ctgreybeard

My wife is planning on attending the annual Lancaster Quilt festival Quilting Heritage and, as I am not a quilter (I just sleep under one), I'm planning on doing some cacheing. I'll also be going to the Strasburg Railroad museum too, probably on Friday 4/7. I've downloaded a query of the area caches to my GPSr and Blackberry so I have a good collection of caches. But are there any that are especially good for the area? Something that relates to PA or Amish or US history or whatever? Any caches that I should try that will give me a better flavor for the area and its history? As a "senior citizen" I appreciate the less physical treks and virtuals are a favorite (but not exclusively) ... I'm collecting swag to bring, mostly kid related (Grandpa's get to become kids again, it's a perk!), and suggestions in that area would be appreciated also! I hope to have a couple of great days in PA! Maybe we'll cross paths ... Bill W P.S. We are staying in Denver in the Comfort Inn with some friends. Email me if you want to hook up.

No, I don't think I've ever seen that. My VistaC did crash one time after I made a minor wrong turn and it went to recalculate and never came back. I had to pull the batteries to get it working again. Bill

I've got a 7520 and run Mobireader on it. Then I can download Pocket Queries to the BB and have the cache's descriptions, logs, etc. readily available. Bill W

The way the GPSr knows whether you have a geocache or a waypoint is strictly by the icon. In mine, and AFAIK the default, the icon for a geocache is the closed treasure box. You set/check it from the main menu click Setup then Geocache and you'll see the two icons for Not Found and Found. If those are the treasure boxes then check the icons set for the geocaches that you loaded. Perhaps they got set to something else? HTH, Bill W

Do you mean the bubble-wrap envelope or the little micro purse the coin came in? I just ripped the outside envelope off as I walked to the car, being carefull not to discard any codes that might be (but weren't) on the outer wrapper. That litle purse was a bit slower to yield because I didn't want to damage it but I really like the idea. Now when the coins hang out in the drawer they aren't going to get all banged up.

Wow! I never thought of that! You're saying, I think, that even if I intend my coin to go traipsing across the world some collector could choose to hang on to it. Unless I try to make it undesireable ... well, I'll have to consider that, I guess. Thanks for the reply! Bill

Having just started geocaching myself (my son has been active for a while) I am intrigued by travel bugs and, now, geocoins. I've just started with this so I need a little advice. Clearly, if I intend to send my coins on their way via a cache I will want to activate those coins. But I can also see the fun in collecting and trading these coins and, clearly, there is a large group of people doing just that. Is there any benefit to activating (or not, as the case may be) coins that you intend to collect and trade and not drop into a cache? Thanks in advance, Bill W

My January Signal coin finally. Looks pretty good especially considering the bashing it was getting earlier.

Yay! Mine finally arrived and perhaps it was because I was late in the cycle that mine came through looking very nice. It has a nice heft to it and while there are a few imperections in the finish it looks quite good. Good enough that I'm looking forward to the February coin and am likely to buy the March also. Bill W.

Woo hoo! Just downloaded and installed this puppy. I had been running 2.51 which was working fine. Now we'll try this one out. Bill W.

Thanks, TL, but No, it doesn't make me feel any better. Bill W

I feel better (misery loves company?) that someone else hasn't received theirs. Keep me posted, either here or by PM?

Has anyone received a Signal geocoin in the last couple of days? I still have not received my January coin and a message to the info address got an automated reply that they were swamped but gave another address to send to if it was an "emergency." Now, I can't imagine what would constitute an "emergency" in this situation but, perhaps, getting what I paid my 12 bucks for might qualify. If the coin is, as they say, "in the mail" then I'll wait a bit but if they all should have been delivered then I'll start to see if I can get a real response. Bill W.

I use my Blackberry car charger with my Vista C all the time. I figured that if it's USB it has to use a single standard voltage and it appears I was right. Bill W

I once made a wrong turn while following a route with my Vista C and it went into recalculating and never came back. I had to pop the batteries to restart it. As this happened only once I'm not too worried but I did download and install the 2.51 Beta software as that is one of the symptoms that I have heard it addresses. What is the version of the software that you are running?

I switched back and forth and didn't find much difference between the two for my location.

I tried my own home address on the site and the map had it pegged exactly but the coordinates were a little North (.001 deg) and West (.004 deg) of where my VistaC says. But the web site shows the spot in the street and I am in the middle of my lot, a quick check shows that the web site is correct if I was standing in the street. Good thing it's Saturday and the traffic is light! Bill W

Ah, Sacramento, the city of my birth! May I never be forced to live there again! [i spent a year out at Mather in the Air Force and discovered why my mother (also born in Sacramento) was very happy to leave it!] I am a bonafide fourth generation Californian and damned proud of it! But I still wouldn't live in Sacramento by choice! But I digress. I might expect someone as far west as you are to pick that one up but I was really surprised when I saw it here in New England! Maybe we were getting some tropo-scatter or some other anomaly? Do you get a solid lock on 48 or, as I do, just get the hollow bar? 35 has been the hollow bar for a while but I understand that is because it's moving and isn't sending ranging signals, just ephemeris data. Bill W

Wow, I have a pretty clear view to the west but I wonder if I can even see either of those. Of course, the GPSr says I can but I suspect it's Anik. I can't see any way that I could see PanAm from here. I'll have to experiment some more I guess. Thanks for the link. Bill W

OK, what's #48? I don't recall seeing #48 before but I loaded the beta 2.51 software into my VistaC today. I've been following this thread for a few days and so I was paying more attention to the satellite screen than I usually do and up pops #48! 35 was low and southwest but 48 was even farther west. I'm in new england. And 35 was popping in and out while 48 was pretty steady and had a higher bar than 35. Neither one got a solid bar but I didn't expect that from 35 anyway. I was getting my D's, however. Not consistently but I didn't have a lot of time to play. Maybe tomorrow I'll get out into a more open area and see what happens. I haven't found a reference to Garmin 48 anywhere yet but I'm still looking. Bill W

One thing I've noticed that I hadn't noticed before is that I am getting a signal from #48 that I don't recall from before. It is low on my western horizon, below #35. I'm on the east coast of the US (New England) I looked at my Garmin/WAAS reference document and I don't see a Garmin #48 listed. Maybe it's a UFO!? edit: Can't spell!

I just loaded it on my VistaC. After a quick I don't see much different but I'll let you know. Bill W

Why, thank you very much! I think the Northeast US does have a high density, makes for busy weekends! I think it is because we have a lot of small public parks. I've noticed that we seem to have a high number of micro and virtual caches. Small parks are hard to fit a regular-sized cache into so people use magnetic micros and even virtuals to put caches in places that aren't easy. I haven't needed my scuba gear even once for any of these which is why I selected no-scuba in the first place. Bill

That's an understatement. All I did was put in a PQ query from my home ZIP (and the same query using my home LATLONG did the same) and added some attributes which seemed to screw things up. Generally, I added NO scuba, NO swimming, NO climbing gear, NO etc. that meant I had to do excess climbing or whatever. The only attributes I selected were negative (slash-type) selections. The interesting part was that the result INCLUDED caches that were 6.7 mi. and more from the ZIP or home location. These were ones that I would have expected in the list. Nothing closer was included until I removed all of the attribute specs from the query. How the attributes and distance are related I have no idea. Bill

OK, I hear what everyone is saying and I would judge that it is broken as it is. But it's not a big deal to me, I just thought that it worked differently than it did. Interesting, though, that SOME caches were actually returned even though the attributes (climbing gear, scuba/swimming required, etc.) weren't specified in ANY of the caches that might have qualified. I'll just accept that attributes selection is broken as designed. When I hear that they are fixed I'll try again. Bill