Ernmark

Here's one for you: On my short-list of stations to visit soon is this station: KW2852 The interesting thing is this - KW2852'THE STATION MARK, A STANDARD DISK STAMPED MOONEY 1960, IS SET IN A KW2852'DRILL HOLE IN TOP OF BEDROCK WHICH IS ABOUT 20 INCHES BELOW KW2852'THE SURFACE OF THE GROUND. IT IS 16.6 FEET EAST OF A 12-INCH KW2852'TRIANGULAR BLAZED OAK TREE AND EDGE OF TIMBER. KW2852' KW2852'REFERENCE MARK 1, A STANDARD DISK STAMPED MOONEY NO 1 1960, IS SET IN KW2852'THE TOP OF A SQUARE CONCRETE MONUMENT WHICH IS FLUSH WITH THE KW2852'SURFACE OF THE GROUND. IT IS 5.8 FEET SOUTH OF A 12-INCH TRIANGULAR KW2852'BLAZED OAK TREE AND EDGE OF TIMBER AND IS ABOUT 2.0 FEET KW2852'HIGHER THAN THE STATION. KW2852' KW2852'REFERENCE MARK 2, A STANDARD DISK STAMPED MOONEY NO 2 1960, IS SET IN KW2852'THE TOP OF A SQUARE CONCRETE MONUMENT WHICH IS FLUSH WITH THE KW2852'SURFACE OF THE GROUND. IT IS 33.4 FEET EAST OF A 12-INCH TRIANGULAR KW2852'BLAZED OAK TREE AND EDGE OF TIMBER AND IS ABOUT 2.0 FEET KW2852'HIGHER THAN THE STATION. ..so why would the station be set below ground while the RM's are flush? It sounds like all 3 would not be in the trees. I also read comments here about whether digging down to find it (by GEOCAC) constitutes disruption (being bedrock rather than a mass, I might be inclined to think not...but then I'd expect more 'reluctance' from the land owner if I'm standind there w/ a full-sized shovel instead of a garden trowel when I'd ask). ..so question 1 is - why do this? ..& question 2 is - would you be inclined to ask to dig for it? (additional background - the hill is currently not wooded, except for a few trees, much like the original description & is basically a hayfield. Also, there is a cell tower a few hundred yards to the east...possibly making the station easier to gain permission to access. All of the other tri-stations in the area are either set in rock or have the standard surface mon./underground mass.) ..I'm hoping I'll get there & find it 3" below the ground (remember, the Appalachians were once as high as the Rockies)...or with an unmentioned monument in place flush w/ the surface

Finds for 3/24: AI4398, REG JV1314, REG JV6919, REG Finds for 3/25: KW2148, REG *2OLDFARTS (Farts Counter® V1.1 Rel2**) ** latest stable release

..if you do want to use the ° symbol - just hold down the 'Alt' key & type '0176' (it's one of the selections in the 'character map'..that is if you are a 'Windows' person ...whether you want to be or not!)

3/22: KW2246. REG* KW2247, REG* KW2248, REG* * Does 3 R's beat a pair of 2's ? *2OLDFARTS (Farts Counter®)

..another non-professional opinion here - but my hunch is that it is (was) a surface mark set 'on the fly' for the following reasons: - from the pic, the monument looks like it was originally poured above a shallow hole w/ some of the concrete spreading over the ground surface - from what I've seen, most brass/bronze disks that spend a fair amount of time covered by ground tend to get a reddish 'rusty' color from the ground rather than green from exposure to rain/air. (ex - KW2132 - disk) (once NGS marks that disk destroyed, that mass would make a great patio table!)

Finds for 3/17: JV6094, REG JV6096, REG JV6095, REG JV1601, REG JV1602, REG* JV6090, REG *2OLDFARTS (Farts Counter®)

Find for 3/14: (oh, but what a find it was !) KW2841, REG* *2OLDFARTS (Farts Counter®)

Finds from 3/11: JV1979, REG* JV4181, REG JV4184, REG JV1980, REG JV1956, DNF* JV7229, REG JV2104, REG *2OLDFARTS (Farts Counter®)

Hang tight, o finned one ! The clear pixels are marching outward this way ...ever..so ..slowly !

3/3: KW1812, REG KW1683, REG KW1814, REG KW1815, REG* Y'know, this isn't a bad excercise program! *2OLDFARTS (Farts Counter®)

...I would've loved to gotten ahold of this one: KW1084 The bridge holding up this one was destroyed just a few months after I visited...I hope this one made it to SOMEone's desk - it's the only one of this type I've run across..

They're all fun! ...well except for that one that, when I looked up, I found myself standing in the middle of the biggest meanest patch of poison ivy I ever saw. (I somehow managed not to get any on myself..how, I'll never know!)

..first, let me say that I by no means live in a true 'rural' area...but close enough that I can get to marks that are in the 'wilds'.. Anyway, I was cajoled into a shopping trip in the DC area by my ABS (Anti-Benchmarking Spouse), so I was given clearance to disappear for 3 hours & look for local marks. I had sized up about 2 dozen w/ in 5 miles or so...piece of cake in my area. But in the metro area, the traffic & amount of widening/destroying/creating that goes on, adds an additional dimension to the Metro hunt - every bit as challenging as the multi-fork, dim woods road, 75-yr old to reach descriptions. For those of you who do most of your hunting in these areas, I have a whole new respect for the amount of time you need to put in, just to navigate to the location you are heading for..as well as the research needed to locate & compare references to the present day. I've done some city-hunting before, but limited my searches to out-of the way areas - it's just that this weekend, I fanned out from the center of a large Retail Googolplex. ..Anyway - congrats to those of you who manage most of your finds in these areas! PS - other observation...don't hunt in the snow! (ran into a closed park, several places where I could not pull off to look & some that were truly entombed in a thick layer of ice, or a 4-foot mound of plowed snow) ....but I sure had a great time anyway ! ..might just leave the rest of the waypoints in the GPSr for next time!

'2's are gonna be tough for me, too !

..if you're looking for benchmarks in Canada, unfortunately they aren't in the Geocaching.com database. You can log them on Waymarking.com - there's a specific category for them - visit link

Earth' equatorial radius is 3963 mi....just to make things worse, Earth isn't a true sphere..

Hi - I'm from PA as well - if you're looking for NGS info go here:http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/datasheet.prl -...the easiest way to start might be to look them up by county or radial search. (this is where the GC info originally came from, although GC's is a few years out of date)

I'm in ! (I think there's an intersection station in the next county named "OLD FARTS HOME WATER TOWER")

Agreed. It's almost a "Zen-Like" experience to find one of these on a mountain, in the desert, or even along a grown-over river bank in a big city and know that you may have been the first person to have been in this spot in 1/2 a century or more!

..also by looking for these, we're doing a service by reporting destroyed tanks, etc. & cleaning up the database in the process.. Edit 1 ..but in re-reading the directive apparantly given to USPSQD mentioned in the first post...sure looks like NGS doesn't want them.. Edit 2 ..or was the request to drop intersection stations made to stave off recoveries being made every 12 months on the same stations over & over again?

Hey - you should've gotten to know him...he'd come in quite handy when you look for EX0170 ..watch out for the shoals, tho'! Movie answer - would that be Jaws? ("I'm not going to waste my time arguing with a man who's lining up to be a hot lunch.")

You don't need to search for intersection stations if you do not want to, but we decided it would be okay to allow all benchmarks in the database. We will need to list the criteria for a "good" picture in the rules. John ...hmm - I'll have a better chance of gettin' that "O" !

I like it ! Oh, are we ignoring intersection stations & concentrating on disks-only again?

Nautical term noted, and appreciated! Paul, Radioman First Class U.S. Coast Guard 1964-1968 Commercial Radio Telegraph Operator Ship-to-Shore Station KLC 1969-1976 Gosh - I hope GEOCAC doesn't lose you to USPSQD!

..do you mean re-logging your own previously found (>12 months) marks? Much as that would give someone who has hunted-out their home turf an equalizer for the contest, I don't think I'd want to do that... it would clutter up the CG logs w/ double-entries in a short amount of time & if you're a holoscenes stat fan, that would lessen the accuracy(?) of those numbers - we'd be doing what the USPSQD does in some areas in submitting NGS recoveries (logging a mark every 12 months just to get 'points'). Even though I wouln't be able to finish in nearly as high of a spot as last year, I'd like to keep it as a 'not found yet by you' situation. Even if the scoring was exactly the same as last year, I'd still find a reason to drive further out to find new marks - I'd want to wait a few more years (say 5 years?) before revisiting my previously-found marks (unless I see a change in their status).. We just checked with the expert on the statistics and he informed us that every "log" for GC.com is counted. This means, if you submit a DNF for a benchmark and then later find it and "log" it as found, it will be counted twice. The same applies to "Notes" that you post for a benchmark. This means that if someone post a note on a benchmark page stating that the previous "finders" logged the wrong benchmark, they will get a Log "count" for the GC.com statistics even though they didn't look for that mark. Compare our profile numbers and our Holograph statistics and you will see the difference between 'finds' and 'all logs'. Would logging previous finds as a "Note" be acceptable in light of the above information? Thanks to Holograph for his quick response to our query. John I realize that notes & not founds add to holograph's statistics* - the point I was trying to make is that the temptation exists (I personally have no plans to do this) to go back & revisit/relog all previous founds over 12 months old (where's the fun in that?). If you make it "previously not found by you" as per the rules last year, there would be no 'revisits' ...or need for that GPSr pic/watch/newspaper (& it's easier on the scorekeeper! ). Except for the ga$, veteran hunters have the advantage of experience in actually finding the marks, so I think the contest would be still fun for everyone - even if we played by last year's rules ..that bingo card does intrigue me....hmmm * - so far, on GC the 'found' total pretty much is the total of different disks you have actually tripped over in person - no 'doubles' ...although in a few years as things evolve, marks probably may get revisited as enough time has elapsed to look in on them again..especially if you are an NGS logger..