BethDaddyKaty

Very cool my five year old would love that as a swappable.

I should say as well the reason I chose "large" was because the guideline photos show a person holding an entire container, not holding a log book. Pretty clear a log book will not fill a massive bucket.

It's an unusual one, but it's more that the log is contained within the tube BUT you can only access the log in a certain way. The rest of the tube functions much the same as any large cache would. Much like a slightly more elaborate an ammo can with a false bottom you have to remove to access the log. I guess i always saw the size as a description for the cacher to find the container itself rather than a description of how the container works - that would seem to be what the description is for. "Other" doesn't tell you much unless you then also explain it in the description. But as a new cacher and CO always learning.

Hmm, not sure about one of mine then. It's a tube a metre long and 20cm wide. You twist the ends off, because of two non-return valves inside one end of the cache then becomes a pump. When you pump it causes a kite to rise through the tube, attached by string to a pencil and small log container about 7cm long. You could put trackables etc in tube, but they would have to be removed before using the tube as a pump. So is that large or other? I put it as large because to me the whole tube is the cache, unless I am misunderstanding and only the physical space that the log occupies is the cache. But in that case most of my caches are wrongly labelled because I usually put the log itself in a sturdy container, and that within another, larger waterproof container to minimise water ingress because it's very wet here. But I'm sure it would get annoying and be unhelpful for cachers if I labelled every one other because they are a cache within a cache.

Are you using the official app? For me that never works very accurately, accuracy shows (and is) to the nearest 10 metres or so, less under tree cover. Instead especially for forest caches I use Columbus (poorer UI but free) or more recently Geooh (paid app, but better interface). They are usually accurate to 2-3 metres. I did ask a while back about the discrepancy. My guess is that the official app only uses GPS whereas the third party app uses Android's location, which also factors in triangulation from masts, which is much more accurate under tree cover. But I don't know for sure. Either way there is always some Chinese whispers involved. Civilian GPS is limited to 3 metre accuracy. So even if the CO provides correct co-ordinates, their margin of error + yours could mean you are several metres off. Of course quite often the co-ordinates are totally wrong for tree cover caches, and the hint is "look in the tree" or similar. So your only chance of getting it is via logs. I had one that was about 20 metres out - co-ords took you to a park, the cache was behind a thick hedge and in trees. Must have been a tenacious FTFer to get that one.

Thanks - good points. I should have said a lot of my caching is at night (NHS nurse so long shifts), so I sometimes feel it's not a true search if it's by torchlight. But you're right, I should probably be more ready to log a DNF.

To me it would be helpful with a high difficulty cache to know the logger was looking in the correct location but genuinely DNF, as opposed to looking in the wrong location due to poor GPS. However - if a high dfficulty surely more experienced people would search much more thoroughly - therefore strings of DNF are more likely to indicate AWOL cache? Either way, I'm currently reticent about logging a DNF even on dark winter nights without a hint to confirm the DNF is genuine. Normally just write a note instead. Perhaps it's inexperience;.

Being British and therefore thinking everything is ironic or sarcastic, and being bitterly disappointed when it isn't.

For me The cache should be able to be found without the hint, but it might take more time. The hint should be enough to confirm with a DNF you were looking in the right place, but were unlucky or the cache is missing. That to be is the difference, the hint should be enough to confirm the host location, without necessarily giving away the cache. E.g. I had a recent cache in the middle of the woods. Found likely location which had been disturbed but no cache. Pretty certain muggled but searched for another twenty minutes because the hint was vague and I didn't want to leave a msleading DNF.

Without GCing I wouldn't have a hobby that gets you outdoors and you can share with your kids. That's the best thing about GCing for me, my five year old can get as much out of it as I do.

A frog as a mascot. Rubbish. But there you are.

Yep, it's an NHS Trust, so not a commercial site. There are already caches on site which don't in the description have permission from the Trust, however, they are large, ramblimg sites. Thank you all for your suggestions. If I set it up to my work email account I can pretty easily forward log emails onto anyone who wants them.

Monitor the logs. Disable if a 3+ credible DNFs. As a CO you have a duty to maintain the cache but you're not an employee. You physically maintain it at an interval that suits you as long as you visit it on some sort of regular basis, and remotely maintain it inbetween.

Hi all, I've been discussing with the media and comms team at the NHS hospital I work at about placing caches. One hospital is on the grounds of a manor house, the other is an ex-American war hospital so both have quite extensive grounds away from the busy parts of the site. The plan is for the five paediatric wards to design and hide a cache. They will be fairly easy to find - the idea is they will be used by the play specialists who work at the hospital as a way of getting kids outdoors both at the hospital but also when they get home to find local caches. I was wondering if anyone had advice about placing caches working with your employer? I'm weighing up whether to do it on my account with the permission clear in the description, create a new account on my work email, or some variant thereof. The caches would be open to anyone to find. I think the media and comms team would take the account, but I feel if I am organising and placing them I should take some responsibility for monitoring and maintaining them. Thank for any advice

My advice would be Geocache app - good all purpose one with a Premium subscription. Columbus - old fashioned but the GPS is for some reason a lot more accurate than the "official" app - often pinpoints to 2m when main app is 10m+ - so I use it if struggling to locate host. Geooh - just started trying it, VERY powerful app but useless out of the box as it only comes with road maps. But you can set it up with your own maps, which is amazing. Also the UK is much better thought through, e.g. things like showing the last five logs (find/DNF) on the main map. Hopefully they will develop some documentation for it because there is a lot of stuff you can do, but I wouldn't recommend it currently unless you're very technical or do a lot of caching so the advanced features make sense. tl;dr don't think you have to choose one app. I would start with the official app AND Columbus and then look at other options if you find they are limiting.

I was wondering now more people are coming into Geocaching "cold" having downloading the app (myself included), what do you wish you'd known for your first cache. Mine would be that logs are really rewarding for COs, and it makes a big difference if you say a bit about how you found the cache, what you thought about it. It also helps the CO improve for further caches. I think this was perhaps more obvious when most were ammo boxes with larger log books but most paper logs around here only have space for a date and name. I wish for my first log it came up with a prompt saying "We'll send a copy of your log to the cache owner, so please let them know a bit about what you liked about the cache." I appreciate that the logs aren't transactional and a CO doesn't have the right to dictate what logs they get, but I wish I'd have known that better logs = better caches, because COs get to know what is and isn't working. At the start I thought a log was just a matter of recording the find, and a simple "QEF here, TTFC" was enough.

I was surprised when I started GCing that caches aren't shown as disabled or similar after circa 3 DNFs. Possibly higher for high D/Ts. I appreciate sometimes a cache will get multiple DNFs by bad luck. But, humbly, I think a CO should provide good enough co-ordinates that more than 33% of people, bearing in mind the D/T rating, should find the cache. If not, it implies that the D/T is wrong or the description/hint is inadequate. Otherwise, the map denotes that a newly placed, very findable cache is equal to a cache which is very likely long gone. Especially for people caching with young families, who are more easily disappointed, this is problematic. No issues as far as I'm concerned is creating a new FTF; No issues as far as I'm concerned in encouraging "bounty hunter" cachers seekijg a new FTF of caches that have been marked as DNF.

Thanks all for your ideas. The reason why this came about is because for a while we've been finding caches multiple times and just logging them on a sticker sheet, basically a low tech version of this, every time a cache is found we get a sticker. However, I've been a bit cautious of this because I know other COs caches aren't meant/designed to be found every day, so I've started placing my own caches locally so we don't damage other COs caches. Recently my daughter's primary school - which in common with much of the UK has loads of parents converging in cars, parking on every available corner/verge/pavement, and generally making it very difficult to actually walk to school was suggesting ideas to try and solve the gridlock. Unfortunately all of their ideas were basically "make it easier to drive to school", which irked me. So my original idea was to basically take the idea of geocaches, but do my own thing, so Beth could have a league table/badges with a handful of friends. But then I thought, as a cacher, if there were effective geocaches hidden that weren't competing with Geocache (as it's only going to be one village), would I want the chance to find them? Or course yes. And the only addition needed would be a log book. I might do them as geocaches, include a laminated QR code with a note on the back explaining it's to encourage a few kids in the village to walk to school and normal cachers can ignore it. Worst case scenario is people dislike it or start removing the QR codes in which case I'll just archive them all and use them just for Beth. On a separate note, I'm really looking forward to a few years time when we can go on longer walks and start doing a lot more caches and for me, the more the merrier. Even our least favourite caches have been fun to find, more fun than walking past blissfully unaware there's a log book with a space for you on it Thank you all for your advice.

As a new GCer, can I guess that the change might be structural? New technology means more young families (myself included) find and place puzzle geocaches, because for young GCers they aren't as exciting (or possible to solve) as traditional caches. That doesn't mean people should give up on them, after all, if you like puzzle caches, there will be a roughly equal number of other GCs who like puzzle caches. It just means they will never get as many finds. To be fair, it doesn't help that the concept of puzzle caches is never really well explained, so you would only search for them if you had specifically made the extra effort to understand them. The icon in the app looks a bit like the "help" symbol in computer programs, vs the clearer symbol for traditional and multi-caches.

I always try and make all the caches I own about a theme because those are the ones I enjoy most, with quirky names/plays on words. Not to say normal caches aren't good but like when you're watching a film and you suddenly get why the film title makes sense... there is something cool about having the same with a GC. Doesn't have to be a series either. My last one was "Madame Butterfly", after the novel (cache attached to a butterfly". One before that was Wizard of Oz style "Somewhere under the rainbow". Next one to be published is a multicache Red Arrows themed one, because the Byways signs here use red arrows. It doesn't have to be a huge link, a tenuous link is absolutely fine

Thanks for your advice. Never going to be big enough to be a competitor unless a lot of people start doing my boring journeys

Hi all, Hope you are well. Me and my daughter really enjoy geocaching - however, at five years old, we do a lot of journeys the same, e.g. school run, cycling to the shops, etc. Beth wants to find all the geocaches every single time which is fine and we pretend to "write" in them. However, obviously (correctly) she can only get a smilie face once. I was wondering what etiquette would be for writing my own program (I'm a web developer) and attaching a QR code to my own Geocaches that could be scanned so she could unofficially log GCs multiple times? My plan would be to link it in with her Fitbit badges so the more Geocaches she collects, the more badges she gets. I would possibly (depending on GCs terms) also tell her school friends about it if they want to join (because being 5yo, otherwise she'll tell them anyway). Would love to hear thoughts. Not sure whether the QR code needs to be labelled so regular GCs don't wonder what it is for. Just know it's great to get kids out, my 5yo happily does long walks if she knows there are multiple GCs on route but I don't want to have to drive every single day to find new GCs to do it. Thanks in advance.

Thanks for your feedback. The idea would be to just schedule the tweets with the second half of the co-ordinate.so there is little effort required beyond setting it up initially. The second half can then be added when I am able to to the cache page for those not wanting to race for FTFs. You are right that it is an ambitious series, but of course the joy of Twitter is that as well as the GC logs people can interact on Twitter and those responses are archived also. My plan is to place them, roughly, on the circular commute I do on pushbike so the caches could be placed shortly before "release" and intensely maintained for the 24 days, with routine maintenance thereafter. However, the risk that one link in the chain could break the cache is concerning, which is why I am debating between a multicache with total control of release dates vs traditional caches but losing some of the advent calendar feeling.

As a relatively "new" cacher, I would say the main barrier is probably that the app has made things so easy that people don't need to understand the concept behind Geocaching. As an example, a couple of months ago I downloaded the app really as a "one day" activity. Found the cache. Bit underwhelming, didn't understand it, but hey, I've got a few more on the list so let's crack on. It was only after finding a few and doing some reading I really got the idea behind it, and the fact the rewarding part isn't finding one, it's finding lots, starting to understand the patterns. I do think it doesn't help having the D2/T2 restriction as well. We already have premium caches, I don't really see how the restriction converts people to premium as they can always use another app. But it does cheese them off. I guess a happy half way house would be to provide some sort of tutorial/guide with the first find, to explain things a bit. Either way, I do think that there is some assumption that because things are obvious to experienced cachers, they're obvious to someone who's only knowledge about Geocaching is it was a recommended app by Google.

Hi all, Advice welcome I was thinking of doing an advent calendar in the local area. There are a lot of active cachers and I thought it would be something a bit different for Christmas. The idea would be to have a string of 24 caches on a bird theme. Each bird is hidden in a (roughly) circular route, with a specially produced FTF badge. Each bird has the first half of the co-ordinates for the next cache. However, to make it an advent calendar, the second half of the co-ordinates will be published each day. My plan will be to add this onto the multi-cache page, but also to auto-tweet it (because they're birds) at midnight for the FTF hounds because from experience there WILL be competition for those badges. The idea will be the caches will all be cache and dash-type hides, not difficult in itself. The challenge will be to find all 24 in sequence. My guess is some will want to do them as the month progresses, and some may want to do all 24 in series after Christmas. Logbook will be in a special cache on 24th. Would be interested to know if people think it is a good idea, and also whether a multi-cache is the best way of implementing this? I could do 24 traditional caches, but I appreciate having to release one a day is a lot of hassle for our hard working reviewers. Thanks for your advice.