roiegat

I'd like to get drop some GC in Australia, England, and Israel. If anyone can help PM me. In return I'll be more then happy to drop off TB and GC in PA where I live for those of you outside the US who want your trackable to start here.

Thanks for the links. I will check them out and see what I can do to help.

Cool. I wonder if there is a website out there for geocachers who'd like to do this. Help to get them in contact with people from other countries. If not, I might have to start one. Would be cool to have TB coming home from different continents.

So I have several TBs out there that are moving nice and slow, but I got this somewhat crazy idea. What if instead of having the mission be the goal, why not start at the goal and have the TB come back? Let me explain. My sister lives in Australia, I live in the USA. One of my TB's is headed her way, but I'm sure it'll be awhile before it gets there. So I was thinking of buying another TB, activating it, mailing it to her, and having her drop it at a local TB Hotel. Since the TB wouldn't be starting until she drops it, it wouldn't get the mileage from me mailing it (which would be cheating). Then I could make the mission of the TB to come back to me. Anyone else done something similar? I think it would be intestering to get a group of people from different countries who are willing to act as the droppers of activated coins. Ideas/suggestions?

Welcome to the club! It's a lot of fun and it's good excerise!

I would recommend to use a GPS when placing a cache but also go one step above. Place the cache and let the GPS sit for five minute and take a reading. Walk away from the cache in one direction until the GPS sees you are moving, go back to the cache and repeat. I do this at least 3-4 times. Then I take the results and average the cordinates. I also take into account the accuracey of my GPS. On my IPhone the GPS is only accurate to 56 feet. On my garmin Etrex I can get down to 15 feet if I'm lucky - but mostly 20 feet. If I can see the object using goggle earth I will also take those cordinates into account. But since most of my hides are in the middle of woods, it not an every cache ting. Once you have a cache posted and published keep an eye on the logs. Cachers will let you know if the cords are way off. If multiple ones are reporting that it's off, I email them and ask nicely if they recorded the correct cord. If not I will go to the cache and get the cords again.

I've heard from several people that having a good disguise can help make it easier. But since I also take my kids with me people actually don't bother me too much. But if you need some quick stories here what I would suggest: parking lot cache: Tell them one of your kids threw a toy out the window and your looking for it. Park trail cache: Tell them on your kids saw a deer/fancy animal and you were cashing it Residential cache: These can get a bit tricky, but you could say your looking for a lost pet. Always make sure you have a good cover story. I think that makes the game a bit more fun.

I'll add my perspctive as a TB owner, a Hotel owner, and a new geocacher (two months) When I first started I though it was expected that if you take a TB you need to leave one. Since I didn't have any I always left them alone. It wasn't until several weeks later that I was talking to a more experienced cacher that I was told that TB's should be moved along and to move them even if you don't have a TB to trade. Since then I've done just that. In fact, everytime I get together with my friend we always have trackables of each other to discover. My logic is that if I can help a TB get ahead in it's mission thats great. But overall I think some owners expect just a wee too much. I had one that wanted to visit the orients. So I took a picture of it next to my samuria swords. I think people taking pictures with TB is nice, but I think it shouldn't be expected. I also try to make sure I visit the local hotels before going on longer trips. Like recently we went to York, PA for a function. I visited the hotels around me area and had about four total TB's to move along. I found a nice TB hotel at our destination and I moved them along. I have three TB's that I've released and two of them are still in the cache and one has been picked up. I don't email the people to yell at them to move it, because I know we all have our lives to live and don't get to geocache every second of the day. It will nice when it gets some mileage on it, but I'm in no hurry. I think TB and GC are part of the fun, but if you don't want to participate in that poriot of the game, you shouldn't be forced to. For me the fun is using million dollar pieces of technlogy to find a piece of rubbermaid in the woods.

Most caches I've placed have been found within 12 hours of being published. Maybe I make them too easy.

You can but you log it in as a note not a find.

Touche, well I do have the Iphone 3GS which is more green then older versions. Personally if I print out anything I try to use the paper again and feed it in my printer upside down and print on the other side. I also shred my used paper and turn into cat litter. Any other paper I make sure to recycle. Keep on caching guys!

So while still new to the sport one thing I really like about it is the fact that were cleaning up our environment and making it a better place. It gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling. I often carry a bag with me and make sure to take out the trash if it's there. Yet, almost 80% of all cachers I see have a piece of paper in their hands with the cache information on it. So were condoning the killing of trees? I guess I'm lucky to have all the cache information available on my IPhone app and I understand the need for people to bring the information with them - but can't we find a more environmentally way to do it? Just a thursday though.

Welcome to the sport! It's a lot of fun and its get you out and about.

Sent you an email. Interested in the legend.

At best I would say the cords are accurate to about 10-15 feet. You have to remember that most GPS have a plus or minus for the accuracy on them. The more you pay for the GPS, the greater the accuracey in theory. Since your new I would recommend looking for cache sizes that medium and higher and then learn how to spot them. Then move to the small and macro level when you feel comftable.

I'm in the same boat with my family. We go out every weekend to go find caches and I ended up creating pocket queries for small or bigger. Having the Iphone with me and using the app we'll atempt a micro if it's nearby. So far of the 5 macro's we went after, we've only found 2. I have a friend of mine who has over 500 finds and I've asked her guidance. She helped me find a macro and we talked about my methodology of trying to find it and how to improve it. I've also been going to ebay and every Groundspeak distributer and looking at what their micro containers look like. The thing is not to get discouraged. As you find more caches you'll get better at knowing what to look. Even if you look for only small and above, any area will have plenty to find. I know within 10 miles of were I live there are 108 small or aboves.

To take a screenshots on the iPhone hit the Home button and power at the same time

I notice when I go to some peoples profile that it had a map with the states in red that they found caches on. Some even have a bar chart with stats of there find. I only have 19 find but it wa in two states and was wondering how to set that up. Any help?

From UnNamed's note: "CO says is pubic area" Could that be the problem? BTW: I thought that you handled it well by posting a nice non-confrontational note on the cache page. Well done. The steam itself belongs to the township and not our townhouse community, so it's public. I didn't think I should get confrontational because I didn't want to deter people from going to the cache. People were able to find it from the description I gave and I'm sorry he didn't feel the same way. I've a very peaceful person after all.

Depends. What are we talking about here, a Micro? Or is it a... <gulp> large?? The cache is a oversized pill bottle. The stream itself is public property owned by the township. So far three people have found it so I'm happy.

I emailed the reviewer and while he agreed the theory was good, he still can't approve it with the current distances. He did suggest I talk to the owner of the other caches to see if they are willing to move them slightly so we could be in range. I'm not going to opt for that at this time. The person who's been doing the skippack caches is a great person and I'd rather not create any interference. Although I am still thinking of doing a non-traditional cache of sorts. Still working on those thought and will chat with my geocache friend about them. As for putting a cache, I put one in the back of my house in the wooded area (cache GC1Z3T0). Now from the limited caches I have found I have discovered some ideas. First, I created the container myself. I used an oversized medicine container that was perfect. I spent some time wrapping it in black electrical tape to give it better camoflauge. I printed out the the log and the info on geocaching and placed it in a ziplock bag inside the bottle. I looked for a tree that would work well since the stream does flood in really heavy rains. I found a good tree that not only would be able to hold the cache nicely and be covered - but I could also see from my house. Within thirty minutes of it being published I already had people showing up. My daughter was watching the area while playing and woke me up from a nap. I had a nice time meeting some new people and some old friends. As of now, three people have found it so I think it's been good so far. If you live in the area and would like to check it out feel free. Just be sure to use a little stealth!

So today I had a run-in with a fellow geocacher that was less then pleasant. I hid a cache in the woods behind the townhouse complex I live in. The cache is GC1Z3T0 if you want to check it out. So it got reviewed pretty quick and published. I was at home with a sick kid so I was watching the back and saw the first group come a looking. Me and my daughter were watching them as they were looking for the cache. We decided to bring some loot to the new cache and chat with the FTFers. They were very nice folks. They are fairly new as well and I stood by as they found the cache. While waiting for them to find it, a good friend came coming to find it. It was becoming a party. So while they were searching we saw someone on the other side of the stream. I asked him if he needed help to get across the stream since he was on the wrong side. He started to complain that the are wasn't clearly marked and the cache was misrepresented. I though this was kind of odd since I did clearly say that it was behind the houses and even gave a parking cords. Didn't seem to matter. He kept arguing how the cache was not done correctly. When we got back home my friend posted her field notes and the person wrote a log that the cache was in a poorly marked property area. I responded with a note quoting the description that the cache is behind the houses and is public to anyone who wants. Everyone else who found had it no issue. And my friend suspect that he's just mad because he didn't find it first. I am a very peaceful person and made sure to remain very calm. But if two people have found it within 20 minutes of posting, what seems to be the issue?

While I only have 18 finds so far, my friend has over 500. She would be the once who would actually hid it. I was just trying to find out if we could hide it..

I've yet to get to Evensburg State Park to find the caches there. But I'll check it out. I was thinking more the lines of maintance, since I'm in Skippack for shows all the time. This weekend the family and I are headed to Peace Valley Park, where there are four caches there. I emailed the local reviewer, we'll see what he says. Thanks for the help.

Thanks for all the replies. I'll send and email and see what happens. If they say no, no biggie. Never hurts to ask. Thanks for the info guys!