GermanSailor

Hi, during my time in the US I enjoyed so many State Parks, NPs, National Forest, Wilderness areas and whatever those jewels are called. I completely understand that pristine nature should be consvered before it is to late. I completely understand that they don't want geocaches here, not so much because of the effect of cacheing but more for legal issues. If you allow geocaching, you are in a bad position to prohibit other things which might have a bigger impact on the area you want to conserve. There are just to many lawers in this country... Why does GC.com not allow a kind of virtual just for those areas. There are plenty of opportunities to read the signs, learn about the park and answer questions to get the permission to log. Ok, no logbook makes "cheating" easier, but I don't care for somebody elses numbers anyways. Earthcaches would be great as well for those areas. Yes, I know about Waymarking, but this site is just horrible and I want to have everything in one place. GermanSailor

I send the owner a mail, if I have a trackable for more than two weeks. If I "need" it longer, because I want to keep it until I travel back to Germany, I ask in advance if that is okay. GermanSailor

Hi, I really suggest, that you travel a bit. The cops in the US are very professional, friendly and usually have a lot of common sense. A police state is something completely different, those people put their safety in the line FOR YOUR SAFETY! In a police state you wouldn't be allowed to write such nonsense. I absolutely understand that geocaching has a potential to create suspicious situations. People with electronic gadgets obviously looking for something and the quickly do something with their find while trying not to be seen. I'm absolutely sure that the loss of another urban micro is a big loss to geocaching... GermanSailor

That's very true. A cache i n a scenic but remote spot is much less likely to get the officials excited than a cache near a government building, bridge or airport. GermanSailor

Yes it is. A cacher without a multi-tool is not a real cacher. A clever one even has the swiss tool and not some cheap colonial (a.k.a. made in the U.S.) copy of the real and first one. (Just kidding of course.) GermanSailor

Actually the thermometer is for keeping the internal time correct, since the crystals of the internal clock need to be temperature corrected to be accurate enough. GermanSailor

The underwater case for my digital camera came with silicon grease. I think that's just what you need. You should get this stuff at a local scuba store, there you might even find some better and more expensive case for your project. Or look here. There are quite a lot of underwater caches. Best thing probably is to ask those guy how they did it, no need to reinvent the wheel. GermanSailor

Thanks for the link. Got my stecil today and it works great. Think about to buy a couple more to make TBs out of them to help other cachers with their cache projects. GermanSailor

Hi W7WT, there are a couple of caches (not just virtuals) in Germany that are dedicated "armchair caches" some of them just can be found online with quite a lot of research. The owner allow it to log their caches after you did the "homework" and found out what it is about. To me the idea of geocaching is to find new interessting places. Most of those armchair caches just do this, even if it is just virtual. I always learned something interessting about a historic place or person. So I personally don't see a problem with this type of geocaching, as long as the owner is okay with it. The problem is that some people assume that it is okay to treat every virtual like one of the armchair caches. So I guess it was just a misunderstanding and you were absolutely right to delete the logs! GermanSailor

I don't think it is a "bad" thing. Who cares how many finds you have? Probably nobody. Some Cachers seem to be very competitive about their numbers and get really agitated about topics like this. I personally don't log my own caches, but I couldn't care less if you do so. Sometimes people with really high numbers post their statistics and you see that over 90% of their finds are 1/1 caches. To me that’s no achievement at all, but if it's important to them, that's okay. To me that’s like the people who brag about how many countries they have been to and when you ask you find out that the "visited" 5 countries in one day and went to "Eurodisney" and ate at McD! Hurrah! I don't have a problem at all with people making up their own rules, but it really annoys me, if they want me to follow their rules. Geocaching has a set of "guidelines" which are definitely necessary to make GC possible. I don't see any necessity for additional rules. So to put it in a nutshell. If GC.com allows to log you own cache, it seems to be legal. Or in other words: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." Immanuel Kant Would it be a problem if EVERYBODY logged own caches? No. GermanSailor

Hi, read what the write here: 4 Corners Monument (Virtual) So better ask before and make sure that everything is okay! GermanSailor

It has been turned off by the Clinton Administration almost 7 years ago. Wikipedia: GermanSailor

Hi, check this site out: http://www.supermagnete.de/eng/magnets.php?group=blocks_big Especially the "Death Magnet" The Peter Griffin in me wants to have such a magnet just because they advise you not to buy it. (You see marketing is not yet that sophisticated in Europe... ) GermanSailor

Hi, the pencil of course. Nice urban legend in this context: http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp GermanSailor P.S. Did anyone figure out how one could make an underwater logbook? I know that you can buy grease pen / boards in Scuba shops, but those ones don't have a lot of space. I'm looking more for a real notebook.

If you have 500 point for a 2 hour walk then the points are about 80 to 100 feet apart. I pencil line or any other line depicting your trail on a 1:50000 topo map is about 150 feet wide. (1mm on the map equals 50 meters or 164 feet in reality.) So if you "navigate" with a paper map, you can't expect GPS accuracy. It's nice to be precise when making a map, but you have to be realistic about what is possible when making a model and a map is nothing else. I wouldn't worry to much, no map used for hiking is so accurate, all you want from a map is to identify your trail and not to pinpoint your position to the third digit. GermanSailor

Hi, at Gunshows you get them for usually around $5 for the bigger .50 cal cans. One store here in Jacksonville is closing down and I just bought 4 cans for $21. GermanSailor

Hi, as others already said, the GPSr itself and the Flashcards are not affected by magnets. I personally tried what happens if you place a rare earth magnet on a SD Card. - The data wasn't affected at all. However, if your GPSr comes with an integraten electronic compass, I believe that a strong magnet can damage are de-align (is it the right word for "make it less accurate") the sensor for the earth's magnetic field. (Flux sensor) Definately keep those magnets away from traditional compasses. It's important to know about those magnets, that stronger ones usually don't have a bigger "range" but there are stronger within the same range. GermanSailor

Some use a geographic position to do so. It's sure not a bad idea to implement the "states" of other countries as well. But does someone really look for caches by state? Especially in the US where some states are really big? Texas for example is twice as big Germany, so what use is it for me to look for all caches in Texas? I rather search for a radius around my home / holiday destination or whatever. Or in other words if it was okay so far not to have the Texan counties on Geocaching, why should a coutry like Germany be divided into 16 fractions? GermanSailor

If you go for a cache that does no longer exist and you don't find it, I guess that's what you should have expected. But honestly I don't think someone would fly from the US to Germany to visit an archived cache, because someone logged it. Nobody was actually talking about caches which are no longer existing. You see, you had to make up quite a strange example to "prove" your point. It's probably a different culture, in Europe more people believe in the concept of being responsible for their own actions. So there is not such a big culture of trying to blame somebody else. But I guess with the few "phony" virtuals I did, I made it clear in the log that I googled everything. It was okay with the owner. For me the cache owner is the authority when it comes to logging requirements, not someone who lives on a different continent and has nothing to do with the cache in question. How happy must we all be, that we can care about something that trivial! GermanSailor

Being that geocaching is just a game, to me those geocachers who have a need to engage in unethical behavior are somewhat strange. At some of those evil armchair Caches the owner explicitly allows virtual finds using google. Some people just do Geocaching their way. Don't you think that the term "unethical behavior" is a bit strong in this context. That in my opionion "cheapens" the meaning of "ethic". In Bavaria, (which you all should visit for real and not just virtual with google Earth) we have a saying: "Leben und leben lassen" ist means:"live and let live!" That's my approach to Geocaching (and many other things as well), I won't do anything which make your life harder, but I may as well ask you not to impose your standards what is ethical and what not on my actions as long as you are not affected, by my actions. Kind of "poor man's" Kant. Would it be unethical for a cache owner to allow archair caching? Would it be unethical to stigmatize other cachers for their way of playing the game? Is it really your business what I log, especially if you are not the owner of the cache in question? Is it ethical to patronize a cache owner on how he has to run his cache? GermanSailor

I didn't see it this way, but I get your point. My intention of course is not to "cheapen" someones finds. But on the other hand, I wouldn't feel that someone cheats the 5/5 finds of a Geocacher by finding 100 1/1 drive by magnetic key holders in a day. I wasn't aware at all that I act as a benchmark for you, and that you measure the "worth" of you finds by comparing them to mine. Probably the wording "hurting" was bad. Are there people out there, who really have the time and interrest in how the finds of other people are done? Aren't there a million other things to do in this wonderful country? We have the type of person in Germany, usually retirees who can't handle the amount of time they suddenly have, and start reporting people who don't park in the right spot and so on. For me those "cybercops" who sniff around in the GC database just to report "unethical" behaviour are somewhat strange. Geocaching is just a game! GermanSailor

Hello, mea culpa! I did a couple of "couch potato" caches. Which were acutally much tougher than some of micros, where your effort is to find a parking lot. I don't think it is lame, because if those caches are done with some thought, then you really learn something, which to me is equally important than getting out. Acutally because of those caches I have two places on my list, which I want to see for real. One of them is: GC44D9. I probably would never have found out that this nice place exists not to far from where I originally come from. So I will go there an check it out. Thats what geocaching FOR ME is all about: Finding new places, you wouldn't have found otherwise. Sometime I don't have the time to go out hunting for a cache, so I try to solve mystery caches to be prepared or I just do an armchair cache. I don't see the problem. I don't do any harm to anybody doing this, so why shouldn't it be okay. As far as I understand it, than armchair caches are intended to be solved at home. I on the other hand don't see the achievment of driving 100 miles to find a caches which is absolutely easy to find and in an area which is not worth visiting at all. But probably gas prices of $6 a gallon (thats no joke) in Germany give you a different perspective of driving such distances just for one cache. But that is just me, if somebody else doesn't like it, that's okay as well. I don't think it is lame, but playing the Geocaching - Stasi and reporting who is geocaching the wrong way, just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I for example find that logging things at an event, is lame, but I could care less, because I don't care if somebody has high numbers or not. I'm just fat-dumb-and happy if I find a new cool place - for real or virtual. GermanSailor

I assume you have one of the models without a electronic compass, or have this feature disabled. In this case the unit has no indication of it's own orientation in space and therefor can't give you a relative bearing. If you move, the units "knows" its path and can relate that to the position of the waypoint. A unit without a electronik compass can always give you a absolute bearing from you current position to the waypoint. (like 324°). Just set up the GPSr to magnetic and use a normal compass to figure out where this bearing is. GermanSailor

Not sure if I will be in the mood to translate 40, but you sure can send me a couple of them to translate. GermanSailor

I'm always surprised about the serious and grave problems some geocachers have. Oh my god, somebody used more space than necessary to sign the log. Imagine what COULD have happened. I'm glad you walked away from that one unharmed. I found a Cache once where all the finders logged with a black pen, but I used a blue one instead. Still feel guilty about it! GermanSailor