fersman4

Well, it sucked reading through this whole argument and the only useful post was the third one. Anyway, perhaps you can school me a little. According to geocachingpolicy.info, BLM lands says geocaching is okay in general, but that individual lands have the capability to make some restrictions. But which lands are governed by the BLM? Who governs National Forests and Wilderness areas? Trying to figure out who manages what lands is very difficult and confusing. Little help?

That's just silly. Do a search for GC65. Apparently, the code will just roll over to 7 characters.

[i did do a search before I posted this topic, but found nothing.] We all know the number of members on this site are growing very quickly, and now that geocaching is getting attention from the media, one can only expect the growth to continue. One of the things I like about geocaching is that it is almost an exclusive sport to those who happened to be let in on the little secret. After all, why do we use the cell phone trick in busy areas, or call non-geocachers geo-muggles if not to keep that secret from them? More geocachers means more caches to find (yes, it also means more lamp-post micros, but that aside....), which is a good thing. But at some point, the number of people caching becomes so great that geocaching is no longer a secret society with its own culture. Instead it becomes a commonly used term that means much less than it means now and does little to discriminate the geocaching culture from the rest of society. I suspect when we finally reach these numbers, a vast number of people will suddenly be bored with the mundane sport known as geocaching and its significance will be lost. How many is too many? 1% of the country's population? 5%? 10%? How far are we from this point? How do we make sure we never get there?

In these forums people are always asking whether caches can be placed on public lands like National Parks and Wilderness areas. The fact is that some areas say it's okay, and some say it is not okay. When someone asks the forums, the answer is always 'Ask the land management organization'. This is obviously necessary, but I don't see why it has to be redundantly asked by everyone who wants to place a cache in an area. If geocaching.com had a centralized database where people could report the answers they received from park administrators for specific parks, it would really be a useful tool for cache placers. Please consider adding such a repository to the site. Thanks.

I did a pocket query for virtual caches within 500 miles of my coordinates (Dublin, California - N37*43.000 W121*54.000) that have been "placed" within the last 8 months. There were NINE! new virtuals. Some might be upset at the lack of approval for virtuals, but I'm going to have to disagree. I looked at the details of these 9 places, and they look AWESOME (especially those placed more recently)! It is plainly simple to see why war memorials, lighthouses, and other "areas of interest" are not approved compared to these places. I now understand that the virtual site has to be truly something very very special. I just wanted to let the approvers know that I agree with the current very restrictive policy used for approving virtuals. Keep up the good work!

I get this one a lot in my area: UNDER ROCKS. Of course, there are no rocks even remotely close to the area of the cache.

I thought I saw this topic before, but I couldn't find it in a very thorough search. Sorry for the possible repeat topic. My eTrex Legend reports a number called Accuracy. Let's say I'm sitting at a position and my GPS reads 0.0 ft. away from the coords, but the accuracy is 15 feet. Does this mean that the actual position is garaunteed to be within 15 feet? Or is this number more statistical, for example 15 feet at 80th percentile, 15 feet at 50th percentile, or something similar? The reason I want to know is because I want to be able to get my GPS to say that I'm within 5 or so feet of a cache with say 15ft. accuracy so that my initial search area is in a 20 foot radius. Then if I don't see it I can expand out from there. I realize that the coords for a cache may not be that close, but it at least gives me a good starting point. Thanks in advance.

I'm going to break the mold here. I have NOT paid for GSAK (though I do have premium membership, without which GSAK isn't as useful). 1) In my line of work, and for the past five or so years, open source and freeware applications are the norm, and people like me take advantage of the wonderful things others do. Of course, in order for this system to work universally, people like me who use these tools have almost an obligation to develop open our own open source or freeware applications for the benefit of others. It's like a new currency system, where the currency is useful applications rather than money, and the value of each application is irrelevant as long as at least a few can use it. 2) I'm new to this sport and I want to make sure that this is something I'm going to want to do more long term before I invest. This does not mean that I will not pay for GSAK. Indeed I have paid more than $30 to get rid of a nag screen on other applications, but I only do it after I'm sure it's what I want to do.

I don't look at hints unless I'm totally stumped or I've already found the cache, but I'm getting to the point where I can almost read ROT13 without having to look at the key, which kinda stinks if my eyes just so happen to glide over the area where the hints are (when you tell yourself not to glance there, your eyes seem to gravitate that way). Anyone else a sick freak like me? Have the site developers thought of allowing people to choose the number for the ROT algorithm?

Is there a way to get pocket query results (.GPX files) with more than six logs? It always seems to be my luck that the logs I need are further down the list.

This link essentially answers all my questions. Thanks!

We hardly ever bring something along to leave in a cache, so we are always TNLN-ing. But travel bugs are a different story. A TB can go into a cache, and then later be removed from a cache and the cache contents will not be altered. Nothing is gained or lost, except the TB is sent along to its next destination, which is a good thing. It would suck to trade something good for a TB, then come to another cache to drop off the TB, only to find a bunch of junk that cannot (with good conscience) be traded to another cache. Furthermore, this results is a net addition of an item to the first cache, and a net removal of an item from the second cache. So... Is it bad to take or leave a TB from a cache without exchanging? P.S. I did a search prior to posting and did not find an answer.

The first stage of a nearby multi requires gathering some information about a skate-boarding skate park. I took my wife and dog to the park and found that the only people there were a dozen teenage skate-boarders. Compared to them we are practically YUPPIES! Anyway, we were as quick as we could be obtaining the necessary information, then we got the heck out of there. We were definitely out of place there.

Of course it can! I hated all the papers, mainly because my desk is small and I have to hook up my printer to my computer every time I want to print something. That's a big hassle. Of course, now I have have to plug in my PDA, but at least I can do this from the couch with my laptop

lame warrior - a forum poster on forums.Groundspeak.com who loves to post a reply stating that the topic is lame (usually LAME in caps) instead of just moving on to other topics. This person is usually, but not always, trying to increase his/her post count. I'm sure I'll get some lame warriors for this topic. Not much I can do but LMAO. Can you think of alternatives to the term 'lame warrior'? Be creative.

I'm so psyched about figuring out how to go paperless: iPAQ 3850 with PPC 2002 Premium membership GSAK 5.04 GPXSonar 1.2.1 (not 1.3 because I don't have PPC 2003) SWEET!

Maybe the reactions you are getting to your posts are why there have been so many posts about intimidation. Really, people, if you don't like the topic of a post, just move on and don't reply. This is just a common courtesy. What you may find LAME might be interesting to others. Please, grow up and be nice. Sure, these repeat questions might be better served by using the search function, but it isn't that hard to politely suggest that the poster do a search, then have them lock the post. If you don't post a reply to a lame post, then those posts will eventually go away.

Legend (B/W) How about creating a software development kit so that third-party vendors could create new software to work ON the GPS itself. Bluetooth sounds like a great idea. More memory, and an SD card slot, as long as it doesn't hurt durability or waterproofness. If I have more than 10 waypoints, I don't like it how the "keyboard" thing pops up (when I try to find a waypoint by name). That should only come up if I ask it to. It would be cool if it could store some waypoint data (and a LOT of it) so that I can go paperless with just my GPS (i.e., cache notes, hints, and the last few logs). Built-in DGPS receiver channels, so I don't need extra hardware. And, of course, all of this on a small, cheap, low power handheld like the Legend

Well, the log was accepted! The owner was really nice about the whole thing too, and was even impressed that I found a new answer to #9 that s/he didn't even thing of.

Golf, backpacking, Aviation

You should get very familiar with manually entering waypoints and using your legend. This means finding a dozen or so traditionals and multis. After you have one or two dozen under your belt, you will really understand how to use the GPS well, then there's no harm in going to something like EasyGPS or GSAK.

I would like to upgrade my eTrex Legend so that I can get DGPS reports instead of requiring seperate hardware.

I didn't find a cache, but I do eventually plan to try again. Should I: 1) Post a DNF now, then post a Found later 2) Post a DNF now, then post a Found later and delete my DNF 3) Don't post a DNF, but wait until I either find it or give up

Where's the challenge? Actually, it turns out, looking DEEP in the logs, that question #3 is unanswerable since the information has been changed for some time now (a year?). The other one I didn't get, #9, apparently has multiple possible, but subtle answers. I gave it a shot, so we'll see if my find is deleted. Lesson learned: if after some good serious effort to find an answer to a virtual, some answers can't be found, it doesn't hurt to try to get the find.

There's this nearby virtual which has nine questions. I went to the place (there's actually two places) and walked around for a long time to find seven of the nine answers. But I couldn't find the other two answers. In general do virtual owners require that you find ALL the answers before you can log the find, or do they usually allow some room for error as long as it is obvious that the person actually visited the virtual?