The Big Kid

28th has my vote. As mentioned above(way up), unable to attend until then. $10 OK, fill me and BFL into a team that needs me(if its the 28th).

I am unavailable from saturday (5 April) until the end of the snow to surf race(27 April). Any time outside of that I will try to attend, and would willingly pay an entry fee.

Dirtrunner, check out "TEAM KFWB GPS" 152 hides/1 find, and check out the Vancouver Island scene N4830W12330. You would be amazed/shocked at what happend out here. Over $30,000.00 has hit the geocaching economy, from 1 team of hiders. Trust me, if you were here, it would be about the $$$$.

How do I qualify to compete? Total elapsed time from page printing to find, points for vehicle parking and dismount, minimized time in the transition area, fashion sense, and level of difficulty formulas.

Stake out your computer, watch and wait. The odds of finding unfound, slim. But when you look at your list of nearest caches, the unfound ones have no date in small print under the name. But found caches are just as good. With so many in the southern Vancouver Island, expect to take a long time to get them all, if ever.

Ok, a start from the top, Lat and long can be displayed in several fashions, Deg/min/sec or Deg/min/tenths of minutes etc. That is simply the method of displaying the information. Geocaching uses deg/min/thousands of minute. It is simply the difference between how the position is displayed. Most GPS recievers can change by changing the UNITS, no math required, but a eyeball check matches up 06 seconds= .1, 12 seconds = .2 18 sec = .3 etc.(base 60 vs base 10). DATUM - WGS 84/NAD 27/NAD 83/UTM these are all different "grids" that can be laid down over the face of our planet. It tells you the information that your lat long is based on. WGS 84 = World Geographic Survey(1984). NAD 27/83= North American Datum 1927 or 1983. UTM- the blue lines, base 10 instead of base 60 of lat/long( 60 seconds = 1 minute/60 minutes = 1 degree. Again your reciever has a "datum" selection in your detup somewhere. I believe that you are looking at a degree/minutes/seconds(dd mm ss) position and trying to find out how to make it match the geocaching position(dd mm.mmm). The WGS 84 just ensure you are working of the same map base that everyone else is. My advice, sit down and have a long session of learning with your manual. It should show and explain how to change it back and forth. Failing that, I recommend the book "GPS MADE EASY" by Lawrence Letham. Hope this helps

So I can book a babysitter.

Looking at what Coupar Angus said, I don't know about being discrete, if the flight attendants see you trying to sneak and hide something they get more worried. They just asked me what it was, I told them a GPS reciever and showed them the map display. They thought it was neat. If they think it needs to be put away, they could ask the pilot, and he knows that it won't be a problem. The good news is that almost all GPS units are recieve only and the signals it picks up are all around the aircraft all the time. The frequencies will have no impact on aircraft communications or navaids(aircraft term) they are miles away in the spectrum and being a reciever, the only problem is if it transmits. Even the Garmin Rhino transmitter would not impact as its frequency is too far away. Although it would be harder to explain than a GPS reciever. Leaving it in open view hasn't been a problem for me, above there was a mention of hanging it from the window pulldown. The altitude feature, if you have a barometric altimeter will not be accurate inside the pressurized cabin. It will probably never say more than 10,000 feet. Of note, the cockpit works on Nautical numbers (knots/miles) around the world still and altitude is still done in 1000's of feet. Enjoy your flight.

No problems, I take my Garmin on all trips out of town. You just need to be able to prove it works to the security folks(so remember to leave batteries in). My last airline trip was 24 Jan 03. I found it quite difficult to get a good fix though, even with a window seat.

www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?ID=29352 They can be laid to rest here. If you are unable to resurrect. Or if the cache owner doesn't do anything about it and you know its not in the cache. Pick it up and place here. Someone else's neat idea. My 2 cents

I will start with my disclaimer, I am bad with computers, and I know squat about programming. My thought is - as my logon name reflects that I do this as a family, so all us kids can enjoy a walk outside, I am trying to find out if it is a feasable feature to have multiple alias's for a single profile. Example - when all of us go out - Me, wife, son and daughter, use full name. But, if just I go out, it would be nice to call myself the big kid, with the wife only - the big kids, with small variations for the permiutations(sp?) that I could go geocaching with different combinations of family members. I know this can be done when hiding a cache, but, to log a find doesn't seem to work. This would allow me to log solo finds under one name, boys trip only etc, to match one logon, and one family profile. I tried just changing my profile name for one trip and it changed all my old logs to the new name. Anyone else think this would be a good feature? Or would it be WAAAAAY too much computing power to be feasable? If this feature is already available, or has been brought up in another forum (I looked/ searched but couldn't find) I sound like a computer illiterate schmuck and now sit by my computer to read your wraith. But at least tell me in your chastising how it works.

Of us Sea King types, there is one more out west that I think I just converted,(he is stuck trying to come up with a cool username-like I worried about that), and I know of 3(aircrew types-anyway)in Shearwater-one truly dedicated and two maybe interested's. Duck tape might not be cheap, but at least it's a color match!

Flying the great grey beheamoths off those itty bitty frigates. I guess that makes me sorta Navy too, but I wear the cool blue and go by Air Force rank and consider my number 2 job at sea, annoy the NAVY.

I retract my previous "Bummer" and now follow Dagg's excitement . Ready and waiting (when I get back from my trip east) dadgum - bad timing again.

Bummer

Mariner, In response to your question about why chase these particular cache. I would like to think that I'm not as concerned about the money. It would be nice to win big,(l do like cachewidow's idea) but that has not worked for me yet(barely winning anything). I believe that if a cache were set up in the fashion that they do it, (but without the $$), I would pursue it as well, to be able to say "I was first on this difficult cache". I was involved in a big treasure hunt(interior BC) through the mid 90's. Called the LEGEND OF THUNDERBEAR. It took 4-5 YEARS to solve it. I continued working on it while living on the other end of the country, with my grandfather sending me clues/info. I think it is what turned me onto the really difficult riddles. I do enjoy the chase, and last sunday my goal was to beat CDMS/FWS/JRAV just cuz they do so well, and lately I haven't been in town long enough to get a chance to research/chase the others. Having the $$ in the cache does add to the excitement and I have travelled around quite a bit chasing little disc's with #'s on them. BUT, sundays sprint was something that was needed to be recorded for TV. The adrenaline of the race was borderline- dangerously toxic. I intend to conduct "WATCHERS....", even if I can't partake on the 28th(jury is still out on that), I will do it(probably a week late)- JUST CUZ. Want a ride?