Serial007

I have heard three of those blow up before, they make one heck of a loud bang and there is almost nothing left of them afterward. Closest I have been when one blew up was about a quarter mile, definitely shook the building I was in, it is good it doesn't happen that frequently. You might be able to get permission for it but, the electric company does routine maintenance on them and they might take your geocache away if they see one on top of it. The fins on the big ones such as the one in the picture are used for cooling and if something was stuck in between the fins it would definitely be taken away.

I think that implying permission in any situation can place you on shaky ground. Even though on unmanaged land most of the time no one specifically owns them, responsibility of them is still held by someone. In one of the cities I have lived in caches were placed public parks that were not managed. The city officially were responsible for the parks and were the ones that ended up making an official ban on geocaches in the area. In my opinion, the chances of getting an area banned is higher in areas that permission is assumed than when permission is requested. A lot of the time, finding the governing body for the land can be hard. Geocaching organizations can usually help in getting that approval for you and usually know of who the contacts are for getting permission. The most that can happen when asking for permission is an answer of no. The most that can happen when not asking for permission is banning of all geocaches, fines, etc. To the OP, I would recommend joining or asking an area geocaching association for help. They will most likely know the areas that have geocaching guidelines, and who to contact, for where you are and can lead to you getting your cache posted and out there quickly with no worry or guilt.

I don't know the specific answer to your question but I know state geocaching organizations can be a really big help in finding out who you need to contact to get permission from different areas. I know okic.org (Ohio, Kentucky,Indiana cachers) has information for parks in Ohio, they might be able to get you in touch with the people you need for your specific areas.

You can definitely paperless cache with a PSP! I have had two PSPs for a while and didn't want to buy a PDA just for geocaching. Right now I use one of my PSPs mainly for geocaching and I take it wherever I go. I can get all of the information I want without having to worry about weather I wrote enough notes about the geocaches I am looking for or wasting large amount of paper printing them out. Here is a quick tutorial: Step 1 Create a folder on your memory stick that you want to use for geocaching. I just make a folder on the root of the stick named GC. Step 2 You can either directly save the cache page to your memory stick or you can use a converter if you use pocket queries. To save the webpage make sure it is as you want it before saving. If you want all of the logs then make sure you have clicked on view all logs on one page first. If you want the hint decrypted for some reason then decrypt it first. If you want to do this the simple way, label the files sequentially such as 1.htm or 2.htm, save the webpage to your folder in your memory stick. If you want all of the pictures and icons make sure to save it as web page complete instead of html only. If converting from a pocket query just save the html files to your folder in your memory stick. Step 3 Open the PSP's web browser, and navigate to your file. "file:/GC/1.html" And there, you can view the page on your PSP. I have taken an additional step by making an index page for my geocaches. That way I can just bookmark one page and go to it and see all of my geocaches. When I find a cache I just strike it out on the index page and delete the files. I am in the middle of making a script that will automatically update my index page for me but I haven't gotten around to finishing it yet. Making an index page is pretty simple and allows for quick navagation of your geocahe pages. Here is a quick tutorial on how to make one: Step 1 Open a text editor and create a new file and label the file index.htm in your geocaching folder. Step 2 Start your file out with the following: <html><body> Step 3 Add the following for your each geocache. In this example I have saved the geocaches on my memory stick by their geocache name. I have used a recent geocache I have visited as an example. The picture name changes depending on which type of geocache it is. 11.gif is a webcam cache, 2.gif is a regular cache, you can look in the _files folder to see what type of cache you are adding. <BR> <img src="./GC6F12_files/11.gif"> <a href="GC6F12.htm>GC6F12 London - Beatles Abbey Road</a> <BR> Step 4 Repeat step 3 as necessary replacing the image and geocache name as needed. Step 5 Finish your file with the following: </body> </html> Step 6 Save your file, this is the most often forgotten step. Step 7 Open your file using your PSP browser "file:/GC/index.htm" and bookmark it. You can now see all of your geocaches in an easy format. To go to the geocache you want just select it and follow the link. After clicking on a geocache page just press the left trigger or use your bookmark to return to the index. I really hope this helps someone. I will make an automated script to update the index file sometime. It will make it even easier to geocache using your PSP. If anyone has any questions just ask and I will be happy to answer them.

I haven't had any encounters with LEOs yet in any of the countries that I have been caching in. The only thing I am semi worried about is how to explain geocaching to a LEO in a language that you have a little bit of difficulty with. A situation I always thought about but fortunately never ended up encountering.

I am guessing 153.5, because I can.

Good post! By the way, how do you cache with a PSP? I smashed my Palm on a rock and would rather get a PSP if that would work! You make use of the built in browser but before you go caching, save the pages to memory stick. I ended up making my own little off line geocaching portal so that everything fit together seamlessly. I will eventually get around to making a full homebrew program that I can distribute but if you want more specific info on how to do it just pm me.

A lot of the time DNF logs help me more than the find logs. I don't want to be tipped off to where a cache is but going to a cache with an idea that someone searched somewhere without result is almost like having someone with you caching. With a single DNF I know that the cache might take a bit of hard looking before I find it and not to give up hope. With a lot of DNFs, especially in a row, I know that the cache might be gone completely. I would hate for anyone to delete a log. Logs show that some effort, however slight, was put into the cache by a finder. I try and search to the level of the difficulty of the cache and if I don't end up finding it I post a log. I paperless cache using my PSP, and I don't run into any problems with anyones logs, long or short. Some owners manage their logs differently though but the rules allow the owners to do so.

The sucky part is that with anyone in a powerful position, you don't always get evidence or a reason. You could end up finding out that the guy was a geocacher who got frustrated on a 5/5, or that the wrong person called on a day his dog died. We can only hope that in the end, things will turn out alright. My opinion that people who harm the environment with inappropriately placed caches does give us a bad name but, I am in no means directing those comments specifically to you or anyone in this thread. Please don't take any offense, I really hope you get to the bottom of things and good luck.

Congratulations! I am only a quarter of the way there but I will get there eventually. Keep up the good work.

As I have already said established guidelines do not mean expressed permission and that the ones that were following the guidelines were not the reason for the original letter. Please read my response fully, I have read all posts in the thread. The fact is that nobody knows exactly what happened yet. The lastest info is that the new Superindendant "may have found" a cache close to a Bighorn sheep watering hole. This guy is different than the last guy and feels that this is a big issue. No restriction about placing caches near watering holes was ever written in the guidelines that the park gave to us 4 years ago. If we find out that this is the issue then we can add that new guideline to the guidelines for ABDSP. So please don't jump to conclusions until the facts are known. I can't believe how many people keep doing this. It's getting old. I really have no conclusions to jump to since it is still an open issue. I would absolutely love for the decision to be reversed and have all of the geocaches that are within guidelines to be saved. In this case we are dealing with the government, and we all know that whenever a decision is made it can just as easily be unmade by someone higher above. At the same time, I would love for all people to also be careful and respectful when placing caches which was what the quoted original complaint was based on.

As I have already said established guidelines do not mean expressed permission and that the ones that were following the guidelines were not the reason for the original letter. Please read my response fully, I have read all posts in the thread.

Which guideline was not followed in this case?

A guideline does not grant express permission. It takes from a few minutes to a few days to ask and request permission from the proper authority, even if it is just to verify that the established guideline is still in place. On the flip side it wasn't the geocaches that were following the guidelines that lead to the banning of geocaching in the park. It was the ones that weren't following any guideline at all that ended in years of existing geocaches being wiped out. One of the main things that upsets me is that there are reasons for the guidelines that geocaching.com has for placing caches but a lot of the times they are ignored or simply not read. This ends up causing the exact situation that has happened here. What upsets me even more is that there are a lot of new caches being published that violate a majority or all of the guidelines, and could either end up getting someone hurt or end up getting even more areas banned or restricted from geocaching. There are a lot of public parks and areas in the world, responsibility of most of them has been assigned to either government agencies or companies to handle them. This is in order to preserve them so that everyone can enjoy them. Some park managers can be pompous and egotistical however, the same can hold true of all people. In the end, their job is to ensure the safety security and preservation of our public land. There were most likely many caches that were posted in accordance with the guidelines and permission was granted to place them. This allows proper communication to be established to ensure that caches aren't inadvertently placed in parts of public property in which they can do more harm than good. When people start cutting corners they could end up hurting plant life, wildlife, or others. In these cases, it is not the owner of the geocache that ends up bearing the responsibility, it is whoever owns or manages the land. Geocaching.com is a company in itself and could then end up subsequently getting sued for destroying land or hurting people. When geocaches in this park started getting placed in sensitive areas we ended up doing more harm than good. This isn't the type of image we should put out as geocachers. In the end, with the letter we all got a warning and a request to do what is already in our guidelines. If we break that request then we end up putting Groundspeak at risk for getting sued for the damages that have already occurred from the geocaches in sensitive areas that shouldn't have been put there in the first place. Groundspeak is already nice enough to assume that we are not breaking their guidelines, lets not get things to the point that we have to prove that we are following them.

Finally was able to post images without the error. The forum pages are now starting to timeout a lot for me. I got my log fully posted now so I am happy.

I have been getting these runtime errors as well when trying to upload a "webcam photo taken" log picture. Is the image server acting up?