Simply B

There's this event coming up in two weeks just south of Manchester where you'll meet some local cachers: GC2PWM5 Something for Everyone

It's already online, on this link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12307628

Hi I'm sure there will be, but I don't know of any just yet. Unfortunately you just missed Pie and a Pint in Sale a couple of weeks ago. That was great fun and we said we'd do another in a couple of months, probably a weekend one a bit further out into the South Manchester / Cheshire countryside, but no solid date yet. Suspect it'll be imaginatively named 'Pie and a Pint II' unless one of us gets inspired. The NW Cachers Monthly Meet covers a wide area so that may come this way again soon. Also, not Manchester but not far away is Warrington Cachers Welcome You All !!! on 30 Jan. Of course if you feel like setting one up, then rest assured that people will come

As others have suggested, it sounds like you may be displaying your position in the wrong datum. I've tried some datum transformations on that cache position, and your GPS displayed position comes out suspiciously close to the result I got for the Rijksdriehoeks (RD) datum used in the Netherlands. With an error of +- a good few metres, the transformation gave a result of N51 08.529 W2 43.539. Could that be it? Bit odd, as you'd still be off by a fair bit when caching at home, but just another idea to try.

I tend to lurk on here rather than post, but just wanted to recognise the kindness of a fellow cacher in the last week. I realised one evening that I'd lost a pair of reading glasses. Thinking back, one thing I'd done that afternoon was find a cache on the way home from work. I wonder ... so I posted a note on my find log that I just might have dropped them while searching for it. Sure enough, a couple of days later I got a message from Phil100 that he'd found them doing the same cache but lived a distance away. Two days later they arrived back with me, securely packed and posted 1st class. So a big public thanks to him. Any other 'caching kindness' stories like this one that anyone has to share? Apologies if there are already other threads like this one, but can't do any harm to revive it as a topic.

No need to log a DNF. Just do what I did at this Alibags cache that boasts 60 varied DNFs to date.

I've recently started adding rights of way to OSM around my area. Before going out I check the Definitive Map that's maintained by the council (for Cheshire it's all online on their website, looks like W Sussex would still involve a visit to the council offices to see ye olde paper mappe). I then use the markings on the ground while out walking to confirm the detail. I then draw on the OSM map using my tracklog that I know follows the ROW. I can also feed back to the council any issues such as missing signs or blocked paths, that around here do get acted on promptly. Dare I say it, I've actually spent more time and had more enjoyment doing this recently than I have going caching ... Here's the Cheshire info, the page has a link near the top to their online mapping: Cheshire Definitive Map. You might want to see if/when W Sussex intend to do something like it.

This forum thread suggests you're not alone: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=224980 Seems to only be affecting newly created PQs, so if you are in a hurry the suggested workaround is to modify an existing PQ to meet your needs.

Scroll down this topic on the GSAK forum and in about the 3rd post you'll find a zip file containing Anquet versions of LordElph's lovely icons for Memory Map. You can install and use these icons in Anquet, whether or not you also use the macro that the forum topic is mainly about. http://gsak.net/board/index.php?showtopic=4698

Requested a My Finds PQ 15 mins ago and it's just landed in my Inbox. Looks like the hamster's been fed.

Thanks again, all working now. (Thought I'd replied to that effect yesterday but it's not there now.) The county polygons are simplified shapes that only approximately follow the boundaries, and also have a shift roughly to the NW of of up to about 1km depending where you look. That's why I spent time adjusting all the county coastal boundaries so they were about 1km out to sea. Before that many of them were inland so all caches along the coast were being missed completely. It didn't seem worth the much longer time it would take to fix all the inland county boundaries too, particularly as you'd need to keep all adjoining counties in sync to avoid making matters worse. So you'll still get a small minority of caches being put in the wrong county. But at least they all get put somewhere, apart from the very odd few puzzle caches that deliberately have their published coordinates miles out the sea.

Hi Thanks for taking the time to do this. I've tried to download your file from that GSAK forum page but keep getting this error message: I can download things from other links on that site. I also noticed the download count for your file was 16 when I tried last night, and still is when I tried again this morning.

Many thanks.

Are you sending out any form of confirmation to people who've registered as supporters? I did so a week ago today (3 coin option) and got an instant confirmation from PayPal that you'd got the money but have heard nothing from the mega 2 team. I used the messaging facility on the mega 2 website to query this on Friday but have received no reply to that either.

That's what I saw. Looks like aliens are taking it over now.

This sounds very much like a datum shift error. The offset you describe indicates that your track file contains positions on the WGS84 datum (the norm for GPS), but by the time the track loads into Anquet these are being treated as positions on the OSGB36 datum (the old norm for OS mapping). So either somewhere in your conversion process the numerical values are being converted between the datums, or when you load them into Anquet the numerical values are still in WGS84 but Anquet is treating them as OSGB36.

I've now made contact with the book's owner - Grandad John.

I went around to pick up the little book from Anthony this morning - really nice chap, as you'd expect from the trouble he's taken over this. It was found lying out in the open between Christmas and New Year near to GC1B5E3 - Teddy Bear's Picnic - Picnic Glade. It's in fine condition so cannot have been there long. I've left a Note on that cache listing with a couple of pictures of it, but have easily narrowed it down to one likely owner, who I've also emailed. Should soon be a happy ending... and maybe, just maybe, a new cacher in the area.

email sent to Miss Jenn Not my book, but I may be able to help.

The state column is filled in from the UK region in the cache listing when you load a GPX file. You can also now fill it in using the GetState() command in a macro. This is useful (or not, according to taste) for filling in all those blanks where the cache listing doesn't have a region selected. The county column is filled in when you run the GetCounty() command in a macro. Or you can have it filled in after loading a GPX file, by putting a y in the 'County update' field in the Load GPX dialog box. I suspect that the confusion comes because we have UK county polygon files for GSAK but not UK state polygon files. What my list enabled clyde to do was to fill in the state column using the county polygons. For example, GSAK can now set the state to Northwest England for any cache that it thinks is in Cheshire, Cumbria, Gtr Manchester, Lancashire or Merseyside.

Of course not (although Tubbs and Edward might not agree). It's just data that's useful in some circumstances, like many other columns in GSAK. For me I guess it appeals mainly to the numbers nerd side of caching - how many have I found in county x, how many counties have I done, etc. I don't pay it any heed when planning local caching trips. One time it does help is when looking through what I get back in a PQ along a route for a long trip - it helped me to visualise the options for where to take my caching breaks.

BTW, before anyone else beats me to it, I did later add this wee bit of land to the above list: The sole point of the list is to define which state GSAK will give to a cache, based on which county it gives it. The GetState() function already gives you options to either only update those that the cache setter has not filled in, or overwrite them all with where GSAK thinks they are, which should suit most needs.

You need to be running GSAK Beta version 7.5 to see the new database structure including the County field. If you don't want to use 7.5 yet, there are workarounds if you're on at least 7.2.3. Basically you can put the county data somewhere else instead, such as in UserData. See the macro help for GetCounty(). Note that the county shape files are approximate only, as Just Roger pointed out, and are for the 1995 boundaries as shown on this OS web page (scroll down to the bottom for the 1995 versions): http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/...un/outlinemaps/ As luck would have it, they do seem to map fairly neatly onto the current UK "states", so the same shapes can now also be used in GSAK to fill in your State column using GetState(). This topic on the GSAK forum discusses what's been done: http://gsak.net/board/index.php?showtopic=10191

There is already the 'Off Yer Trolley' series, you might want to add your new caches to that instead: Off Yer Trolley bookmark list Edit to add: snap

Blacks on Deansgate in Manchester knew all about it but had been told the promo started on Sat. As luck would have it the Garmin materials were delivered while I was in the store. So I got the first shiny coin out of the box.