Jump to content

Gravitysmith

+Premium Members
  • Posts

    15
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Gravitysmith

  1. I'm not sure about the current situation, but when I visited a couple of years ago, there were 2 traditional caches there. They were hidden within the outside of the wall around the city, and so were technically located within the boundary and were classified by the site as being in the Vatican City State. It was a great accomplishment to clear out an entire sovereign state in less than an hour! Interesting ... I actually saw those two, but I was checking by viewing the map and it appeared to me that they were outside the boundary. If the site says they are inside the boundary, then I was mistaken about the Vatican City not having any caches. It is fascinating to see how many countries still do not have caches. It seems like geocaching is everywhere, and yet we still have a long way to go to make it a truly global game.
  2. Although North Korea may currently be popular to pick on these days, there are several countries through out the world that don't have caches. A quick search revealed the following places where I could not find any caches, and I am sure there are others: Equatorial Guinea Côte d'Ivoire Guinea Guinea-Bissau Liberia Solomon Islands Tuvalu The Vatican City in Rome has two puzzle caches listed, but no caches with an obvious physical presence inside the area. Note: all the above countries have flags as recognized by the CIA factbook, and can also be found on the Wikipedia list of sovereign states https://www.cia.gov/...oftheworld.html http://en.wikipedia....oldid=508038948
  3. I love this idea! Thank you. A few months ago I placed my first cache and the reviewer suggested I consider whether the wheelchair accessible attribute was appropriate. The cache is actually quite accessible in every way except the cache height. My question at the time was: do I use the attribute or not? To be "safe" I did not include the attribute to start, but now that I am aware of your site, I rated the cache, added a link to the rating, and changed the attribute. I am glad this service is being made available. Hopefully it will catch on. [edit] On further thought, I do wish Groundspeak would clarify what it means to have a wheelchair accessible cache. I suspect a lot of people don't use the attribute because they don't know what it means and therefore would rather avoid having to think about it. Or perhaps like me they rate it not accessible when they are not sure if it is accessible in order to be "safe".
  4. Running the latest non-beta firmware here. I turned on the Montana and before it had a chance to lock on the satellites, I was able to verify the compass works fine.
  5. I think it was always an intermittent problem, and the number of comments about it has died down over time. If it makes you feel any better, I was an early adopter of the 650t (S/N 28V0001xx ordered from TheGPSStore) and have had no troubles since I got it in June. Good luck!
  6. I've had my 650t (S/N 28V0001xx) in my hands since June 23 (got it pre-order). Unlike the post below, I have had no screen problems despite the much lower number, and no significant software problems for the last few releases. As my first GPS, it has introduced me to the fun of geocaching, guided me faithfully on a 2,100 mile trip over 2 weeks, and is still going strong without problems. Personally, I conclude that there is no pattern to the serial numbers. It is most likely a rare event that comes with mass production, and a few rare people get stuck with defective units that need replacement. I truly feel sorry for all the people who end up with a defective unit, but hopefully it does not deter others.
  7. I am one of the early adopters ... got a 650t as soon as I could get it shipped. Unlike the horror stories you may read, I have had only two "serious" issues so far. The first was that the unit would crash when I tried taking pictures in an area of no GPS reception (surrounded by metal mesh). I contacted Garmin, they responded that they could not repeat it and asked me to update to the latest firmware. Indeed it was fixed with the firmware update. I think it was one of the updates after 2.6. The other issue came this weekend when I upgraded to 3.1. Somehow the upgrade corrupted my geocache file in such a way that caused the unit to crash when I tried to view a cache log or hint. Of course I did not notice until I was out at ground zero. It always happens that way, right? Anyhow, I grabbed a few easy ones before going home and reloading the geocaches. It has worked perfectly fine since then. Maybe I've been lucky (knock on wood). Maybe the horror stories just sound like a big issue because people tend to complain more than they praise and unlikely events sound very likely. Maybe something will happen to your device. Maybe it won't. Frankly there is no way to predict. Version 3.1 does fix some annoyances I ran into, and so I personally think it is worth it. Is the device perfect yet? Well, if it matters any, I don't currently know of any issues that affect the way I use it. I mostly just wanted to write to balance some of the horror stories I read with my "nothing exciting" story. If you want my opinion, I say "go for it".
  8. Thanks for shooting down my perfectly good conspiracy theory. Now I have nobody to blame but myself! Seriously though, a 15-30 foot radius seems particularly large. I guess the real issue is that it is much tougher to determine a cache location than it is to verify it. To verify a location, I have learned to move 100ft or more away, get a bearing, and associate it with ground features. Do this from a couple of different directions, and I find I get pretty consistent results (especially knowing that city caches are rarely left out in the middle of nowhere and are usually attached to some object). Thinking now about the reverse problem, I can see it would be much tougher. I place a cache, and I can use my GPS to take multiple bearings, but without serious math, it would be difficult to accurately calculate coordinates of ground zero. Thus in retrospect I can see why it is easier to locate the true ground zero with a GPS than it is to define it. Another lesson learned.
  9. Thanks. So I guess there is no easy solution I was hoping for. As for building intuition, I find that happening at a very rapid pace. My first lesson was to trust my GPS to get me to ground zero. The cache was right where the coordinates said it would be. My second lesson has been not to trust ground zero too much, especially around buildings where the coordinates vary with where you stand. I know ground zero can be triangulated from direction readings from several positions, but I am actually starting to wonder if some people intentionally mark the cache a little bit away from where it should be just to add drama or to make things slightly tougher. On the up side, I am learning the bounds of human ingenuity when it comes to hiding little pieces of paper. I am having fun though, and that is the most important thing.
  10. Is there any way to get more log notes to show up in pocket queries? It appears pocket queries only contain the last 5 notes. If I go to the page for an individual cache, and choose to download the GPX file, then I get the last 20 log notes, which is an improvement. Ideally I would like ALL the logs included with my pocket query. The reason I ask is because there have been a few caches I only found after reading back through many log files. For one of my latest finds, I printed out 15 pages of log files and took them with me since they often make much more sense when at the physical location. The clue I needed was actually 1 year and 32 logs prior. I really want to go paperless, but the 5 log limit in pocket queries is causing me to log a lot more DNFs than I prefer. Any suggestions? Is there some sort of setting I can change on my account? Thanks for your help.
  11. Thanks everyone! I used the fieldnotes option, and I like the way it works. I will stick with that. As for GSAK, I guess I had a slight misunderstanding of what it does. It is a nice program, and given its versatility, I just assumed it would be more integrated. Since my remaining questions are more specific to their program, I will take my questions there. Thanks again for the help!
  12. Thanks for the links about logging. I think I actually read some of that a few days ago, but there is so much new information to absorb it is overwhelming. I am a little surprised about the lack of integration GSAK has with geocaching.com, but I can imagine it could also be a spam-prevention type of thing. Thanks for your help.
  13. Hi, I made my first find today, but I am having troubles getting it to show up on my account here. How do I do that? For more details, I have a GPSr that can do paperless caching and I have become relatively comfortable with GSAK for managing my list of desired caches. When I made the found today, I logged it on my GPSr and made a few notes for myself. According to the GPSr, it is found. Now that I am home again, I went to GSAK and told it to receive waypoints. I know that worked because the pre-loaded Garmin headquarters waypoints are now in GSAK. The problem is that GSAK still shows no finds, and when I click on the cache in GSAK, it does not contain my notes or any other indication I logged it as found. Even if it did show as found, I am also not sure how to synchronize my finds with geocaching.com, although that is one step beyond my current situation (perhaps better suited for GSAK forum). As a separate method, I logged into my account here, and looked for a way to log my find, but I do not see relevant links on my account page. I do not need to log my find through GSAK (although that would be nice). I mostly just want it to show up on my account at geocaching.com. I figure I must be overlooking something simple. What am I doing wrong? Thanks in advance.
  14. Thank you also from me as I was about to ask a similar question. In fact, ferjea beat me to creating a thread about this subject by about 1 minute. It is nice to see such quick and detailed responses.
×
×
  • Create New...