boydg

Maybe it's obvious to you, Mopar, and others, because you're not bothering to think outside your current perspective. But I won't sink to insulting you, as you have me and our fellow hams. This has been a reasonable discussion, for the most part. I don't see why you have to take it down that road. Where you think we're idiots, we (and "we" includes more than just Hams, I believe) are just trying to provide feedback and input to help improve geocaching. We're trying to help folks break out of the "groupthink" that seems to have taken hold on this subject. While the various statements scattered around the site regarding Event Caches may seem obvious to you, the benefit of opening Event Caches beyond their current narrow definition seems obvious to me. And yet, I'm not going to accuse you of being something you're not in the hopes of insulting you. Rise above the fray, pardner. Oh, and for the record, I hold a General license, not the "no-code" ticket you and so many other Hams love to disparage. Out. ----- ~ Boyd N5CTI "Never ask a man where he's from. If he's from Texas, he'll tell ya soon enough. If he ain't, don't embarrass him."

Another thought came flitting through my head, so I'd better grab it while I can. If someone prepares an Event Cache for a non-Geocaching-specific event, and they clearly describe the purpose of the event, cachers are free to determine for themselves whether or not they participate. If they don't want to have anything to do with Ham Radio (or Volkswagens, or Day Trilling Night Warblers, or whatever), then they won't bother with that cache, will they? OTOH, if the subject of the event is something that interests them, they can go out geocaching and combine it with another area of interest. The best part is, by combining two different types of activities, there's the possibility (maybe even the likelihood) that we'll get some "cross-pollination." The Geocachers go into it with their eyes wide open, with the recognition that they might get "infected" with the other activity. But let's not lose sight of the other side: some of these "other" folks will get the chance to talk with Geocachers, whose enthusiasm for Geocaching may also "infect" these poor, unsuspecting folks. I don't know, it just seems like a no-lose situation for Geocachers. And on a related note, if you want to post an Event Cache so you can pitch a time-share, Amway, Zoroastrianism or whatever, and it's clearly stated in the posting, who cares? If you don't want to hear that time-share pitch, you won't go. And on, and on. As long as the posting is clear and honest about the event, I don't see any harm with it. If you maintain this policy of exclusivity, I suspect you're going to run into problems where people "tweak" their postings (also known as "lying") in order to get it through the approval process. Not to be contentious or insulting, but this whole Event Cache policy seems to be completely backwards to me. We should be leaping at the opportunity to infect...er...share our hobby with the world. ----- ~ Boyd N5CTI "Never ask a man where he's from. If he's from Texas, he'll tell ya soon enough. If he ain't, don't embarrass him."

I think we're missing an opportunity to promote Geocaching by this policy. A Field Day Event Geocache (or many other types of non-Geocaching events with an associated Geocache) could be used to promote Geocaching to Hams (or others). Amateur Radio licensees are particulaly likely to get interested in a hobby like Geocaching (y'know, with all the gobs and gobs of spare time we have ). Many Hams already have small GPS receivers that they've built into radios, which continually beacon their position, report the local weather, etc. I'd hate to see the Geocaching community (and our "leadership," if that's the appropriate word) cut of our nose to spite our face. Regarding the "obviousness" of not needing to articulate that Event caches must be Geocaching events and no other types, it's far from apparent to me that it's obvious. Similar to my statement above, it strikes me as an opportunity to proselytize and expand our community of Geocachers. Personally, I think it's silly and a bit arrogant to have such a policy, but if you do, it should be clearly stated. Which brings me to my final point: there's at the very least an appearance of inconsistency with this policy, which makes the decisions seem capricious at best, and showing favoritism at worst. Inconsistency will kill you every time in positions of authority. Either have the policy or don't, but it's foolish to selectively enforce it. It would be reasonable to have canceled an Event cache planned for the end of June, and already approved, some time in April, or even May, well after this policy decision was made, but also well before the cache was apparently hidden. I can't begin to figure out how things have gotten to there current state; there certainly appears to have been a breakdown somewhere along the line, and I don't really think it's fixable at this point. I still believe this new Event policy is short-sighted and ill-advised, but if it's going to stick, then it should be publicly stated somewhere and consistently enforced in the future so this mess doesn't happen again. 73, and happy 'caching, ----- ~ Boyd N5CTI "Never ask a man where he's from. If he's from Texas, he'll tell ya soon enough. If he ain't, don't embarrass him."

No, wait... ----- ~ Boyd N5CTI "Never ask a man where he's from. If he's from Texas, he'll tell ya soon enough. If he ain't, don't embarrass him."

Well, I used to live in Columbia. ----- ~ Boyd

I'm USN(Ret), too. Howdy! ----- ~ Boyd CTIC(SS/NAC) USN(Ret)

quote:Originally posted by Kordite:When you think of it, a trail has two beginings and two ends depending on where you start. I know, I was just joshin' with ya. quote:My plans are to do the ride 4th of July weekend (although I have to call my sister in Md to confirm the weekend). When are you planning your ride or is it still too early to ask? I'm not even sure if we'll do it this summer. On top of the time management problem of getting an opportunity to ride locally to get into shape a bit, I have 1) 77-year-old father in Texas I want to visit with, and the opportunities for doing that are shrinking with each passing day, and 2) oldest son, daughter-in-law and (1st) 1-year-old grandaughter just moved to California, and the time you miss with the youngsters can never be regained. Jeez, this is coming off so maudlin...anyway, I have my doubts I'll be able to fit the ride in this summer. ~ Boyd

quote:Originally posted by SpinnerB82002:http://www.stopstart.fsnet.co.uk/mica/shootingsoldier.gif I hate apostrophe's You hate apostrophe's...what?

jonboy, TOPO! is the National Geographic product, right?

quote:Originally posted by Dave54:The software has more features. You can configure the receiver to ignore a single satellite signal that drops below thresholds you set while processing the remaining signals (i.e. receiving six satellites but two are marginal. It will use only the best four or five). At the risk of digressing, my understanding was that consumer-grade GPSr's automatically used the four best signals. Is this not true? ~ Boyd

My Geobuddy and I've have been toying with the idea of making that same trip over the past few years, except going in the opposite direction. I've d/l'd your file, so maybe it'll inspire us to get off our butts and actually make the trip. P.S. I always thought the trail started in D.C. and ended at Pittsburgh.

Another benefit, which is merely an extension of what's already been mentioned, is to organize your waypoints according to where you're going and what you'll be doing. When I travel to other locations, I can load waypoints for that local area and dump the ones around home. If I'm hunting for Geocaches, I load cache coordinates. If I'm hunting for Benchmarks, I load Benchmark coordinates. Of course, you can organize it any way you want, but that's the point. EasyGPS (or any of the other useful PC utilities) can help you arrange your waypoints (and routes, and tracks) however you want.

I agree with Welch. I always want to download the actual cache coordinates, and I may or may not want the parking coordinates. Since the coords in the cache definition are what gets downloaded, those need to be the actual cache location. Not that you're doing this for me specifically, of course.

So that would be <img src="images/icon_gogeocaching.gif" width="88" height="31" border="0" alt="Lets go geocaching"> If necessary, modify the path in the src attribute to match your local path.

After taking a few practice tests at the QRZ web site, I think I could probably pass the test for Technician. I've also downloaded the Koch CW Trainer from G4FON's site, which seems to be a very good approach to learning Morse code for the General license. The only thing holding me back is the prospect of yet another money pit to throw all my spare cash (and then some) into. ~ Boyd

My limited experience indicates you have two basic choices for viewing Geocaches on a map: 1) Cumbersome 2) Costly There are many ways to get .loc or .gpx files into various mapping programs, but in my limited experience they're always multistep, multiprogram procedures. The simple but relatively expensive way is to buy ExpertGPS. You download a waypoint file to your computer, then open it in ExpertGPS and view your waypoints on a topo map. I'm always willing/able to be edjimicated if I'm wrong, though.

I just started Geocaching, and I'm thinking about trying to run down a few Benchmarks in my area, too...especially ones that haven't been located in 40 or more years. The question I have is this: if you find a benchmark where the description reflects a situation that has changed greatly over the years, does it make sense to submit a report to NGS with an updated description of the location? While the coords off our GPSr's aren't sufficiently accurate for their purposes, wouldn't an updated description be valuable? If so, then it seems to me that, if you don't want to post spoilers on the Gecocaching site, you could post your "vanilla" report here, and submit an updated description to NGS. My apologies if I'm all wet.

I'll add my voice to the call for finer-grained waypoint projection on my Venture. While I can get the distance down to .01 mile (~53 ft) which should be good enough for geocaching, it still doesn't feel right when the spot is actually only 30 feet away! While I'd like to see more data associated with waypoints (time, comments/descriptions), I think memory is going to be an issue for many (like me).

So, there's no problem downloading and saving the file, just opening it up into EasyGPS?

I would think that there's a problem related to how you've got things set up on your computer, such as what browser and related settings you have and so forth. I only started downloading waypoints last week, but in about 10 tries, I've had nothing but success. How about selecting a single waypoint to download and provide a blow-by-blow description of what you're doing and what response you get from your browser or EasyGPS or whatever? Maybe your description will reveal something that one of us can pick up on to help you out.

quote:Originally posted by mattb5:Apparently Adobe and WinXP don't play nice together. Well, it's actually Acrobat 4.0 that's incompatible with WinXP. I've never had any problems with Acrobat Reader in over a year of running XP Pro, I suppose because I always upgrade to the latest version of Reader as soon as I know it's available.

"Huckle buckle beanstalk?" Well, at least it's intuitive!

quote:Originally posted by RobAGD:I have been do a fair share of night caches of late and holding a frozen MiniMag in my mouth while I write in a log book has got to stop. Instead of a MiniMag, I use one of those cheap Eveready (I think...some major battery brand) flashlights they carry in the grocery store. At our local Safeway, they have two or three different models, and they all have some sort of "rubberized" surface. Fatter than a MiniMag, so you'll have to watch the drooling.

On my Garmin Venture, the "compass screen" is called the Navigation page, and the only real purpose I can see for it is to "Goto" the selected WP. Using it as a true compass can only get me into trouble, I think.

quote:Originally posted by Cachetrotters:But I don't seem to recall the Magellan's having a GOTO screen. On my Garmin Venture, I'd consider the compass rose with the needle pointing to my GOTO point to be my Goto screen.