link) In that posting I included an open request to the reviewer to please communicate with me if there is a problem so that it can be resolved. The real problem with the cache is that it is part of the Peter Pan series of caches that kewfriend organized. Without the information in the cache in NJ, it is not possible for some of the other Peter Pan caches to be found. Though cachers are resourceful and they have been able to work around this problem. At this point I have stirred the pot as much as I am comfortable with and I think we should give the system some time to work itself out. Though I am at wits end on what else can be done to get some progress on the cache approval. If anyone has any specific questions regarding the Peter Pan (Camden) cache, then please feel free to contact me via geocaching mail. Regards, Frodo_Underhill

Recently a series of six caches in the UK, Belgium, Canada and Australia were released to celebrate the seven Bronze statues of Peter Pan by Sir George Frampton which was first cast in 1912 for London. The statues are of J.M. Barrie's immortal character, Peter Pan atop a tree stump surrounded by fairies and various forest creatures. The London statue was erected in secret during the night and 'magically' appeared on 1st May 1912, having been originally commissioned in 1910. There was no publicity before the statue's arrival and on the day, Barrie placed this announcement in The Times: "There is a surprise in store for the children who go to Kensington Gardens to feed the ducks in the Serpentine this morning. Down by the little bay on the south-western side of the tail of the Serpentine they will find a May-day gift by Mr J.M. Barrie, a figure of Peter Pan blowing his pipe on the stump of a tree, with fairies and mice and squirrels all around. It is the work of Sir George Frampton, and the bronze figure of the boy who would never grow up is delightfully conceived." For those of us in Southern New Jersey, we are blessed with the seventh Peter Pan statue which was placed Camden, NJ in 1926. Not to be left out, a seventh Peter Pan cache has been placed in Camden and is currently in the approval queue. Each of the Peter Pan caches is a multi cache. The cacher will be brought to each of the Peter Pan statues to view and enjoy. Then the work begins! You must collect some information or perform some task to find the coordinates of the next stage. At that stage you will find a micro cache with coordinates to the final stage. But here is the twist, you will find coordinates for Peter Pan caches in some other cities, not yours! To find your Peter Pan cache, you will need to network with other cachers in other cities and countries to obtain the coordinates for the Camden cache, which are in one of the other caches. This should be a fun exercise in international cooperation! We are hopeful that our local reviewer will complete the reviews shortly. In the mean time, if you have been contacted by cachers in other countries regarding the Peter Pan cache, feel free to contact the CO “tinkerbell” through my account to discuss. For further information on the cache series, check out the cache page for the Peter Pan (London) cache at:GC188J7 - Peter Pan (London) And Pofe – if you are listening, please, please, please contact me regarding this cache. I have been attempting to contact you through various email addresses for a week now with no luck. Your e-mail address through your geocaching profile may not be correct or your email provider is not allowing the e-mail to get through as it is very unusual not to hear back from you. I would very much like to see this cache approved as it will be something special for the local and international caching community. If anyone else knows how to contact Pofe, please drop me a line. We really would like to get the Camden cache live as soon as possible since its delay is causing frustration for cachers in other countries who are depending on information in the Camden cache to complete their caches. And in the spirit of full disclosure, when the cache was originally submitted, I neglected to check the "cache is active" box on the cache page so it missed the cache reviews a week ago Tuesday (2/26/08). However the error was spotted and corrected then. It has been in the queue a week now and by my count over 20 caches where approved yesterday. So if there is a problem, please communicate with me Pofe so that we work it out. I feel bad about trying to contact you in an open forum like this but other channels are not working and I just don't know where else to turn. So apologies in advance for any ruffled feathers. Regards, Frodo_Underhill

It is an interesting concept but until they get this out of Alpha and make it more accessible on other platforms, sounds like a waste of time and effort. Plenty of real caches to find in the mean time.

several times but guess I don't understand how they work. My 2 locked sats are in the WSW To get to secret menu 03, press the keys in this order: MENU LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT LEFT Then a square box with the number 00 will appear, the right number should be highlighted, using the UP key change the number to 03 and then hit ENTER A screen will appear with a table of numbers - the numbers in the upper table, left columns are the designations for the WAAS satellites. If they are 135 and 138 you are in luck. Hit the ESC key twice to get out of this menu. Be very careful in the secret menus. Some of them will wipe the memory of the unit clean. Don't call any up unless you know what you are doing and use at your own risk. Also W in the SW sounds good. Seeing WAAS Averaging on the data screen is the best.

Go to secret menu 03. It will tell you what WAAS satellites the GPS is looking for. If its 120 & 122, then it is looking for the old WAAS birds and you are out of luck. If it is 135 and 138 then its looking for the new ones and you should be able to get WAAS. Also if you are on the east coast, the old birds will show up low in the SE on the satellite screen while the new ones will show up low in the SW. Hope that helps. This is based on one Maggie gold that I had all along which got the updates last year and a broken one I picked up on eBay and repaired which was inactive during the transition and did not get the updates. (Broken one had loose battery contacts which was an easy fix)

You might find this link of interest. TuxGPS - open source OS for Magellan Looks like it was an attempt to develop an alternate operating system for the Magellan GPSr. It didn't get much further than the ability to load simple programs into the GPS RAM and run them from there. Where this might be useful, is that if the locations of the WAAS almanac can ever be pinned down inside the GPS, then a simple program to reset the appropriate registers to see the new WAAS birds might be possible using the techniques these developers were working on. Just some food for thought.

Thanks for the replies folks. Googling the internet is resulting in the same answer - though it is tough to find any info at all - mixed in with everything else. At this point the only hope is that someone has figured out how to patch the firmware to update the hardwired WAAS almanac to default to the new satellites instead of the old. Interestingly I sent in a trouble report to Magellan via their web site last night and actually got a response this morning. It was for doing a factory reset - which I will try a bit later, though from everything I have seen so far I have doubts. If it works, I will post the procedure here. And of course I got the canned note that the unit was no longer serviceable but that there was a trade in program for newer units at a discounted price. From the stories about their new units, I think I will pass on a trade in program until they work out the bugs. Well no great loss on the Meri-green. It still works pretty well without WAAS and it will be a good unit for the kids when caching which is why I picked it up.

Recently picked up a Meridian Green unit on eBay and it appears to be working fine except for one issue. It is not getting a WAAS lock. When hidden menu 03 is called up it, it indicates that WAAS is enabled, and that it is looking for satellites 120 and 122. On my Meridian Gold, side by side with the Green, it is receiving WAAS and has satellites 135 and 136 listed under hidden menu 03. So will the Meridian Green eventually update the almanac on its own or do I need to reset the unit somehow?

Any idea as to specifically what features they might've felt were lacking in the PN-20 which were fulfilled by Garmins? They basically said that it worked a lot differently than the Garmin and was harder to use for what they wanted to do. One specific thing I remember that you can't search for nearest geocaches. It only lets you search by name in alphabetical order. You can search for the nearest geocache on a PN-20. I do it all the time with mine. You can toggle between "Find Near Map Center" and "Find by Name" on the "Find" menu. Read the manual, included with GPS. This unit is a bit different than the Maggies I have been using but once you work with it for a while you will love it for the maps and the responsiveness of the unit.

The GPX files from the cache pages or from pocket queries can be downloaded into the PN-20 as waypoints through the Topo 7.0 software which comes with the PN-20. It works just fine for getting the waypoints in and the PN-20 works real well getting you to the cache. And the maps you put on the unit are the best I have seen so far. GSAK is the way to fly if you want to sort out the GPX and pocket query results before loading them through Topo 7. I am having no trouble getting the info from geocaching into my PN-20. Sounds like its pretty well supported to me. Have you got a specific support question?

I have had my PN-20 for about 2 weeks now and I am really pleased with the unit. Have had it out caching a few times and the unit is responsive under heavy tree cover and gets me to the caches without any "looping" or "slingshots". And the maps are superb. I haven't tried any of the additional imagery yet as the maps are that good. I find the screen to be very readable even in bright sunlight. Battery life looks to be comparable to other GPS units - NiMH rechargables. The map updates and scrolling could be more responsive but it is not a show stopper. And the display could always be bigger but again not a show stopper. What sold me on this unit was the crisp display, the maps and the evidence of active customer support on the DeLorme forums and occasional postings here. So my first impressions are very favorable and this is from a diehard Maggie fan.

That means someone will actually have to go to Camden? Oh yeah! Some of us get there from time to time! Some nice things to see along the water front. Some not so nice things to see and do elsewhere - like the never ending jury duty I had this spring!

email sent sounds like a very interesting idea - I wish you well and hope I can help.

My coin arrived this morning. Southern New Jersey - near Philadelphia. Very nicely done. Somewhat reminiscent of another Challenge coin released recently.

Consider this (be careful as it could be heresy). This is not the only listing service for caches. Consider that a cache may have been listed on one of the other sites and then listed here later or it may have been put out as an event cache and then converted to a permanent cache. In these cases the cache will have been legitimately found before it was listed here. Claiming a FTF for this cache after several people have found in earlier through another route doesn't sound quite right. I would say there is no FTF to claim as it was taken in the caches earlier unbranded existence. Good luck coming up with some standards for FTF. The discussion on this topic on our local South Jersey board generated a lot of angst and no agreements. It would be nice for this excuse for argument to go away.

Here is another twist on the question. There are some cachers who play the game in the background and they neither sign the logs nor log on geocaching.com. In this situation how do you ever know your were first and not beaten by one of these "ghosts"?

Thanks. I eventually found a copy of v 3.0.0762 on the web and I am using that now. I may go back to the latest version and try the time sliders. I knew I was missing something but did not know where to start. Thanks to everyone for hte help.

I just upgraded to Google Earth 4.0.2737. An earlier version I had would show all the waypoints and tracks in a gpx file. This new version only shows some of the waypoints and none of the tracks. Is there an option I am missing on the Google Earth settings? The earlier version was 3 something. The update was prompted by a hard drive crash and system rebuild so I don't have the old files to go back to. OS - Windows XP Pro - SP2 - IE6 Thanks

PS - Ask Mother Hen of Evil Chicken fame about the swamp! See if she has a flashback!

The two of us in the same sentence!!! Will wonders never cease? Nice to be compared to one of the "uber-cachers" And oh yeah - I did the Codex and swore left at right every step of the way. If you are into mega puzzles, I seriously suggest you try Choreographed Chaos first. We all had more fun with the structure of this puzzle than Cerebral Codex. In Chaos you are fed the puzzles sequentially as you solve each step. So its like following the breadcrumb trail. For Codex you have all the puzzles at once. If you have a good code breaker on the team you can get through the puzzles in short order. Then you have a large work list of stages to go find so you can secure the info you need for the final puzzles. Thus you see this huge work load at once which can be discouraging. Where as for Chaos you see it a bit at a time. Also the physical stages of Codex are out on the edge of extremety. Where Chaos was 10 stages of 3 - 4 terraain to give you an overall 5 terrain, most of the stages of Codex are 4 - 5 terrain with some legitimately 5 to give you an overall 5. Whatever you decide to do, be careful and most of all have fun!

Down in South Jersey this goes by the politically incorrect term of "profiling". This thread will be constructive until it wanders into the territory of caches you may not care for and the chachers who place them. Its much more sporting to figure this information out by caching and asking around when you run into other cachers. My two cents worth,

Never heard of the top four on that list Long Islanders??

Events are cool but nice to have a themed event now and then. Just having one every month to have an event could get old. We seem to end up with something in South Jersey every two - three months. SJG gas been doing some un-branded events posted on their own site due to overwhelming the Pic the last time an event there was posted on Geocaching.com. The number of cachers is rapidly growing and at times gets beyond the ability of some of the small places to handle an event. I would love to see an event up at the White Manna but only a dozen or so people would fit in there! Rather than a rigid schedule I would vote for whoever wants to host an event and do the footwork to feel free to post the event.

Getting with the spirit of this, Math Teacher hit 666 today at 1892 Train Museum - Congrats MT!! I remember hitting 666 myself back in August at Lonely Twin Pines. I made sure I found a couple other caches immediately after that since I didn't want my count to stay at that auspicious number! Nik, I think some recognition now and then is a good thing. But in the back of your mind remember that it really is about the journey and the good friends we make along the way! Dennis