niraD

Yep. I found a series (with a bonus cache) that was like that. It was originally placed as a private "birthday adventure" for someone the CO knew. Later, the CO reworked it so it could be published. But the date was listed as the original "birthday adventure" date, and the CO mentioned in the listings that FTF had already been claimed, but STF was available.

But be sure to ask before giving someone else's dog a treat. My wife's dog has allergies, so she doesn't give her anything but the kibble that has been proven not to trigger the allergies. Other owners may have trained their dogs not to accept food from anyone but them. And so on.

I was about to comment on that. I've found LBH caches that were micros with no stamp. But a stamp doesn't have to be huge, and a log big enough for letterboxers personal stamps can fit in a micro-size container. Sure, it will fill up faster than a big notebook, but blinkers need new logs after a couple dozen finds, so I have no problem listing a LBH that needs a new log after a couple dozen finds by letterboxers with personal stamps.

My concern with a DIY pole made of PVC would be whether the finished pole ends up being rigid enough. By itself, 7m of schedule 40 PVC is going to have a fair amount of flex, and each joint is just going to add to that.

I don't use Project GC, but you do have to be a premium member of geocaching.com to use bookmark lists.

FWIW, I just added my FTFs to my "milestones" bookmark list.

Keep in mind that any special Unicode characters (emoji, strikethrough text, combining characters, etc.) will probably not work at all for some geocachers: those who use apps/devices that cannot handle these characters. In some cases, the title will just be blank. In others, the whole cache listing (and perhaps others that follow it in the same Pocket Query) may be lost to these geocachers.

FWIW, I've used Google Docs, Google Sheets, etc. to store my work on complex puzzle caches, and have put the URL to my work document in the Personal Cache Note of the puzzle cache in question.

I would argue that it wasn't necessary to use a handheld GPS receiver back then either, but early in my geocaching career, I found hundreds of geocaches using only the satellite images from Google Maps and compass/navigation skills. But now I do almost all of my geocaching with my Android phone, and use my old handheld GPS receiver only when I need better durability, battery life, and/or GPS reception than my phone provides. And modern smartphones have much better durability, battery life, and GPS reception than smartphones a few years ago, which makes a handheld GPS receiver even less necessary. The last time I took coordinates for a new cache listing, I used an Android app that averaged coordinates, and my handheld GPS receiver (which also averages coordinates); the results for multiple waypoints were virtually identical.

Exactly. Groundspeak's "Oh, no! You clicked a link!" alert is breaking normal browser functionality for handling links. It's been that way for years.

One of the underwater caches I've found was an ammo can about half full of concrete to counter the ammo can's natural buoyancy. As I recall, the log was a weatherproof notebook, in a heavy ziplock bag, inside another ziplock bag, with a note on the cache page to make sure that NOTHING was caught between the lip of the can and the seal of the lid, otherwise it would wick water into the can. Everything in the ammo can was dry, but it was a mystery/puzzle cache that wasn't found very often (and was mainly found by groups who were making an evening of it, since it was also a night cache). The other underwater cache that comes to mind was full of water, and the log was mush. All the underwater caches I've found have been tethered though. I've found "magnet fishing" caches, but they've been lightweight containers, and not hidden underwater.

I'm out. If I ever do an AL, then I'll do it with a separate AL-only account.

Geocaching Swiss Army Knife is a freeware (MS Windows only) geocaching and waypoint management tool, and one of Groundspeak's API partners: https://gsak.net/

The duplicate topic has been merged. The posts from both topics are here.

From the guidelines: "There is no minimum required distance for [...] EarthCaches and Virtual Caches as they do not have physical waypoints." EarthCaches do have their own guidelines, and one of those guidelines regards "EarthCaches that duplicate existing EarthCaches or related sites", but in that case, the EarthCache guidelines state, "Content, rather than proximity, will be the guiding principle for EarthCache reviewers."

Please don't Why not?

The additional encryption doesn't need to be ROT13. I've seen three-tier hints where the first hint was just ROT13 and automatically decrypted, the second hint was ROT13 and backwards (automatically decrypted, but you need to think a bit about what it says), and the third hint was ROT13 and in brackets (so it didn't decrypt automatically).

Many of my favorite caches have been well-camouflaged hidden-in-plain-sight caches with high difficulty ratings.

One of the first caches I found had a high difficulty rating and three hints. In the text of the description, the CO said that each hint we used would take one star off the difficulty rating. (This was back before apps would decrypt hints automatically. Since we had to decrypt the hint letter by letter, we could easily control how much of the hint we wanted to use.) But the difficulty rating was not reduced because there were hints. I think that's still the way to do it, even today when apps decrypt hints automatically.

That would require a new state ("pending challenge completion" or whatever it would be called) just for Challenge Caches. That would probably be a lot of work, not to mention any effect it might have on the API, API partner apps, anything that uses GPX files, etc. My guess is that there are a lot of higher priorities.

The last time I sent out a bunch of TBs, I just used the ball chain they came with. But I shorted the chain so that it wasn't any longer than necessary, and once they were all ready, I mixed up some epoxy and added a drop to each connector. Sure, someone could break or cut the ball chain, but they wouldn't come apart accidentally, or on a whim when a newbie couldn't fit the whole trackable into a new cache.

Who said anything about caches? frenchje placed an Adventure Lab.

It may help to remember that GPS coordinates work the same way as time. 12.5 hours = 12 hours 30 minutes (time) 12.5 degrees = 12 degrees 30 minutes (coordinates) 34.25 minutes = 34 minutes 15 seconds (time) 34.25 minutes = 34 minutes 15 seconds (coordinates)

This is part of cache maintenance: "Update the cache page if conditions or coordinates change." If you don't have time to maintain your cache properly, then you should archive it (or possibly adopt it to someone who does have time to maintain it properly).