Thot

I called it the "circle of uncertainty", so yes the outer limits of the circle would be the extremes, but the circle represents the area where it could lie. I’m basing the 50' feet (actually 15 meters) on Magellan’s current ad on their website. It says, “You’ll always know exactly where you are and where you’re going to within 15 meters . .” It seems like it would be unusual for a company to understate the ability of their wares. http://www.magellangps.com/en/products/product.asp?PRODID=2

You may be right, but I was quite aware of the problem of being observed and took precautions to avoid it. That's actually easier to do in a small town than a city. For example, it was the County Seat and the Court House was located in the middle to town. It was open at all times -- you could go in at night and no one was ever around (except inside the sheriff’s office). There were several places to hide coins that would seem completely secure and you could be sure no one was watching. There are many similar examples. So, I don’t think I was seen hiding them very often. But, the suggestions given in this thread may well be the answer. Everyone knew me and my folks. If I’d put the coins in an envelope with my name, saying they were mine “Please don’t remove,” I have a hunch they wouldn’t have been taken often.

Well, maybe, but the gadget says it's only accurate to about 50’ (not 20), so one could think of it that this is an 80' radius – entry error of 30' plus location finding error of 50'. The person who provided the original coordinates probably wasn’t accurate to better than 10’. So, it seems the ambiguous circle could be as large as 180’ in diameter - 2 X (80 + 10) = 180. If the cache placer was using my GPS his error would be 50' not 10 so the total would be 2 x 130' or 260'. Now I think my original estimate of 120' was too small.

I grew up in a small town (pop 2000). For a few years I had a game I played where I would hide coins in unusual places around town then check them periodically to see if the coins were still there. I was absolutely amazed how people almost always found and took the coins. (Remember -- small town) I put them in places I thought nobody would ever look. As they kept finding them I began hiding them more and more securely, yet they kept finding them. To this day I can't imagine why anyone would look in many of these places, but they did. And coins are small and easy to hide. When I read about this hobby/game a couple of nights ago my coin game came to mind immediately. It would seem like random strangers would stumble on and remove or destroy these caches so often it would make the concept impractical. Then you have the malicious souls who learn of the game and delight in locating them using your directions and stealing them. So my question is, why doesn't this happen so much it defeats the game?

I’d never heard of geocaching until I stumbled onto it 2 nights ago, and it sounds like fun. I’d never seen a GPS receiver before this afternoon. A friend had a castoff Magellan GPS 315 he lent me to give this game a try. But this thing can only accept coordinates to the nearest hundredth minute. By my estimate that’s nearly 60 feet. This seems to mean it will have one standing in a 120 foot diameter circle of uncertainty trying to locate a hidden object. It seems like that would be quite a challenge if it’s anything more cluttered than an empty Walmart parking lot. The caches near me are in a semi-urban area, so it seems like a detailed street map would get you that close or closer. Am I missing something here?