Adrenalynn

You generally need to modify the cell or the holder. Li-Ion aren't available in standard sizes. Their voltage on the low-end tends towards 3.7v (which will feed the regulator in most 3v devices fine, incidentally. YMMV, check the specs on the regulator) - and charging them in a non-Li-Ion device will cause them to ignite. Personally, I just cast an adapter..

Just need to chime-in with something fairly important: Very few people die from rattlesnake bites... Yeah, it's nasty. Yeah, it's uncomfortable. Yeah, you should provide first-aid for snake bite victims. Yeah, you should get 'em to a hospital post-haste. But snakes get killed 'cause people live in fear of the "deadly reptile". In the US, we just don't have much that's all that deadly. Even a heavy envenomation event isn't at all likely to kill you as long as it's treated. If you've been hit by a king cobra a thousand miles from medical attention - all bets are off... You probably have a better chance of being killed by a single bee sting than a rattlesnake bite. That doesn't mean you should horse around with 'em. As far as "respecting wildlife" goes, I'll often move a rattler off the trail - for its own safety. Likely some jerk is going to come along and kill it. All my neighbors know to call me to dispose of rattlers in their yards. I catch and release them. Now, of course, as a geocacher, I look at my favorite release points in a whole new light...

Regarding "what is a decon container": "Decon" is short for "decontamination". It's what the military decontamination kits come housed it. For practical purposes, they are generally black or OD (Olive Drab) and run about 3" x 2.25" x 4.5", molded plastic. The often contain frightening words molded into the top like "harzardous" or "toxic" or "caustic" ... Cover-up those, or file 'em off. Might as well not frighten the muggles into having another container blown-up by the bomb-squad. Talk about "accidentally breaking a cache"!!! See, this is a great thread. If you read it with another point of view, you see all the design failures I was talking about. That's the common thread to the, errr, thread... I love this thread because I now have a couple dozen ways NOT to construct a cache...

1) _Anything_ that can be read on the mac can be read on a PC. 2) Even an autorun isn't hazardous if you a) turn off autorun or hold down the shift key when putting media into a PC or c) set windows (XP only) to automatically open only the folder or prompt for action any time foreign media is inserted. Personally, I'd probably prefer SD/MMC or CF instead. The vast majority of palmtops from palm to CE can read SD, for example. That removes most of the virus threat and further allows for portable devices (even many phones) to read/write the card. 3) To respond to the OP: I have a carputer in the truck. I wouldn't carry a laptop into the field, but I could be prompted to drag the "cache" back to the truck for a few minutes. A twist-thought: Acknowledging the forgery potential, just put a few hundred images on the drive, and digitally sign them. Prompt the person to download all the images, and just post the next consecutive when they log... The image itself and the filename could both just simply be numbers so there's no confusion... Another concern since forgery has been mentioned: What stops me from deleting the log of a nemesis? Prehaps have the text files named by number too. Doesn't stop it, but non-consecutive date/number becomes kinda obvious. Just some thoughts! Keep thinking the way you're thinking, you may be onto a whole new category! [edited to turn off emoticons for my "]

And body-shielding in your pocket. It's near-microwave(shf, 1.2+ghz). Which is heavily impeded by the water in your body parts.

Again, What's the dif between this and a fake drain cap for a below-suface-but-not-buried cache? Those are all over the place around here. You know, I asked the cops the same question... "So what's the difference between the bodies in my freezer - and the ones in Dahmer's?" Actually, they agreed with me on that one...

I'll respond further later... PowerEx has 2500 and a new 2750mAh AA (NiMH) was just announced - I'll have to go back and look at the press release and make sure it was them... (I do design on video monitoring devices that run for long periods independantly - so I get lots of battery junkmail) Ansman, Accupower, UltraLast have 2600's readily available to the consumer. I believe the LiPolys are Megatech, but they weren't AA. I "adaptered" the battery pack. They're 3680mAh. The Li's in AA form are 2700mAh. Aha. Here it is. Sanyo has a 2700mAh available today, NiMH - check 'em out at http://www.batteriesamerica.com/newpage3.htm - $3.50 each. That's pretty consumer-ready. Anyway - quick examples. I need to get up early. I'll answer your points when I have a chance tomorrow. Thanks!

Should be archived, IMHO. Looks to me like a pointy-object was used to place it.

Life goes on! We're dumping man-made containers into the harshest environs known to mankind, and then expecting people to figure out our little "tricks" on the fly when they're potentially cold, tired, hungry, and excited with the find. I just despise it when people leave things off in their haste or lazyness. Carefully designed waterproof caps, for example, left laying next to the cache "oops!". If someone broke one of mine taking it off, I'd personally consider it a design failure, unless it were obvious that they were out with the sawzall and the demo hammer.

Not entirely sure how an LED will be brighter @ 1.2v than @ 1.5v. The LED itself is being fed with the same voltage regardless (regulated). True, though, for incandescents.

Umm, no. Not true. NIMH batteries have lower available energy than alkalines. I'm going to differ with you a little bit: It depends upon WHICH NiMH batteries you're referring to. LR06 (AA) batteries of Carbon-zinc construction deliver about 700mAh typically. NiCads (nickel-cadmium) average about 1080mAh (1.08Ah), at a slightly lower voltage. Typical Energizer and Duracell AA batteries (not some of the new digi-pic battery lines and such) typically delivery ~1300-1600mAh when measured in series with a 0.1ohm resistor. By way of comparison, there are NiMH AA batteries that can deliver 3200 (or more) mAh of current @ 1.2v. So the equiv is: ~20% voltage differential, right? About ~2500mAh equiv @ 1.5v. Still better than the alki AAs. Cheap junk NiMH deliver only about 850mAh - so that's probably what you're basing your perspective on. Even the Duracell NiMH batteries are around, what, 2300-2400mAh? --------- I run 1.2v 3200mAh NiMH or 3600mAh Lithium Polymer batteries for my GPSs. They have the added advantage of running cooler and thereby further extending battery life. [edited to add]: >> And they have a much steeper voltage dropoff when they near complete discharge, which means that they appear to go dead "suddenly." Yeah, but that can actually be an extremely good thing. I prefer to have a flashlight that delivers solid light throughout the discharge cycle. Nothing worse than that sinking feeling that the batteries are getting weak and the light is so marginally as to be worthless. I end-up junking batteries only 3/4 discharged in that application, whereas the NiMH or Li* batteries will ramp down with juuust enough time for me to sneak another set of batteries into 'em. But, hey, that's just personal preference... * Data obtained from manufacturer tech/oem pdfs as mentioned. Tradenames used without permission here...

Holy k-rap. That picture actually startled *me* as I slide the scroll wheel to the bottom and BLAM! I've seen similar views in the wild, and photographed them live. It *never* gets "common"...

Nice Prairie Rattler (Crotalus viridis). The photos aren't large enough/close enough to get specific to subspecies, but it's a likely possibility given the area that it's a Crotalus viridis viridis (C.v.viridis) The Prairie Rattler is the most common rattler in the United States with a massive range across subspecies. C.v runs 10-45" long, and is common in long grasses and esp. around prairie dog towns, and rock outcroppings. In fact, prairie dogs, small squirrels, and moderators that look like hamsters are its most common diet. Now the *really* pretty snake that you have over there in just a few tiny regions of the south-east portion of the state is the Copperhead. The are gorgeous!

Some forward-thinking companies don't have a problem with it. Some, like mine, encourage it. "should" will just come and bite ya in the rump every time. . .

Welcome to geocaching! Alas, feeding your post to InterTran for Dutch->English does an amusingly horrible job. Hopefully someone will come along that speaks Dutch and answers your question!

My trusty old eMap is "TruBlu" 'cause it's blue - and never wrong - duh!

The thing I miss the most when I forget it at home, that really really complicates finds, is my brain...

If I lived in the area, or was traveling in the area, I'd do it in a heartbeat - just to put it on my FTF list. . .

I see where you're coming from, but that puts an awful lot of caches in the 4.5 range that I'd consider a 3... I really think your scale there is a little toddler-weighted.

>> or are a cache fanatic who has to find every single cache in a 100 mile radius I represent that remark.

Hi John, As the first finder of the aforementioned cache - I'd like to comment. For reference to those reading the post, the cache is: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...4e-d1e4478d1279 The route that I took to the cache, as I mentioned, in the dark and prehaps the same route you took, was definitely a 3.5. I think from that perspective, you hit it on the proverbial nose. (Thanks for the late-night hunt, btw! I had fun! The FTF is always an exciting challenge. And thank you for sharing your first cache with me!) Looking at sat photos and cruising around the park, I see some easier ways in. That said, you'd have to hike 3/10ths from the logical parking to get to those easier methods as you wouldn't want to come off of sunrise from a vehicle (apologies for the region specific references) This is what really makes rating a cache hard. I'm not the most experienced cacher in the world, obviously. But I'm going with two basic extremes: A 1.0 for terrain is wheelchair accessible. (which is also variable. In my extreme-sports experiences, gosh, you should SEE what some people do in wheelchairs!!!) A 5.0 requires special equipment/skills/gear/insanity. So everything falls in between that. And it's a total judgement call based on Those That Have Come Before. The hide was definitely a "1.5". Frankly, I think you did an excellent job rating it, and I didn't want my log entry to suggest otherwise. I'd be happy to edit it. My log entry was something of a hint that if a finder didn't want a 3.5 terrain, there are probably other ways to go about it that could drop it to a level walk with a few puddles. If we ever have a spring here, the only obstacle will be tall grass and ticks. I suspect some lamppost micros may be rated a 2 due to stealth requirements. That's a skill every bit as much as fording a stream or climbing a mountain. Anyway, keep going the way you're going, and *I'll* certainly keep ftf'ing your caches! Nice work! You put a lot of thought into your first hide - and I certainly appreciated it, as my long log entry suggests. Incidentally, this was the furthest FTF from my home coordinates for me. Over-road distance was close to 10mi each way, 6.4mi as the satellites fly.

For a large container, try cutting the top off with a chainsaw or bandsaw (makes prettier cuts) - just a few inches. The cut the log in quarters with the chain or bandsaw. Now cut the insides of the quarters off squared. Then reassemble the log. The inside is now completely hollow. Put the top that you cut off over the top of the hollowed log. Now it's invisible. (you can do the same thing on the bottom if you like. Build a rotating pin hinge to allow the top section to rotate off the hollow section if you like.

Where do you think lamppost micros come from?

And that's why you read the cache descriptions, which will be much more explanatory than a number rating. So what's wrong with a filtering system that helps eliminate - or in my case, LOCATE - such things? What I'm proposing is simply more granularity.

If you go after a "real" 5/5 - you'd BETTER care how tough the find is! Nothin' like waking up dead at the bottom of a 200ft fall to say "gosh, wish I'd cared a bit more how tough that really was. . ." And that's my point: Many 5/5's just aren't. Someone does a 5/5 in a paddle boat and probably thinks they're more prepared for the next one than they probably are.