Myself248

I ran across xkcd comic number 77 last night, and it set me thinking: Did you add geocaching to your regular outdoor activities? Or is geocaching the only thing that gets you more than 100 feet from the car on a regular basis?

Ask your local police department where they send their cars to have the equipment worked on, and where the old cars go for salvage. Such an outfit will probably have all sorts of mounts, wiring helpers, and advice. I'm told of one outfit who bought entire cars for a set price, sold the laptop and radio as used, and junked the rest, which included lights, switches, mounts, and everything. You could pluck good-condition RAM mounts out of their dumpster until you got bored with it.

Amen! I recently added an orange thinsulate hat and a cheap plastic orange vest to my kit. I work as a cellular site tech, and a lot of my caching gear is also work gear. 95% of the time I can park right next to the site so I'm not worried about someone mistaking me for a target, but in the event that I have to park some distance away and hike back to the site, that orange hat is my best friend.

"I bought this for a friend, I didn't realize she had a Mac, and it doesn't work with Macs." Works every time. Really, where does it end? Every little doodad comes with a CD of drivers. Will they find a way to make everything unreturnable because of that? It's like rebates, once you cut the UPC off the box, you can't return the item even if it's defective. They'll try anything to make the customer right less often.

Simply know that you belong there, and you won't look suspicious. They say dogs can smell fear, but I think it applies more broadly. If someone is looking your way, just muster up half a smile, flash it in their direction with half a nod, and go back to what you were doing with just a hint of annoyance at the distraction. You're just trying to finish this last site before your shift is over and you can go home, after all. A clipboard is the single most official-looking piece of gear you can carry, anywhere, for any purpose. Particularly if it's the clamshell style that can hold some papers internally. Another piece of good urban camo would be a rolling ruler, the wheel-on-a-stick that some kinds of surveyers use. You might find it coming in handy for actual caching, too!

Howardforums is indeed a great place to find tons of info, especially about prepaid providers and services. In general: The north american cell phone network is messy. Where europe has a single standard (GSM) and everyone's phones can use everyone's towers, we have 4 major incompatible standards, and your phone is only physically capable of working with the same type of base station equipment. If you have an iDEN phone and you're only near CDMA towers, you're SOL. (I love TLAs!) Many IS-95 CDMA and IS-136 TDMA phones can fall back to the AMPS analog standard. In some rural areas, AMPS is still operating, though carriers are ripping out the old equipment whenever it gets in the way. (It consumes a lot of power, and if you thought YOUR electric bill was getting high, look at a network of 600 cell sites!) Phones also take more power when they're in analog mode, so if you have to make an emergency call and you end up on AMPS, your battery's 3-hour talk time might become 20 minutes. All phones sold in the US are required to place emergency (911) calls without authentication. This means the contract can be expired, the phone can be blacklisted, the handset can be locked, the SIM can be locked, or the SIM can be missing entirely. Even AMPS phones, which you can't put new activations on anymore, can make 911 calls in areas where they have service. Carrying any phone is a good idea for emergencies, as long as it's not sitting in the glovebox with a dead battery. There's also no reason not to get your ham license. The test is cheaper than a GMRS license, and it's valid for longer. Carrying a five-watt mobile and a copy of the ARRL repeater directory will almost certainly put you in touch with someone. Drop in on your local amateur radio club, they'll be happy to explain the basics and get you ready for the test. You might even find a good deal on a basic radio from a club member who's upgrading. (Also, ask them about foxhunting. Geocachers will find this activity right up their alley!) Someone also mentioned personal locator beacons. PLBs are intended for longer outings, and you should file a trip itinerary with SARSAT-NOAA for them to be useful. When triggered, a PLB activates its GPS receiver, gets a fix of your position, and transmits it to the SARSAT network. It then keys up on the EPIRB frequency so responders can home in on your signal using radio direction-finding equipment. Probably overkill for geocaching. (Just a bit.) If you plan to spend a lot of time outside cellular coverage, a satellite phone makes sense. Inmarsat and Iridium would both apply to North American users. Various resellers offer rentals and some remarkably affordable plans, considering that they are satellite systems. I doubt many of us are really that far off the grid, but consider the sheer coolness factor of a satellite phone! Keep in mind that they need a clear sky view, just like your GPSr. As for the note about cellular phones not working in emergencies: (getting farther and farther off-topic here!) The August 2003 power outage made the point very clear: A provider with a half-dozen generator trailers, and 300 sites, can't possibly keep them all running in a widespread grid failure. Each site's battery bank is good for 3-8 hours, depending. I'm in Michigan and I don't know about other parts of the country, but after that incident, Verizon installed autostart generators at every site they could. (A few percent, due to rooftop placement or other concerns, remain generatorless.) Ditto with Alltel. The fuel tanks are usually sized to run the site for 3 or 4 days. As far as I know, no other carriers have permanent generators at more than a few percent of their sites. That being said, if there's a big enough emergency that the cellular network is overloaded or offline, your landline isn't likely to get anything more than a busy signal if you call 911 anyway. Your best bet in any such situation is to be prepared to handle your own family's needs for several days. Luck favors the prepared! In summation: Any phone with a charged battery is better than nothing. Two phones that work on different networks (one tri-band GSM, one CDMA/AMPS, for instance) are even better than that. If you're talking about real emergencies (911 stuff), there's no need to buy service on any of them. Talk to your local ham club about repeaters in the areas you hike. There's no substitute for the buddy system, and even a pair of cheap FRS radios will help you keep in touch with your friends on the trail.

The crystal oscillator in the receiver is also affected by temperature. Diagnostic mode on the Garmin eTrex series includes a display of the circuit board temperature, since it uses this data internally to adjust its timing. The thermistor is a few millimeters away from the oscillator though, so during rapid temperature swings, it might not know the oscillator's actual temperature, and the adjustments would be slightly off. Since GPS transmissions are really just precise timing signals, having a stable timebase in the receiver is essential. If you're on the edge of your unit's temperature spec, it might have some difficulty disciplining the local oscillator. That in turn would mean a slower time to fix, and possibly more error in the readings. A stable temperature is more important than a specific one, but always try to say inside the specified operating range. Everything that's been said about batteries is also correct, but if the unit was reporting full charge, I doubt that would be the cause of a slow fix.

The UV-blocking coat will make the GitD paint useless. Luminescent materials absorb light at a short (high-energy) wavelength, store it for a while, and slowly release it in a longer (lower-energy) wavelength. Since they're emitting in the blue-green spectrum, they need to charge from something even higher, specifically ultraviolet. Any covering that blocks UV will prevent your GitD paint from charging. Conversely, a cacher using a small keychain UV light will see your glowing markers vividly.

That's the perfect excuse to pick up a new GPSr when you land! They're certainly cheaper than a replacement airline ticket, and you end up with a "spare" once you get home. Seriously, having a second unit makes it much more enjoyable when you're introducing a friend to the hobby. Nobody likes a GPS-hog. (:

It should be clarified that the term comes from the Harry Potter books, where magic-users refer to non-magic-users as "muggles". Muggles are not aware of the unseen world, the magical things they walk past every day. I think. I've never read the books myself, but that's what I've gathered from context. Any Rowling fans want to set me straight?

I read all the previous incarnations of this thread. I'll try not to repeat things that've already been said. Here's what I have to add: What's the calculator for? You've got pencils and paper, and I don't see any need for advanced math that the GPSr doesn't already do for you. Several people mentioned calculators in their kits. Clue me in? Pens and pencils are great, but sometimes a greasepencil ("china marker") is the right tool for the job. Marking on the side of an ammo box, for instance. Fluorescent surveyers' tape is also cheap and handy for all sorts of marking needs. I picked up some Ivy-Cleanse packets, and recently found that Tecnu is available in packets too. Stuffing a few in the first-aid kit sure beats carrying around a whole 16-ounce bottle that you rarely use. Also make sure your kit includes whatever medications you take. A small pack of Benadryl is worth its weight in gold if someone gets stung. I'm surprised nobody mentioned a small folding grappling hook to use with all that rope. And rags are great, but you know where your towel is, don't you? I also always keep a roll of electrical tape in my pocket. It's tough enough for emergency strap repairs, tenacious enough to reinforce band-aids that won't stay put, stretchy enough to work as a tournequit in a pinch, and you'll find a zillion other uses if you carry it every day. I like Scotch 35, which doesn't leave residue, and 88t, which is unbelievably stretchy. Caches seem to have moisture problems even when they're perfectly sealed. But what packrat geek doesn't have a pile of desiccant packs, saved from packaging? Now that the weather's cooling off, it's time to reactivate your dessicant packs: Lay them out on a cookie sheet and put 'em in an electric oven at "warm" (200 F) overnight. (See why you wouldn't want to do that in the summer?) Gas ovens produce water as a byproduct of combustion, and since the object here is to drive the moisture out of the packs, you really want dry electric heat. Store the desiccant packs in a tightly sealed baggie, and drop a few in each cache you find. If you find packs already in a cache, swap them out for fresh ones, and take them home for reactivation. (That's almost worthy of its own thread!) Also, basic GPSrs are cheap enough now, carrying a spare is practical. If you're caching with friends, two people with receivers can help a lot, especially with dense tree cover. And if you have to foresight to mark a "where we parked the car" waypoint on both units, you'll have a much harder time getting lost if one unit dies for some reason. On a longer hike, a backup GPSr is just as sensible as carrying spare batteries. Speaking of spare batteries, do something to keep them from shorting out with each other and the metal miscellany at the bottom of your bag or pocket. I had a mishap with a 2100mAh AA on the passenger seat with my foil-wrapped slice of pizza... And speaking of car-food, Capri Sun and other pouch drinks are perfect for the winter, since they don't burst when they freeze. Apple sauce and pudding cups share the same miraculous property.

Whoah. The first idea I flipped to, capture-the-flag, blows my mind. If the voice server is aware of two or more people playing the game simultaneously, it could pit them against each other. It could instruct them to interfere or collude with each other. "Please enter your latitude. Press pound for decimal point, or star to return to the previous step." Muhahaha! This is a great resource of ideas, thank you! I'll read through it and post an update on the notacon.org forums for further discussion. More input is most welcome!

I did my first successful geocaching yesterday with a few friends, and had a blast! I think this would be a perfect addition to some of the weird games planned for next spring's Notacon. I'm posting here in case y'all are looking for a fresh batch of victims to foist your diabolical geo-puzzle ideas on. Notacon celebrates the obscure side of computers and technology. 2004's Theme was "art and technology", 2005's was "technology and community", and 2006's will be "communications". There are some ideas being tossed around on Notacon's messageboard already, about games and events that various people are planning. One idea that keeps popping up is the use of an Asterisk PBX system, to twist voicemail into a sort of interactive game. I'd love to see a combination treasure hunt, walking tour, multicache, and interactive phone puzzle. If any of this gets your creative juices flowing, put those ideas out there!