ozarkray

One good one that took me a while to find was out in the woods. There were a lot of broken tree branches laying around. The cache was impossible to spot until you realized that one of the branches was actually a piece of firewood neatly cut at both ends. Some of the people who hide caches have a good imagination. Thanks for the cache, Ray

I have done a lot of whitewater canoeing and have carried my wallet and car keys in a ammo box in the boat. Ammo boxes do float as do ice chests and unopened cans of beer and soda. I don't know what kind of river you're writing about, but around here the box would most likely float down to the next bend or two of the river and get stuck in a brush pile next to the bank. Next likely it will get snagged by a branch at the high water mark two to five miles downstream and be left sitting on the bank. I doubt that it will get covered in mud or break apart, but depending on the steepness of the bank and the size of the river, it could be anywhere up to fifty miles downstream. Let us know if it every turns up. Ray

Right! Happier map users, but not happier GPSr users. Ray

I think that it should all be up to the owner of the cache. I am currently working on a puzzle cache where the puzzle will be to find out how to open the cache container. In this case, I think that signing the log will be required to post a find. Ray

Go ahead. As long as the computer program and GPSr are set for matching baud rates, the thing should work. Even if it doesn't, you won't hurt anything; you'll only get an error message. Ray

As I understand it NAS27 stands for North American Survey of 1927 and WGS84 stands for World Grid Survey of 1984. And, yes, they do start in two different spots. And, yes, they did come up with different coordinates for the same spot. Majority of the topo maps published by the USGS have grids based on the NAS27 since that was what was in effect when many of the roads in this country were built and land surveys were made. People who do a lot of work with topo maps use NAS27. GPS coordinates, however, are a world wide effort and most are based on WGS84. Hope that helps, Ray

We have some of those already. Check out "two towers and the black gate" where the owner wants an e-mail with the word written inside the cache box. There is ruffridr's two travel bugs, lonny and lattie, that give the coord's for the final cache. There are lots of creative geocachers out there that make things interesting for the rest of us. Ray

I am given to understand that the best way to calibrate the GPS is to leave it outside, turned on, without moving it for fifteen to twenty minutes. I haven't seen it listed anywhere how often the satellites update their ephemeris, but I usually recalibrate my GPS about once a month or anytime I travel more than 100 miles. Ray

One thing that helps a lot is to resize your pictures. The pictures coming out of the camera are probably 2000X1500 pixels and have a file size of 1.2meg (these take about four minutes to upload and download). Your computer screen is 800X600 pixels. You probably got some sort of picture editor software with the camera that will allow you to resize the picture (don't forget to save it under a new file name) down to something less than 800X600. These picture files take up about 25K of space and only take a few seconds to upload and download. Your website host will thank you for it. Ray

It doesn't matter too much to me what I find in a cache, as long as it's dry. I carry a variety of trade items with me ranging in value from 25¢ to $5.00 and I usually try to trade even. There have been several caches I have visited where I have had to put all the watersoaked wood and paper items in my CITO bag. I really appreciate a cache where all the items are in individual zip-lock bags. Thanks, Ray

From what I remember from teaching map and compass to bunches of Boy Scouts, Azmuth refers to True North and Bearing refers to Magnetic North. I wouldn't trust that everyone knew the difference, but I would start with that. Thanks, Ray

Probably because this method is frowned upon. OK! Learned something new. Thanks for the info. Ray

One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet is to update the logs as you go. Each time I've gone after a cache, I've made an entry to the log and deleted the previous entry that I made. If I'm unsuccessful on a hunt, I'll log a DNF. If I go back at a later date and find it, I can log an FI and tell everyone how many times I had to go back to look for it. Then delete the DNF's I've made so as not to worry the cache owner. Ray

I have not found my GPSr to have any accuracy at all under tree cover. I am not a veteran, but the best advice I have found on the forum is to use a compass. I normally walk down a trail without tree cover watching the location display, and I walk until the display shows that either the lat. or long. is the same as what is shown for the cache. I normally get a change of 1/1000th of a minute each time my left foot hits the ground. When I get a match, I know that I am either straight North, South, East, or West of the cache and out comes the compass. I can follow a compass bearing through the woods much easier than I can follow the arrow on the navigate display on the GPSr. When the navigate display starts flip-flopping among 200 ft. South-west, 80 ft. West, 120 ft. East, I know that I have arrived at the cache site. I put away the GPSr and start looking for the cache. Hasn't failed me yet. Ray

I just saw this story and thought it would be a good thing to share. Hope it's not too long. How many of you think that this would be the perfect job? Ray

Ahh! I think I am beginning to understand. It appears that in some cases poor coordinates are part of the game, and that in many cases the coordinates don't show the location of the cache so much as showing the place to start looking for the cache. I definately need to start paying more attention to the degree of difficulty. I thought at first that it indicated how well hidden the cache was. I guess that it is also an indication of how many acres of ground will need to be searched. Thanks to all who responded to my post. Your input was useful. Ray

Something I have not seen either in the website or in the FAQ or in the forums is what to do about coordinates that I believe to be in error. As an example, I goto GEOCACHING.COM and look on a cache page to get coordinates for a cache. I also click on the link, For Online Maps: Topo Zone, and the topo map says that the cache is in the middle of a field. I go looking for the cache and my GPS leads me to the middle of the field, but there is no place to hide a cache. The cache page also lists the terrain as 2.5. There seems to be something wrong. About a hundred yards away at the edge of the field there is a ravine. I go hiking up the ravine and find a geocache hidden under a fallen tree. I mark the location and go back to my computer. Typing the coordinates for the location I marked into Topo Zone puts the target in the ravine. The minutes listed on the cache page were 44.733 and 57.633; while the minutes for the location I marked for the actual cache were 44.743 and 57.608; a distance of about a hundred yards. All coordinates were in WGS84 or should have been. So, the question is, is there a polite, non-threatening, tactful way of contacting the owner of the cache and letting this duffus know that his coordinates stink. Would that be in a e-mail to the owner of the cache, or an e-mail to the admin of GEOCACHING.COM, or should GEOCACHING.COM have an errata file where members could list caches and coordinates that look like they have problems. I suppose that the traffic from people experiencing "user error" and not knowing how to use their GPS might outnumber the messages from people reporting actual error, but there should be something to aid in reporting problems with caches. Thanks, Ray