Jaz666

Welcome to the sport. Unfortunately you've stumbled upon the major grey area when it comes to Geocaching. The promotion of a "worthy cause" without permission from Groundspeak, who own and run this site, is a big no no; and has caused grief in this forum on several occasions. May I suggest taking the discussions to the GAGB website, where no such restrictions are in place. http://www.gagb.org.uk

Thirded, forthed and fifthed!

Already discussed here http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=203355 I finally gave an Oregon 300 a trial run today, and it's a lovely piece of kit. I found the interface very intuitive, but gave it a test with some thick gloves on and found the buttons slightly too small. It's currently at the top of my Christmas Bonus spendlist.

From Memory (as I've been selling them in my day job). 200 - Worldwide Basemap, limited amount of internal memory, no Wireless data transfer. 300 - Shaded worldwide basemap, around 800MB of internal memory, Wireless data transfer 400t - as the 300, but includes 3D visualisation and a more detailed basemap 400i is for inland water 400c is for sea

I'm guessing this will be the 1:250,000 scale map http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/...cts/250kraster/

I can see both sides of the coin here. On the one hand, events should be "open to all", but on the other hand "tacking on" a pub meet or something similar to some types of events doesn't always seem the right choice. To take a recent example; I held an activity event that involved a bit of driving. To make it open to all I allowed anyone who turned up at the start to log the event. Understandably the vast majority turned up for the free smiley, and didn't take part in the activity - which I'm totally fine with, as I expected that, and the numbers who did take part in the activity was spot on. However, it has since been pointed out to me by several of those who did take part that "why should I be allowing the majority to have a free 5* smiley on their stats". So far I believe the reviewers have used their judgment fairly, but I do feel that activity based events, which are free to enter, shouldn't have an "open to all pub meet" if the organiser thinks it isn't appropriate.

It's a bit hit and miss. I've heard reports of it frequently directing drivers off a motorway to avoid a jam that has long since cleared. If money isn't so much of an issue, have a look at the new Tom Tom x40 units that are due out in the next month or so. They feature quite a few new traffic avoidance innovations.

Could you clarify that part a bit better? I have all the Garmin units in the shop I run, but I've not had a play with the Oregon yet. The first thing that struck me was it's relative small size compared to the Colorado, but it fits in your hand nicely.

Excellent, I've been meaning to revisit my favourite series of books from my childhood, and now I've an even better reason. I'd imagine the references could have been inspired by letterboxing.

There has been much talk along the lines of "there's so many more micros these days", "no one places regular sized caches anymore". There's certainly a lot more micros out there, but is that because there are overall a lot more caches being placed??? The answer, it seems, is the percentage of caches which are micros is on the up, Regulars are becoming rarer, but the percentage of small caches has remained quite static in the last few years. Micros are now more common than Regulars, but still not as common as Small caches. http://www.metalheads.co.uk/yorkshirecachi...heSizeStats.pdf

Just to confirm..... No trackables were left over at the event, the boxes were empty by the end of the event.

We would have loved to have popped down for the weekend, but it's Amber's Birthday weekend, and we've the party of the century planned!

*house!*

Well done to the reviewing team for tackling a sensitive issue. As a cacher, I find searching for caches in populated places such as stations occasionally uncomfortable - knowing a cache has permission might make me inclined to seek out such caches more often.

Every event is within 5 miles of home, and I can only make one of them (just). Darn you real life for getting in the way once again!

Welcome to the Scottish Rebel How much do we have to pay for those photos not to be published ?

Until I got gsak to tell me, I never realised how few and far between "Large" caches are. From the current active UK caches..... Micros 29% Small 39% Regular 25% Large under 1% Unknown 6%

Well done Ernie, great to meet you again a couple of weeks ago.

I'll consider updating my LQ chart sometime soon - it's been low down the priority list lately.

Awww, wish I could come Jon, but I couldn't get the time off work

After the recent angst in this forum, it's high-time for an "informed debate". This has crossed my mind several times over the years, but seeing so many cachers together recently has reminded me to bring it up. Why does Geocaching in the UK attract mostly White British people? From the 2001 census, 85.67% of the population of the UK describe themselves as White British, with the rest made up from Indian, Pakistani, Black Caribbean, Black African etc. I spent the last ten years living in one of the most multicultural cities in the UK, but all Geocachers in my area I've ever met are White British. We had 928 people at the 2008 Mega, so if Geocaching was a universal pastime 14.33% of attendees (133 people) should of been non-white British. There were no Asian cachers, and I can't say for certain if there were any black Caribbean/African in attendance. I'd also go as far as saying Geocaching is also almost exclusively a middle-class pastime. So, why?

www.yorkshirecaching.co.uk The site came into life after I plucked up the courage to hold my first event last year where I realised the benefit having a community site could have, and so far the active user-base has mainly come from West and North Yorkshire, but everyone is welcome. The site has been rather quiet in the past few months, as some of our members were very busy putting on 6 events in the Harrogate area earlier this month Now that that's out of the way, I hope to get the site updated more often again. The site has - Forums - News articles - Section for recommended walks, complete with Google Maps and Overlays - Facility to share your favourite photos and logs - A page that allows you to connect into the #geocaching chat room - Resources area that allows users to share pretty much anything they want to write. The site is approaching it's first birthday, and I hope this will inspire more visitors to come and have a look. Yorkshirecaching has a lot of scope to grow as a community site, it just needs more people willing to submit content. Thanks for allowing the blatent advert Mandarin.

New news to me. What's that all about? After The Hornet was banned for 3 days, I/Lactodorum posted a single, short message saying if people wanted to contact me on the forum they should do so using my Lactodorum account. One of the Global Moderators (not UK) decided that this was a serious breach of the guidelines against the use of sock puppet accounts and warranted an immediate, indefinite ban. I have appealed and am still awaiting a response. I guess the engraving on the Tankard you received at the Mega is even more poignant now

As I said, it's a "big if" at the moment - Robin is on holiday so it wouldn't be discussed until the end of September. A few of our committee have said "never again", so it really is a very slim possibility at the moment; but bear in mind we have a venue that has said we are more than welcome to come back, and the experiences and practices in place to make it happen again. I'm just putting the possibility out into the ether before all the Mega Events up to 2020 are pre-arranged

Not wishing to tread on any toes....... Could I point out that the Harrogate Committee are having a well earned rest before meeting next month to evaluate the event. It has been informally mentioned between ourselves that a few of us might wish to put on another event at the same venue sometime in the future - not next year, but 2010 could have been a possibility. Reading Michael's encouraging words earlier in this thread, he suggested that the UK could support two events per year, and I agree. So if (and that's a big if) we did decide to try again in 2010 it would probably be earlier in the year, leaving the summer hols to our friends in the North.