Munin

I quite agree - for me, the extra little challenge of heading back and trying to verify this one as precisely as I could just made it more enjoyable. It's still a kind of game - but this time I was "scoring" myself based on accuracy. Anal-retentivity and fun aren't necessarily mutually exclusive!

Site on GC.com where you can log in lost TBs Examples: GC72A8 Travel Bug Graveyard GCH8F6 Austrian TB Graveyard GCD653 UK Travel Bug Graveyard There are other country/regional graveyards beyond those I listed, but you get the picture - a virtual cache that someone has established specifically to serve as a drop point for TBs that have gone missing and are presumed "dead". If the TB owner wants, they can use these caches to give their poor lost bug a formal "burial".

Just my $0.02, but before folks break out the tar and feathers... Looking at the cache page, I see no requirements by the owner about having to maintain a specific TB population here. Logs from Sep and Dec '04 show times when there weren't any TBs in the cache at all. With 5 pages in the cache's TB history I wasn't going to look at every single bug that passed through, but a random sampling of a dozen bugs showed many stays of 2 weeks or less, and several that moved on within days. I see over 140 visits in the 14 months since the hotel opened, and a whole lot of TB drop/took/traded log entries. Maybe I'm missing something here, but this doesn't look like a TB "prison" to me - on the contrary, it looks like a rather decent hotel (easy access, frequent visits, no restrictions on TB movement). Wondering if maybe Puppers just happened to catch the cache at a time when dropoffs were out-pacing pickups. (No TB residents in December, no log entries mentioning large numbers of bugs until April, and it looked like the cache owner dropped off several bugs the week befor Puppers' visit. Possibly just a temporary spike in TB residents?) Can't say as I'd personally agree with the cache owner's decision to delete Puppers' log entry. Sure, maybe they picked up a relatively large number of bugs, but hey, there were a lot of bugs in the cache...and judging from Puppers' TB stats I think it's safe to say that they'll take good care of their passengers. I've only got a couple TBs out at the moment, but I've got plans for several more - and like everyone else here I'd love to see them keep moving, whether they travel on their own or with a bunch of friends. (Nothing wrong with a TB party - I think they're great photo ops! ) Puppers: Have you contacted the cache owner to ask about the deletion? Just going by a random sampling of log entries, both you and the cache owner seem like conscientious TB movers - maybe the owner was having a bad hair day, or misread/misinterpreted something in your log entry?

Okay, I'm back from my jaunt - I think I'm comfortable logging this as a "Found It" (ipoor condition) at this point, at least as far as GC.com gameplay goes. Let's see what people think: Hiked on over to the area with my handy-dandy 100' tape measure. The datasheet says the 81.9 foot distance to the station was measured from the center of the tower. (Links for quick-ref: MY4774 GC.com page, MY4774 datasheet) Minor inconvenience there, since the interior of the tower isn't accessible by the general public. Fortunately the base of the tower is square, so... Measured distance from stone tower to station, which was 74.25 ft from the base of the tower to the center of the stem. Measured width of stone tower along side, which was 15.25 ft from front to back at the base. So center of tower should be 7.625 ft from the front. Putting that together (74.25' + 7.625') gives me 81.875 ft from center of station to center of tower, so I think that compares favorably to the 81.9 ft on the datasheet. Followed up with another check of the GPSr at the station: GPSr -vs- Datasheet N42 29 24.2 -vs- N42 29 24.32527 W70 59 07.7 -vs- W70 59 07.74443 So, I think that's enough to claim a "Found - poor condition" here on GC.com. Given that the disc is missing, opinions on whether this is sufficient for an NGS update? Cheers - this was fun!

BuckBrooke: I'll read up on NGS reporting, and will submit the ones that I definitely located. I think I'll do a return trip for better photos first, particularly for MY2601 - I want to try one of the tips I read about using chalk/flour/corn starch with damaged/painted discs and see if I can bring out the markings more clearly.

For what it's worth - the day after I was looking at the BURRILL HILL (stone tower) location, I returned to another section of this park to do a cache and look for other benchmarks. I went to three of them on that trip - all three were present, and none have been reported to NGS since 1934-35. If it'd actually be useful for NGS to have an update on these old stations, I'd be willing to give it a shot. PIDs for this second trip: MY4780 - Disc present and easily readable. Last NGS report 1935. MY2601 - Disc present, scarred and partially painted, but readable. Last NGS report 1935. MY2599 - 1934 NGS data says drillhole with triangle. But according to 1935 MY2601 data, MY2599 was filled with a lead plug with copper tack - this revised info corresponds to what I saw. If these would be useful to get formal reports on, I'm willing to give 'em a go - I think it could be fun and interesting to do this. From what I've read, the pictures I took on that trip probably aren't done correctly for submitting to NGS. But this is a park I enjoy hiking in, so I wouldn't mind doing a return trip to get better ones. (I'm sure I can learn how to do those properly within the forums here on GC.com.) But if doing a proper NGS report honestly needs more accuracy than my poor little Foretrex 201 GPSr can provide, feel free to tell me so - what holograph said earlier about bad info being worse than no info makes a whole lot of sense to me. I promise I won't go cry in my beer if that's the case!

Thanks to all for your answers and encouragement! If the rain holds off long enough tomorrow, I'll be swinging back over with a measuring tape - it'd be fun to try and nail this puppy down more precisely!

In all seriousness, contact Garmin and suggest that they add this option. Give them the same explanations you provided earlier in the thread about which display you'd want this on, and why you think it'd be fun to have. There's a form on their website for contacting their tech support group: Contact Garmin Technical Support I did this last fall with a suggestion of my own. Got a friendly email back from tech support the next day saying that they'd forwarded the suggestion on to their design team for consideration. Might not ever get implemented (my suggestion wasn't), but you'll know that they know that there's at least one person in the world who'd want this. And who knows - maybe if enough other people have asked for the same thing, your email might be the one that finally tips the balance so that Garmin decides it's worth doing.

Well, I'm no stranger to embarrassment! But I'm sure I'll have plenty of chances to blush without taunting Mr. Murphy by claiming a find at this point! Makes perfect sense to me - NGS gets used for real-life, serious work. I'm definitely in the "amateur hour" (more like "Gong Show" ) category, so I'm happy just sticking with GC.com - it's fun, I'm actually managing to learn a thing or two, and nobody's going to misroute an interstate highway through my living room if I happen to goof up! I think I understand why NGS wouldn't consider a station destroyed just because a supermarket was built over a former pasture - the station might well be perfectly happy and healthy, even if it's currently underneath a layer of asphalt. I'm a little puzzled that they wouldn't necessarily consider a station destroyed if the rock ledge containing the setting was gone. Is there a simple (newbie/layman) example of how the station would still be useful? (Or is it just that NGS would want to have an honest-to-god professional look into this before they write off the station as lost for all eterinity?) I don't think this particular visit would have measured up. GPSr read 2 meters off from the published coords when I was at the setting, but that was with 6-7m EPE. So going on the GPSr alone, I think the best I can say is that I was in the right general area. Still plenty of room for reasonable doubt. The landmark reference on the datasheet is an old stone firetower on the same hilltop, and it's close enough that I actually could bring a tape measure along and check the distance to the setting to see if it matches up. I'll have to try that next time I visit this park - it'd make for an interesting and fun experiment, regardless of how it turns out. I'm thinking that the orthodox/purist/conservative approach makes the most sense to me. If I were to draw an analogy to caching, if I'd followed my GPS to a location, found a box-shaped depression in the leaves, but never actually found the cache...well, that's a DNF, plain and simple. Here, I've basically found a benchmark-shaped depression in the rock, but didn't find the cache...errrr...disc, so "Didn't find it" seems sensible. If I went back and actually got an exact match on the landmark reference, perhaps coupled with a lower EPE on the GPSr, then I might actually log a find here. If not, hey, I can always post another DNF or add a note with my observations. Very useful explanation on "Destroyed", and I like the "bet-my-children" test for when this is appropriate to use. Thanks for the feedback, holograph and seventhings! I'm very comfortable now with logging a "Didn't Find It" on this benchmark. I've even got a potentially fun challenge with going back and trying this one again! Cheers!

I'm a total newbie when it comes to benchmarking, so even though I think I know the answer based on other threads, I'd like to have a sanity-check to make sure I'm doing things properly. I decided to take a look at MY4774 (BURRILL HILL 1935), since I'd be passing through this area on my way to a nearby cache. At the expected location, I found what certainly appeared to be the setting for the benchmark, but no disc. (There's a picture of what I was looking at in my log entry.) At first I'd logged this as "destroyed", because that's how it had been marked previously, and it seemed reasonable based on my initial reading of the FAQ. But after reading various threads here, I decided I was mistaken, and switched my log to "Didn't find it". My current rationale is: well, I certainly didn't "Find It", since I never set eyes on a disc. And I'm thinking it's not actually "Destroyed", since its setting (the rock ledge) isn't gone. So even though it *seems* really obvious that this is the right spot and the disc has been vandalized, am I correct in thinking that "Didn't Find" is the correct description for my attempt? I.e., that it's possible - unlikely perhaps, but possible - that I was looking at some unrelated setting that just coincidentally was near the location described in the benchmark description, and the real one is still safe and sound...perhaps hidden under one of the nearby mossy areas? Related question: Am I right in thinking that with a rock ledge setting like this, the only time it might be appropriate for an amateur like me to use "Destroyed" would be if I had evidence that the rock ledge itself was gone? Say, if the entire side of the hill had collapsed in a landslide, or the hill was leveled in preparation for a housing development? Thanks for any feedback/suggestions/corrections!

Try the Cache Freak section on cafepress - I think these are the t-shirts you're thinking of. There's other versions of this shirt available in cafepress' Cache Swag section.

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