arkadillo

Well, I just spent the better part of today travelling and searching for the balloon and cargo. All I found were a lot of thorns and ticks in the woods. I managed to hit the coordinates given and fanned out in each direction for at least 100' looking high and low for any signs of it. But I can call no joy. I talked to the local gas station owner who knows a lot of things in the area and she never heard anyone talk about it before. I figure one of two things happened. Either 1) someone already happened upon it and took with them, or 2) the balloon must have carried it further away from the last coordinates than originally thought. After two hours of searching in 100+ heat index and I carrying a 25 lb backpack, fatigue got the better of me and I had to give up. Once I got to my car I had to pick off about 30 ticks that ignored the bug spray I applied. I hate that I didn't find it and lost cost about $100 for the adventure, but it was great to be able to put my eye on the exact spot it said the balloon went down. Partial victory for me. HA! Now off to bed. I'm exhausted.

Pray tell, just who told you that? Just some of the threads I've read in here (I think in the iPhone forum). Several folks were happy with it and one or two said they were pretty close to the nicer model GPS units. Although I could borrow my dad's for a weekend now that I think of it. He's a consultant engineer and uses it for his job. Maybe he could let me try it out for a weekend!

Last week I found my first as I awkwardly started using my iPhone GPS and learn its' limitations. It took two tries to find it. But today I had a breakthrough. I had an hour to kill in El Dorado, AR so figured I'd hunt some urban caches though muggles around. I had great success, finding 3 in about an hour. It was a lot of fun. The third one unfortunately a muggle saw me as I was replacing the microcache. Nothing I could do about that. I've thought about buying a nice GPS, but have heard that they aren't much more accurate. I have found that the iPhone starts pretty inaccurate, but as you linger in the area and move about, it gets its' bearings and will get you within a few feet of it. The biggest limitations for it would be locating caches in areas with no cell reception. I've also heard it said they aren't accurate in the woods with tree cover. Is it ok to stick with an iPhone? I've only had to give up finding one cache in front of a museum by a busy street. Never could get it to pin down the location there.