CuplaKiwis

Like most of the above, it really depends on what kind of mood I'm. Some days a cache n' dash is all I want, and there's even been the odd occasion when a car park micro has appealed (but I've usually come to my senses fairly quickly ), but for the most part I love a good wander. This weekend just been, we walked to a graet cache just off Hadrian's Wall with my wife's cousin and his girlfriend. It was about 2hrs return I guess - three of us had a great time, and one had had enough after a few minutes. It just depends on the person...

Had always used 1:50K maps in NZ (fondly known as Topographicals or just Topo's), and so was surprised to see the 1:25K's over here. Have to say that while they are very useful for seom things, for the most part I find them to be a bit superfluous. Yes, the extra detail is nice to have, but for navigation 'in the field' a 1:50K is sufficient. Besides, if I have a 1:25K query for a specific spot, I can just grab it online

(probably) silly question, but you haven't accidentally changed your datum, have you?! Good luck tho' - hope you get your luck back soon!!

I'd agree with the previous posters, that the behaviour you see could be just the 'normal' rough-and-tumble of using a handheld GPS in mixed conditions. However... There have been some reports that the eTrex can start to behave in an unpredictable manner when it's tracklog is full. It's worth checking this: RTM for your version. Find the "Tracks" display and clear the tracklog. If you aren't actually using Tracks, then turning track recording OFF altogether will give a (small) benefit in performance. -Wlw. That's quite interesting - hadn't heard that before. Do you have a reference for this? I find that my eTrex is pretty stable (at least to with a metre or two) as long as I have decent sat coverage (5-7m accuracy). Best way to find a cache if coverage is dodgy is to triangulate the position from areas with better coverage a few (?10) metres away. Much easier....

Probably is anonymous for this very reason - so people won't be afraid to leave <ahem> 'honest' comments...

...and in situations like this, "reasonably" as well.

What about figuring out where the more "cache-heavy" areas are, so that people with caches in these areas could be contacted anually and asked to review the status/relevance of their cache?

<rant> Right. Two points, and then I'll shut up. 'Public' areas are being taken over by bureaucrats - scared of litigation/liability/p!$$ing off the latest save the snail group. Blanket bans of activities like ours can not possibly be justified in their own charters - they need to recognise this. Individual cases, such as the original post, are a completely different story. Which brings me to point two: GAGB has an absolutely fantastic resource for identifying land ownership and preexisiting permissions/bans. WHY DO CACHE PLACERS CONTINUE TO IGNORE IT? For goodness' sake. It's not that hard. </rant> Flame away...

You should be able to (though I haven't done this yet) set up a PQ to look for new caches daily.

well, not necessarily - that would be a *really* easy find! "Dave, I'm looking for a cache. Oh, there it is - Thanks. I'll go and hide it now"

hmmn. Still down. Anyone close by that can go in and give them a poke to wake them up?

The outage was announced early yesterday at the top of the forum (under Geocaching Announcements). I think that's a better way of making the announcement than sending thousands of (spam?) e-mails. As it should have been 2-3 hours only it should not have been much of an issue - I guess they didn't expect it to take as long as it has... I don't have a clue what the forum usage statistics are, but if more than 50% of active geocachers frequently use the forums, I would be extremely surprised... (edited for cr@p typing)

perhaps they can form a 3D map of the surroundings based on the observation pauses you noted - they can then correlate this to current position and react accordingly. More importantly, did the squirrel list them as individual caches or as one big multi?

4.5 hrs and counting How hard could it have been to send out an email to users warning them about this planned outage? Again - it's the middle of the night in the US, and I guess that's what matters. Mind you, I do pity the people doing the work in said middle of the night

Excellent. Looks like my $30 for membership *did* help after all.

What?! You mean there're snakes in this country? Right. That's it. I'm going home.

Hmmn, my Doctor told me angst is bad for my health... Sillyness - well we could all do with more of that

Cheers folks. FWIW, I prefer to ask questions here first, then move to the general forums if I have no luck - I find I'm less likely to get a "smarmy" response here!! Silly, I know...

E-caching for the first time. Have noticed that caches whose names begin with "A" or "The" have this removed in the eight character waypoint name in my eTrex. Is this the eTrex or GSAK that is truncating this? More importantly, are there any other words that GSAK/eTrex truncate in this way?

and is running into other cachers a bad thing? Don't think there are too many of us. With initiatives such as CITO and general environmental awareness, I say "the more, the merrier."

Noticed this cache in the longest ftf thread. It's got three TB's in it - if someone were to (finally) hit this cache, they should definintely take all three, even if they can't help directly. As far as other finds go, we typically grab 'em if we can help, leave 'em if we can't, regardless of number.

...and a fair proportion of those are upcoming event caches too. Some great spots in amongst those tho' - particularly liked the 'puffins' one.

For those of you considering paperless caching with a smartphone - I was not able to find very much information about this on the interweb or GC.com, so thought I would summarise here for folks to refer to. System: Etrex Yellow with serial cable Nokia 6670 (series 60 Symbian smartphone) - using inbuilt web browser (offline) GSAK * Pocket Query downloaded into GSAK. * Use the upload waypoints function to send 450 WP's to Etrex. * Export data to HTML from 'file' menu. * Send entire folder to my smartphone - this takes about 25 minutes! * Create bookmark in smartphone's web browser, pointed at 'index.htm' on the phone's memory card. * Bookmark opens completely offline, with full index and search capabilities. Fantastic!! Only downside is time taken to upload html. This might be better next time, as it will hopefully only upload the changes? If not, no big deal... Very impressed - Should have done it sooner.

Noticed somewhere in the general GC.com stuff a note from Jeremy that "GC.com is on four servers that are currently running very close to capacity". Suspect we are seeing symptoms of this in the big slowdowns, timeouts etc. I have now paid up to become a Premium Member (Shock! Horror!!); I hope that my $30 will go straight towards a new server!

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