MKFmly
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Posts posted by MKFmly
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The cache D/T rating does an ok job identifying the requirements from some arbitrary point defined as stopped traveling/start hunting to the point of the find. As written the cache rating guide does not address the variable "effort", "time" or "resources" required that many cachers (and occationally Groundspeak) feel need to be included in the D/T ratings to get to that arbitrary point.
Are all Hawaii caches T5 because they are on an island(s) and require special equipment (aircraft, boat, etc) to get to? Likely not. So in the case of the US/France 2 stage multi example 1/1 seems appropriate, with the greater than 10K attribute and special equipment atttribute set ;-).
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The difference, however, is that power trails, and the goal to find as many caches in as short of time as possible provides an incentive to cut corners.
This is not a goal of power trails, this is a goal of many many cachers. Power trails enable cachers to do this more easily. However, to suggest that power trails are the root cause and that these goals did not exist before power trails and that cachers never cut corners or engaged in "questionalbe behaviours" before power trails is not fact nor accurate.
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Many things affect GPS accuracy; satellite constellation, solar activity, atmosphere, topography, multi-path, filter settings, processing algorithms, etc. These vary on a continuous basis.
In general you will find that a smart phone GPSr chip will tend to be more sensitive to all those factors noted above providing generally less accuracy and stability than a standalone GPSr.
Placing caches with an iPhone should be fine if you are sure you have got it correct. I've struggled far more with caches placed with bad coordinates than I have with my iPhone's signal.
Signal strength of your iPhone is irrelevant. How does anyone determine that they "have got it correct"? How is it determined that struggles are due to "bad coordinates" (what ever that means)?
By knowingly (or unknowingly) introducing wider variences of the accuracy issues noted above (i.e. using phones instead of GPSrs), how can you attibute positioning errors to "bad coordinates"?
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At least one puzzle series allows "remote solvers" to discover a trackable (in lieu of finding the cache) if you complete the prescribed puzzle(s).
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The strange thing is that nobody is willing to post that first DNF. Then when one appears, everyone else seems inclined to post one a little easier.
Seems to be human nature and is not so strange. A fair amount of people do not want to be first. They are in general followers and are comfortable in that role. Most cachers (especially newer ones) are hesitant to put their "caching self-esteem" out there for other cachers to posiblly judge. Once the first DNF is posted then it is felt "safer" to express your experience. You see the same in the forums daily.
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Speaking only for myself, my reasons for using such words are because they are a part of our vernacular and to remove available words simply because someone finds them offensive is to limit our abilities to express ourselves.
There are a myraid of words and expressions available, as you say why limit yourself to a few cuss words designed to shock and ofttimes offend?
"Such Words" are losing their power and are used in many less extreme contexts: regardless of anyones "comfort" with the use of such words, if there is no need or intent to shock or offend why use them?
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I would like to search for caches by their terrain & difficulty this way I can fill in my missing T/D caches.
Try www.project-gc.com ...Maps ... D/T Matrix
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One extra note...
For those who can read steroscopic images, the image size on the cache page is more difficult to read. Clicking on the magnifing button (Bottom RHC) of the image helps or just as simply zooming your browser page to 200%. No extra software or larger monitors requried.
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We camp a lot and like to search the areas we visit for caches. What is the best way to find a night cache? The type I'm looking for are those that use firetacks and require flashlights to locate the cache. I've tried a few different attributes like the "Flashlight Required", "Night Cache" and "Recommended at Night", but more times than not they are not actually the night caches described above. Maybe there's just not that many out there... Any ideas?
It will vary by area but generally there are not that many. Use pocket queries and search on the attributes you have noted above (and add UV light). It works best if your PQ searches for one attribute individually, rinse and repeat for the others.
Bear in mind you can cache at night regardless if there is a "night cache", and it is quite fun and challenging.
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We are customers of Groundspeak, but we are not customers of the reviewer. We are their peers. I think that's an ideal arrangement, so I object to any suggestion that we should think of them as if they are employees of Groundspeak.
Reviewers provide an exclusive service (publishing caches) to customers (geocachers) on behalf of Groundspeak. They are not peers but have been extended extra privileges/responsibilities to be an agent of Groundspeak. A service relationship exists regardless of the existance of a monetary transaction.
In a reviewers capacity as an agent of Groundspeak they evaluate caches against the stated guidelines. "Reviewers are entitled to their opinions" however they are restricted from passing judgement on "cache quality" based on those opinions.
Many people have a knack for being "candid, blunt, and honest" while at the same time being polite, respectful, and helpful, without the use of boilerplate and/or "politically correct" language. Just check out most of the "moderater" posts on the forum...
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The reviewer was being candid, blunt, and honest, which is much more refreshing than a bot-like boilerplate message.
--snip--
+1
Reviewers are just fellow cachers who give their time freely on behalf of the rest of us.
Why in this modern age do people hold "volunteers" to a lower standard and/or give them a free pass because they believe "their heart is in the right place"?
As a paying customer I expect agents of Groundspeak to be professional, respectful, and to complete their assigments in a approproate time frame regardless of their renumeration.
Reviewers have been recruited to ensure caches meet the minimum stated guidelines of Groundspeak. They were not recruited to be "judges" of cache quality nor enforce any sort of personal preference/opinion/agenda.
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Look up Inattentional Blindness
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inattentional_blindness
And maybe this was the article...
http://blog.geocaching.com/2013/04/behind-the-scenes-of-the-podcacher-podcast/
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Do you have any evidence that this affected any of the caches in the oldest bookmarks?
No, however it is a plausible theory with respect to these "Oldest Caches" and without significant investigation and more information it would be difficult to prove satisfactorily if this plausible event occurred or not.
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Double Post
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The GC code is not a reliable indicator, other than in general. It only tells you when the cache page was started.
As you can reserve GC codes indefinitely, and publish a cache much later using one of the older codes. For example, a cacher could reserve a few GC codes playing with the cache creation pages when learning the geocaching.com site and/or have a few left over from caches that were never published (for whatever reason) dating back years.
Said cacher could then publish a cache with one of those codes and a date near when the GC code was issued and no one would be the wiser. Obviously, the logs would indicate a few things on the gross time scale but a matter of weeks or months would not show up very easily. It happens daily where a GC code is reserved and not published for some time (for whatever reason) and in the meantime later reserved GC codes are published inside a few days.
As a current example, I submitted four caches for publication on July 1st, and I am sure there have been many GC codes reserved and published since that time. The published caches with newer GC codes will always be "older" than my older GC Code caches.
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There are numerous threads advocating (some arguably tongue in cheek) the "banning" of certain container sizes (and types)
One oft repeated mantra in the forums is "no more micros in the woods", a lame cache page, in a lame wilderness location (and there are many), even though its regular sized is still a lame cache. Isn’t it?
One holistic view of a "geocache experience" is the cache trifecta: that being a creative cache page, an interesting journey and/or location, and a creative hide/camo.
In addition to the oft maligned micros, many small, regular, and large size caches fail some if not all those tests.
So given a deficiency in the other aspects of the "geocache experience" does the size of the container really matter?
How would banning "any cache size" (or type for that matter) improve overall quality and address the other deficiencies, if indeed you agree there are any?
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is there a way to filter so you only search for night caches?
In general there is, you can run a PQ with the "Night Cache" or "Flashlight Required" attributes. This pre-supposes that the correct attributes were assigned to the cache.
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for height, in planes, use GPS height, NOT the pressure sensor !
it is displayed on the GPS status screen.
Are you trying to say that a GPS pressure sensor; by being located inside the pressurized portion of the airplane, will not give you an accurate reading of your current height?
Aircraft still use pressure sensors to determine altitude and airspeed. During cruise/transit flight these are set to reference altitude to standard day sea level. That is one reason planes don’t fly into each other. Upon takeoff and landing they are set to "local" pressure so they know how high they are above the "local ground".
GPS heights generally give you a distance above the ellipsoid (a model of the earth’s surface as it is not spherical but more like a squashed egg) not the ground. In some areas the ellipsoid matches reality quite well and in others they are quite inaccurate. This will also change with the geodetic reference system you happen to be using.
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I would think that aeronautic equipment would be property shielded such that it would be protected from stray RF.
Off Topic but to address a related issue
For the most part aircraft avionics are tested shielded as required. Obvioulsy, aircraft cockpits from the last 30 years (and even today) were not designed to be hardened against the infinate variety of Personell Electronic Devices (PEDs) available today because the normal (and critical) use case in take off, landing, and in-flight they would normally not be (or expected to be) subjected to those emmisions.
There is a "black art" called Electro Magnetic Compatibility that sets out to test for interference between electro-magnetic devices among other things. It is time consuming and expensive. PED (Personell Electronic Devices) have been much studied and are tested for emmisions/interactions prior to approved use in aircraft. Witnessing "modded or hacked" black/grey market satilite cards (from the ground) jamming the aircraft "guard" emergency frequency, to something as mundane (and low tech) as the the shank in a safety boot throwing off compass readings.
With experience and testing they have relaxed the guidelines and restrictions of PEDs in some cases, but to blanketly expect that all PEDs are compatible (and cause no interference) with all cockpits/aircraft (and variations therof) is silly. Obviously, most aircraft travvelers would want the TSB to err on the side of safety, and with that goes automatic restrictions until proven otherwise.
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There are other "geo-checkers" available, some perhaps with better stability.
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Not taking August off and we will likely engage the month long streak just to get out caching together everyday.
Travel takes time and effort, and is the stuff that memories are made of."Souvenirs" may be encouragement and motivation for some cachers to get out and write some new adventures and make some new memories...
August 13 (to choose a random date) is not the stuff that memories are made of. I mean, unless something dramatic happened to you on that date. It's just a date.True and that goes for just about every cache find/log (even if you travel) and have a souvenir already. However, if you do not go caching you won't have the chance for "something dramatic" happening...(at least w.r.t. caching ;-)
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What kind of challenge cache are you currently doing?
We are chipping away at many challenges: in addition to the standard Jasmer, Fitzy, and "Hidden Date" challenges these are some others we are following and pick up a cache or two on our caching excursions. We like the research and planning,the variety, and the travel aspects of meeting these challenges.
Alberta Lonely Cache Challenge (Now Archived but enjoy the concept and are still completing it)
Alberta Alphanumeric Hider Challenge
Discover Alberta Challenge
Alberta Provincial Parks Part One of Triple Crown
The MD`s Of AB Part Two of Triple Crown Challenge
Mapsheets AB, final Triple Crown Jewel Challenge
The Bingo! Challenge
GC30C3M The Say Challenge
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Container/No Container/Log/No Log Ruling
in General geocaching topics
Posted
After a quick search, the guideline(s)/rule(s) indicate that a geocache has a container and a log book. Nowhere does it indicate that the log HAS to be within the container or that the container has to encapsulate the log book.
Although pedantic, it could be argued that in this case the (wooden) log IS the container and as such contains the "other type of log for geocachers to record their visit".