Shoebox

For those who already had a stamp made, how cheap was it (your idea of cheap and mine might be radically different).

You'll always have trouble in a house as the building blocks the satellite signals. Near a window you can pick up some of them but you need to be outside to get a good signal. You will also have spotty reception under thick tree cover and downtown between tall buildings but the gps will get a signal, only slower.

There are a couple of listservers for the Magellan 330 that you might want to join. They are on Yahoo under Groups and the two largest and most actice are called Magellanmap330 and M330. They discuss all sorts of things related to the Megallan 330 and the members are quick to help you with your problems. And welcome to Geocaching.

Have you talked to the owner of the second placer? Maybe if you explain the situation to them, they might move theirs and it would avoid the fight for permission stuff. Talk to them.

I realized that I wasn't a newbie when I noticed that I was answering more questions than asking. You'll feel it when you get there. In the meantime, don't worry about it as you are already more experienced than those who started geocaching after you.

With only a couple of weeks until the event, the cache event site is way too quiet. I thought I'd bump puppyman's notice back up to the top where it can be seen.

I agree with the list CharlieP posted with one addition. When my daughter and I go geocaching and climb some steeper hills, we use the staffs to help each other. When one of us gets up the bank a bit, they hand one end of the staff down to the other to help pull them up. Makes it much easier and in some cases much safer.

Look for a library nearby, as free net access is often available.

Definitely go the easygps and use that program to transfer long/lat to your gps without typing in the numbers. Also go to "my cache page', then to "change your account" and add your home coordinates to it. Then when you log in, you can click on the nearby cache button and the caches listed in distance from home, nearest first.

The subtracting, adding numbers on a sign or plaque works but one nearby me seems to be plagued with math errors (including mine). Another multi I've heard of has the numbers to the next stage printed, laminated and hidden high on telephone poles. Others are just small boxed like playdoh containers that have the next stage numbers in it. Another one has a stack of directions that gets you through maze to the next stage. It’s almost unlimited. Just be creative.

You said that you start it up on one side of a house. This will cut off half of the available satellites to lock onto and it will take a little longer to find the minimum needed (in my case it takes 3 good satellite locks). I have the same trouble when I start it mounted to the vans front windshield, against a house window, in the woods or against the house. As others suggest, get out in the open a bit and let it have a bigger field of satellites to pick from.

Long before the end of the universe, the Sun will explode and give everyone a very bad sunburn. At that point, no one will exist to worry about the end of the universe, endless dark expansion or Big Crunch.

I took a recent look over the caching pages to find the posted cache totals and couldn't find it. Where is the total listing? And is this the US total or worldwide? Thanks. PS: I went to check off the automatic notification of this forum and it doesn't seem to be there. Is that gone or am I just dense? (Please don't answer the "am I dense part).

I looked at my notes and it was 1 3/4 miles to the cache and a short cut back to the car.

The caches that you have found has a red checkmark and have a gray background. The ones you haven't found will have a white background and the ones you have hidden yourself will have a yellow background. Makes it easy theses days.

Take a look at http://www.maporama.com/share/ . It will take an address worldwide and give you a map and long/lat on the bottom of the map. It's posted in dd/mm/ss and dd.dddd but there are a number of sites and free programs that will be able to convert it to dd mm.mmm required for geocaching. And unless your gps is very old, you should be able to convert with the gps.

There is a cache near me that is extremely well hidden and has a difficulty 4 or so. There are as many "did not" logs, as there are "found it" logs. Leaving the "did not" logs give you an idea of just how hard it is to find, before you try it. And it gives the owner an indication that perhaps it might be too difficult (or not, if he enjoys it being hard to find). Leave the "did not find" log by all means.

I just went through a new multi-cache in North Park (north of pgh) that I found to be a lot of fun. Even the beginning point is quite clever. It's generally rolling terrain (no killer hills to climb) and is only a 1 1/2 hike (if I remember correctly). So take a look at South Ridge Cache if you go north of the city.

If you've only found 5 caches, I would suggest looking for a lot more before you hide one. At least a dozen and maybe more. That will give you a chance to find different styles and different hiding places. And get further away from home for a couple of them. You sometimes get different styles when you go to different areas. And different difficulties sometimes show different approaches. Just a thought.

If you are just getting started at geocaching, remember that the gps is only accurate to within 30 or so feet. When you find the correct spot, mentally draw a 30-foot circle around yourself and then imagine where you might hide a cache yourself. The usual spot are under thick brush, under loose rocks, in tree hollows and anywhere a cache might be hidden. And remember that the hider might not have done a good job in establishing the long/lat and the cache may be a bit further away. If the difficulty rating is high, then the hider is devious and finding the cache will be very difficult to find. Begin with easier ones and work your way up to the difficult ones when you begin to see how it all works. And welcome to the madness.

I'd get the MapQuest maps from the Cache pages for those caches you plan to visit and then zoom them in a bit to get local roads. And I'd get a good road map of Pittsburgh to find your way around (and to find your way back []). I've been driving the area for 37 years and I still get lost a lot. Getting to the parking is sometimes more than half the battle. And welcome to Pittsburgh "you can't get there from here" Pennsylvania. Happy caching.

I think I'd like to see the condition of my cache and perhaps that could be sent to me privately and not posted as a log. When I search for a cache, I don't care what's in the cache. It won't influence my decision to search for it. If there were a surprise feather at or on the approach to the cache, I'd prefer it be a surprise when I get there. When I look at other cache logs, I love to see photos of other things and not the cache itself. I enjoy seeing part of the trail or other cachers and if the parking and trailhead is confusing, I like to see a photo of that. Just some things that came to mind.

It might be a good time to do all those city caches during deer season, or maybe the early Christmas shopping. I don't even think about rural caching during the first few days of deer season, as that's when most of the accidents happen. I let them shoot at each other and hopefully they'll get it out of their systems.

Take a look at the bugs listed in your neighborhood and recently listed on the Travel Bug Track page at the Geocaching Home page. They should give you a number of examples of goals and bug types. There'll be a great variety to get inspiration from. Then just go for it.

There are a number of geocachers that do quite a bit of their caching at night with and headlamp. They say it gives the search a totally different experience.