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wildlifewriter

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Everything posted by wildlifewriter

  1. Badly OT (sorry) but, have you tried this one? It's fast, flexible, free - and does exactly what it says on the tin... (edited for URL)
  2. ...and another one... To the tune of "Galway Bay" If you ever go across the sea to Ireland For a little bit of cacheing on the way, You can see the coaches parked in rows at Claddagh, And watch the Yanks go down by Galway Bay. There are caches that were hidden here by tourists. Sure, they didn't have the way of it at all: The co-ordinates are near the Falkland Islands Which are seven thousand miles from Donegal. Now the strangers came and tried to teach us their ways, They gave us grants from Brussels on the nod. Now we've motorways that finish up in nowhere, And the airport up at Knock belongs to God. Maybe someday I'll go back again to Ireland, Well, maybe to avoid my Income Tax. I could buy a little castle next to Bono's, And communicate by e-mail and by fax. ©2004 Wildlifwriter International Media Plc.
  3. One more shot at this, and then I give up... You are getting yourself confused, and using terminology outside its correct context: 1) What Garmin tend to call "position format" is the way in which the unit displays position information. This may appear in Lat/Long format (in various guises), or you may choose to display it in a format corresponding to the British Grid. (or Finnish Grid or whatever.) 2) OSGB36 is a map datum. It is not any sort of a grid, still less a positional format. 3) There is no "updated" British Grid. What there IS, is a new transformation model, known as OSTN02. This model is more accurate (for geodetic purposes), and more numerically stable, than the previous one. As Forester has already pointed out, handheld GPS units do not use OSTN02 when converting position formats applicable to Great Britain. They use an approximate method, which is faster and more mathematically economical, but which is also marginally less accurate. For this reason, it may be a mistake to have your GPS unit set to British Grid format, when searching for a cache. It is DEFINITELY a mistake to have it set that way, when placing one...
  4. A couple of other related things... Batteries for your GPS are available here, in the same sizes and types you use at home. BUT: Mains electrical equipment (charger for GPS, perhaps) may not be compatible. The mains supply is 220-240v AC, 50Hz. Power outlets have a different physical configuration with three pins - adapters should be available at the airport. Some hotels have a power outlet in the bathroom which is switchable to 110v - this will take a plug with two round pins.
  5. Ten minutes that I'll never get back, now. It doesn't matter. I've lost the will to live, anyway...
  6. No, you see.. <cough>... the original was...er, a banjo... Ah, forget it. I'm going down the boozer....
  7. (To the tune of a well-known American folk song) I took my girlfriend shopping - with a cache along the way, The only one I haven't logged: GC5EFA. It's cold, dark and misty, And it's getting hard to see, But we'll find it with an OS map And the e-Trex on my knee. We headed for the area – which I didn't really know, Last junction on the motorway, and forty miles to go... A quick stop for petrol, (Joanna had to pee) Then we're off to Ballygarmin With my e-Trex on my knee. My datum was inaccurate, my batteries were lame, Joanne was very angry - and the farmer was the same. Two loads of buckshot, And a trip to A&E, Now I'm waiting on a trolley with my e-Trex on my knee. (Refrain) Oh, Joanna! Don't you cry for me, Just blame it on the cachein' And the e-Trex on my knee.
  8. [If you are driving anywhere in Ireland, there are a few things to be aware of... 1) Nominally, we drive on the left. However, in rural areas, vehicles often drive on whatever side of the road they started out from. This is an environmental measure, designed to reduce journey times. 2) As night falls, Irish drivers do not switch on their headlights unless and until it is too dark to see where they are going. This is also an environmental measure, designed to save electricity. 3) Signposting on Irish roads is purely advisory, and often highly imaginative. Signs indicating "Tourist Route" or "Scenic Drive" should be treated with extreme scepticism. 4) Parking: in major towns such as Cork or Limerick, a single yellow line at the roadside means that you cannot park there at all. A double yellow line means you cannot park there at all, at all. 5) Road works: These are never signposted in advance, except where the project has been "Part financed by the European Infrastructure Fund" - in which case a 15' high hoarding to this effect will be displayed. In general, road works follow the British pattern, in that no actual work is ever seen to be going on at the site. 6) In cities, motorcycles may be ridden on the footpath when avoiding traffic congestion. 7) The standard method of transport in Ireland is the brown Toyota Hi-Ace van. These are allowed to carry not more than 52 passengers. Drivers of brown Hi-Ace vans do not require a licence, but must have beards prominently displayed. 8) By law, all vehicles on Irish roads must have a current and valid Certificate of Insurance. (This is a joke.) extracts © wildlifewriter 2001 A full copy of this document is available if I can find it. (edited for copyright)
  9. Not exactly, I fear. I looks like you took these figures using your GPS unit's co-ordinate converter - which isn't quite accurate enough... In fact, the two "very same spots" are just under ten metres apart. And THAT (of course) is one of the reasons why Geocachers need to use the same co-ordinate system - whether it's convenient or not. (edited for accuracy)
  10. For God's sake keep your voice down! Harry may be banged up, but the rest of the gang - hired killers every one - are still at large... Fitzroy "Two caches" O'Toole, "Jimmy the GPS" McTavish, Luigi "garminfingers" Scalotti, Hans-Dieter Furstfinder ("Holding Hans"), Aaron J. Ziploc III alias Aaron Ammobox alias Billy Twigger alias ... (That's enough aliases - Admin)
  11. I'm intrigued by this - what exactly do you mean by an improvement in the "steadiness of signal"...?
  12. Amost anything written by Team Bridge Bandits is worth a look. It's entirely possible that these logs are posted with the aid of powerful pharmaceuticals. This is a typical hilarious example... (edited for dodgy link)
  13. From my (admittedly meagre) understanding of how handheld GPS units work, it hard to credit that these things could be connected. Mind you... it's amazing what some people believe: I met a local rambler, the other day, who has just changed the settings on his GPS, in order to improve its "accuracy"... "Well, it WAS on metric distances, right? But now I wentan changed it to feet, 'cos feets is shorter than metres, right. So it's more accurate, now - stands to reason, dunnit?" And so saying, he rambled off...
  14. No, thanks. For the record, I think that the system works quite well as it is. The present approvers do a difficult - and often thankless - job with real dedication and good humour. We can help them by providing the feedback, as Klaus is doing, so that the 'field' can be kept tidy. This is particularly useful for newcomers to the hobby (like me)... Unlike experienced locals, we may NOT know (for instance) that all the caches owned by "Harry the Hat" won't be maintained unless his next parole application is sucessful...
  15. I have to agree with Klaus on this - (thus proving that there's a first time for everything) - it's time to call in the Ground Force, and get some weeding done. (Acknowledged, by the way, that one of the approvers in still on holiday.)
  16. Those who contribute to any activity, as much as Mark did to ours, are always a great loss. Our thoughts are with his loved ones, this day.
  17. I tried to find thirty caches in my first thirty days - and made it with a day in hand. The hit rate dropped away, though, when I realised that I wasn't getting paid to work that hard!
  18. I can't see anything wrong with this, as it's presented. You've given all the information necessary, and included a hint that the container is camouflaged. You adjusted the rating - which many people don't bother to do - and included sensible parking directions. <rant> As a comparative newcomer to the hobby, I never get p****d off if a cache is a tough find, or calls for triangulation to get round the tree cover problem. Two things that DO annoy me are: (1) Co-ordinates that haven't been properly checked, before listing and (2) no indication of what we're supposed to be looking for. Unfortunately, a number of hides in Ireland suffer from one or other of these - and the notorious IWG caches (of course) feature both. </rant> (edited for whingeing)
  19. A point you may not have considered is this: If everyone stopped buying PDAs, the hard-working and highly skilled people who design and make them would, all or some, be out of work. Heaven forbid - but they might even be forced to eke out a miserable, hand-to-mouth existence as freelance journalists...
  20. Q: How do you tell that the Germans have beaten you to a FTF? A: There's a folded towel lying on the cache...
  21. Sure and we only call THAT a little shower. Imagine what it's like here in Winter.... We may have cache deserts - but we haven't any deserts.
  22. Yes - the whole of County Fermanagh, in Norn Iron, with the exception of one (new) cache in Enniskillen. There are only two caches in County Armagh. As a rule, geocachers here don't like travelling too far from home to hide a new one, on account of all the rain...
  23. Possibly yours was cached (in the computer sense) from an earlier session. I've never used it before, and I get the same script error as 'hedberg'.
  24. Doubt it. Looks more like a brand identifier. They might be OK but.. I've never heard of them, either. Of course, at this price you could just buy lots and keep cycling them...
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