BikerKats

Anyone else just received the weekly geocaching.com update from Groundspeak for 9/6/2007 to 9/13/2007? We've had this week's, too, but the next item in our inbox was this one from September. I can't say whether we received it in September as well as we don't keep them that long. Just wondered.

Mr BK rides a motorbike, all of us ride pedal cycles. Interested in principle in an event but this could raise childcare issues for us. Don't count us in, but we'll "watch this space". We would be more likely to attend a day event within reach of home than a camping weekend further afield with the motorbike.

Yes, it's dreadfully slow. I'll give up and try again later if it doesn't work soon.

I recently wrote one for PocketPC but I guess that's not going to help you much . Incidentally, the figures generated by Groundspeak on the cache listings are out by typically about 7 metres. It's not a datum issue as it's pretty constant over all the areas I've tried it, and in any case 7 metres would be a bit low for a WGS84/OSGB datum error for most parts of the country. As I use OS grid references and not lat/long in the software I use on my PDA (which is also my main GPSr), this is quite an issue. I've checked on the OS web site and the problem is definitely with the Groundspeak conversion and not mine. When you do find a convertor, might be an idea to check it against the OS site, which has a free online convertor. Good luck, Rgds, Andy Andy - the lat/long - OS grid converter for Pocket PC would help us... I was looking for something like this a couple of weeks ago before our holiday. Any help you can give would be appreciated. I'll also look at the OS online converter when I have a bit more time. Jenny BikerKats

Thanks for that, Careygang - I've just read all the logs and it's good to see all is in order. (Just catching up with the forums now after a couple of weeks away)

Well, we went to the Jamboree, got very hot but had a brilliant time. We photographed "Beagle Scout", found the Jambo Geo cache, and introduced some of our Group members to caching. We didn't knowingly meet any other cachers but there are lots of logs for Jambo Geo on Sunday - I do hope it is still there.

I seem to have got it to work at last - notes, logs and hints now appear on my PDA. I would still like to have the OS grid references displayed if there is a way of doing this. Does anyone know if this is possible?

Like the OP, I have spent a frustrating couple of days trying to go paperless. Also like the OP, we can see the cache name, waypoint name and the Lat/Long co-ords on the PPC - no logs, no hints etc. I will try the suggestion of using GPX files instead of LOC files if I can work out how to do it. My specific question is - Is there any way of getting the OS grid references to display? We are using cachemate, GSAK and a Pocket PC (iPAQ).

Thanks, it is now on the ppc. Now I need to work out what else I have to do!

Hope you don't mind if I hi-jack this thread slightly. We bought CacheMate two days ago and can't get it to open. We get the following error message: C:\Documents and Settings\.etc.\.etc.\cachemate-1.2.4.exe is not a valid Win32 application Maybe I am being dim and someone can help me before I e-mail Smittyware?

Thanks for the suggestion Mark and Lynn. We are trying to go paperless - we already have two pocket PCs and memory map. We have purchased cachemate (yesterday) but so far have been unable to get it to run. In trying to prepare for caching trips I have run a pocket query but have been unable to get it to load into GSAK. (I have run pocket queries before now and they worked). I don't know what I am doing wrong, or what I am missing in my understanding. We desperately want to have paperless set up before we go on holiday as I do not want to take reams of paper with us so we have details of the relatively small number of caches we will attempt. It is all very time consuming and frustrating.

I'm preparing for some short caching trips in the next few days and am printing off the PDFs for the caches I intend to do. However, two of these are multis and the Additional Waypoints (stages of a multi) showing the part-co-ordinates do not appear on the PDF. I have had to copy and paste them into Word and print another sheet of paper. Am I doing something wrong? The additional Waypoints do appear on the "Print-friendly" version but, as discussed before, the "print-friendly" version does not include previous logs. I'm still missing the OS grid co-ordinates which do not appear on the PDF version. I like to plot cache locations on a map (if I have one) when caching in an unfamiliar area. I'm finding this so frustrating - the old "Print-friendly" pages were almost ideal - they worked for us, anyway - now I find neither the PDF nor the "print friendly" version satisfactory.

email sent. Thanks, email received and replied to! that should do the trick, Cheers The TB is now in our possession and we hope to take some photos of it on Sunday. If "Jambo Geo" is accessible to day visitors, and time, our programme, and muggles permit, we could place the TB there. If that is not possible, what do others think we should do with it? Place it in a cache near our home (or elsewhere, but we are unlikely to be able to get it any closer to Brownsea Island in the foreseeable future). It can then find its way to Brownsea via "normal" TB routes; - or - Post it to DorsetGal and Geodog as they will be able to get it to Brownsea in the near future. I have been reliably informed that it is available to day visitors, and we shall certainly be looking for it on Sunday when we visit, you never know we might even bump into each other Perhaps I will wear a Geocaching pin badge so we may recognise each other

email sent. Thanks, email received and replied to! that should do the trick, Cheers The TB is now in our possession and we hope to take some photos of it on Sunday. If "Jambo Geo" is accessible to day visitors, and time, our programme, and muggles permit, we could place the TB there. If that is not possible, what do others think we should do with it? Place it in a cache near our home (or elsewhere, but we are unlikely to be able to get it any closer to Brownsea Island in the foreseeable future). It can then find its way to Brownsea via "normal" TB routes; - or - Post it to DorsetGal and Geodog as they will be able to get it to Brownsea in the near future.

email sent.

Many thanks for these suggestions. I have up-loaded the nearest 100 to Appleby to Memory Map, and as you say, Appleby is rather sparse for caching. This will help us sort out which caches to try. Any further suggestions would be appreciated - even for a little further afield as we are going to have to travel to caches anyway.

For our summer(!) holiday this year will be camping near Appleby in Westmorland. Does anyone have any particular recommendations of caches in this area? We will have a car and probably also bikes, and we will probably attempt to climb one or two of the Lakeland fells. We don't want to spend all holiday caching (well, I might) so any help would be appreciated. We are also looking into being paperless for this trip, but haven't worked it all out yet. Many thanks, Jenny

I've done the same. I also sometimes like to print the "show 5 logs" facility as others' logs sometimes help - at the very least to know when the cache was last found. I've been using the PDF version of print-friendly pages but don't like this as much.

Two months does justify a reminder, in fact this thread has prompted me to e-mail the owner of a TB we've held on to for too long. This is for various reasons: the owner specifically wants photos taken and we haven't been anywhere interesting with both the TB and the camera, we've had less time to go caching recently, and when we have been caching, we haven't come across a suitable cache in terms of size or perceived muggle-resistance. I would never place a TB in a cache that I thought was likely to be muggled - we've lost a TB in a muggled cache recently and had a near miss with our Geocoin. I've asked the owner whether they would prefer us to hold onto the TB and add to its mission, or place it in a cache near us in the near future. I've sent similar e-mails twice before - one met with no reply, and the other owners were grateful we'd contacted them.

We now have a happy ending. The coin arrived in the post today. In the meantime, it has been logged into a cache in North Carolina, adding 3929 miles to its mileage. It will resume its travels soon. Many thanks to all who offered to help with the coin's rescue. BikerKats

Thanks for the suggestions. We now have a reasonable map of Brussels and will check to see where the caches are and which we might do.

We (Mark [ie Mr BK] and I) are planning a weekend in Brussels this weekend and would like to grab a few caches while we are there. I see that there are 32 traditional caches in the "State/Province" of Brussels. Can any one recommend any "must do" caches, or any we should avoid? We don't want to attempt any multis or puzzle caches that might take up a lot of time. And we have no intention of trying to find all 32! Many thanks, Jenny

We saw the Bollywood filming in Oxford too, but not the four poster bed.

We use 1:50000 which is excellent for navigating to the general area of the cache. But we find that our Garmin is best for finding the cache once we are in the general area. We recently went caching without the PDA and wished we had taken it as it would have helped us to know which path to take. IMO 1:50000 is great but we wouldn't be without our Garmin. We have never used 1:25000. Hope this helps

They're back Thank you - much appreciated.