The Good Shepherds

quote:Originally posted by Sel:I've heard if you contact Garmin and complain, they send you a free "bit of plastic" for the battery compartment to prevent this happening. Apparently if you cut a very small chunk out of a rubber band and wedge it underneath the battery contacts it has pretty much the same effect. Fortunately our machine hasn't suffered this problem - yet.

Could a physical cache be reasonably placed anywhere within a 0.1 mile radius of the site? If "yes", the cache shouldn't be a virtual. If "no", then I think you have a water-tight case for it being a valid cache.

quote:Originally posted by Sel:I hate to be pedantic, but how can a point have a road parallel to it? If the trigpoint was in the dead centre of a roundabout it would meet this criteria [:-)] (though I suspect this was not the case...)

We visited both of these caches yesterday. In my opinion, they were very responsibly placed. Cache (1): The standing stone is in the middle of a MODERN plantation. If the poster is concerned about disturbance to the stone itself, he should perhaps worry more about the fact that the land managers have planted young trees within reaching distance of the stone. The fact that a small plastic flask has been concealed 50 meters away isn't going to have ANY detrimental effect on this ancient monument (I would elaborate more on the nature of the hiding place, but I don't want to spoil things for future hunters... but it is well thought out and non-damaging to any existing treelife, stones etc.). As far as "preserving the sanctity of the landscape" is concerned, I think the fact that this stone has had an entire woodland plantation and a O2 repeater station dumped around it is going to be slightly more significant to the stone's history than the aforementioned geocache is ever going to be. The cache itself is a "rubber stamp" style cache - you don't leave anything, you don't take anything away... you just stamp your personal log book. It was expressly set up this way so that items that may be detrimental to the environment would not be accidently left by less-experienced cachers. Cache (2): I've just uploaded a photo that I took from the cache site to the cache's web page. If you look very hard at the treeline on the left hand horizon, you might see a couple of slightly ligther coloured pixels. That, my friend, is the warrior stone. It's actually quite a significant distance from the cache, and on private land which can't be accessed anyway. The hard-surfaced track that you see in the foreground of the picture is where the cache is hidden (there's actually a modern house just off the left hand side of the photo - I had to angle the camera to avoid it and maintain the illusion of rural isolation!). The cache is a 35mm film container, containing dolls house toys. IMHO, Moss has done a perfectly good job with these caches. The thread starter should do his homework before flinging accusations like this!

quote:One of the first caches we visited had a small tin of pineapple in it which seemed quite reasonable Tins can burst when the contents are frozen. (c.f. the previous thread hijack about frozen beer!)

Well done to all concerned - this is fantastic news. A good result will set a strong precedent for dealing with other land-management authorities

quote:Originally posted by Travers:There was definitely not anywhere near that amount of rubbish when we visited and as Kouros says, the views are great. Agreed. We mentioned this trash-out idea to Branxholm (who did "Gliders View" a few weeks ago) and he thought we were insane - "you'd need a skip to shift that lot" he said. Now we know what he meant - things really have got bad since we visited it last summer. quote:Another option would be to find somewhere that had already been the subject of random fly tipping and is a good candidate for a new cache. This strikes me as a good idea - more in keeping with the "cache IN, trash OUT" philosophy... (and maybe leave a few binbags in the cache for future visitors!)

quote:Originally posted by naffita:I get an automatic notification every week listing all the new caches within a hundred miles of my home co-ords. Doesn't everyone? The auto-notification is all well and good... but you need to get your info hot off the press if you want to get there before Travers + The Northumbrian

I find that the inclusion of the county name is useful when you're scanning the "new UK caches" list to see if anything has appeared locally. Maybe it's not such a big issue at the current time of year, but during the closing weeks of last summer new caches were appearing at the rate of several dozen per week - It was useful to be able to tell at a glance which new arrivals might be of interest.

quote:I was thinking about Gliders view, We had a strange feeling that might be the one! It's only a couple of miles from home, so I guess we wouldn't have much of an excuse for not attending...

quote:Originally posted by Moss Trooper:Count me in Nige.. Which one yer on about? So I can plan the pub lunch LOL LOL or you plan the pub lunch Moss de Boss... Sorta A northern "trash-out" event cache? We'd probably be up for it, work-commitments allowing!

Make sure the "datum" setting on your GPS unit is set to "WGS84"- if it isn't set to this, your readings will be offset by something in the order of 100m - that's a big enough difference to ruin your chances of finding a cache, but small enough for you not to notice something is badly wrong in terms of your general location. Many newbie cachers fall foul of this gotcha on their first trip!

Which reminds me... Once upon a time, I left a can of beer in the freezer by accident (don't ask!). I was rather impressed to discover that the expansion of the frozen beer was sufficient to rip the top off the can. Does this mean: (A) I shouldn't buy such cheap and nasty beer in low-grade cans. or ( Leaving fizzy drinks (or, potentially, other canned goods) in caches during extremely harsh winter weather might be a bad idea.

quote:But do people think Geocahing.com should implement this kind of system? There was talk of jeremy adding some to the next version of geocaching.com. "ScooterJ" produced some prototypes here (actually, it's surprising how much common ground they share with your set - great minds think alike! )

quote:Originally posted by Tim & June:We did try. See http://opentopic.Groundspeak.com/0/OpenTopic?a=tpc&s=1750973553&f=1500909683&m=6270987645 Thanks for the reminder - as I originally said, I I was *dimly* aware that something was going on, and presumed there was some kind of thread I was missing - It's just a shame the original thread surfaced just before that palava with the mod ants happened ...there are a few good comments raised - offers of help from the wombles, a request for elaboration from jeremyp - then nothing. 2 months later we get told "too bad guys, talking about food in caches blew it for us." *sigh* ...maybe this is all just misdirected frustration. Waking up on a morning to find out that big chunks of the country are now out-of-bounds as far as caching goes is a bad way to start the day. On a more positive note: anybody planning a trash out event for "earth day"? - might be a good opportunity to gather PR which paints our hobby in a slightly better light.

OK, this is a difficult thing to articulate, so sorry in advance to anybody who is inadvertently offended by the contents of this posting - it's *genuinely* not intended as any kind of dig at the mods, who do a fantastic job (even under conditions of great provocation!) but... The topic of this thread struck a chord with me: "Democracy rules, and screws it up". Is the UK geocaching community really a democracy? While I was *dimly* aware that T+J were up to something regarding the establishment of geocaching policies with the likes of Forest Enterprises, I had no idea that things were quite as far along as they apparently were. Or (more significantly) that negotiations were not moving in our favour. I sense that a rather major decision has been made about the future of geocaching in the UK, to which the majority of us were either (1)blissfully unaware, (2)unable to contribute an opinion, or (3)unwittingly undermining by posting inappropriate messages to the forums at a strategically important time. Is it just me who feels out of the loop on this one? Or was there an thread somewhere that I missed? I appreciate that it's not always appropriate for decisions to be made "by committee"... but I do think it's reasonable to expect a certain degree of transparency (and with it, accountability) when people have taken it upon themselves to be our representatives in issues quite as important as this. This kind of leads on to the crux of the issue. Clearly, T+J have moved above and beyond the role of what most people would consider "moderator" - they've become something of a spokesperson/representative for geocaching in the UK in general. Now, I have to state very clearly here that I *personally* think they do a very good job (especially thinking back to the mod ant fiasco a month or two ago, and I was among the many who said as much at the time, both on-forum and in personal correspondance) - but this seems to be a role that has been "thrust upon them", rather than the one they were specifically elected to (that being: keeping the forums in order). It strikes me that if, for better or worse, the UK geocaching community has reached the point where it's necessary to interact with the likes of major landowners, then things really should be a little less haphazard. Yes, by all means T+J should be our spokesperson(s); they do a great job, and their work is appreciated - but stuff like this should be done with the support of the community, not negotiated behind closed doors, with the final result "sprung" on us out of the blue. God knows I'm no fan of beurocracy, but when it comes to major negotiations like this, we really do need to maximise on the opinions/talents/skills/strengths of the community at large to win ourselves the best possible outcome. Maybe we need to think about how this could be done, ready for next time. ...and there *will* be a next time. John TGS

quote:I ran a quick satellite footprint view on my ham radio satellite tracking program. And it is possible that the footprint of satellites will cover Great Britain and the middle east at the same time. So if the service is degraded (SA turned on) it will also effect Europe, North Africa, and West Asia. I think the trigonometry involved allows them to be a bit more localised than that. To quote the FT article - "Something similar happened during US operations in Bosnia, which caused temporary trouble in Italy" - seems to imply that it's not going to knock out an entire hemisphere, just a few neighbouring countries.

quote:If the clouds are rain clouds then they will, and the more water they are holding the denser the cloud. This means a weaker signal getting through. It's true, but even very bad conditions will only cause a very small error - a few feet at worst. The main part of the GPS error is caused by the signal passing through the ionosphere (the layer of ionized particles between 50 - 500km above the earth). The amount of interference caused by the ionosphere changes from day to day. The GPS satellites continually broadcast "forecasts" of how bad the ionosphere occlusion is... but it's not always 100% accurate. To compound problems, the GPS satellites aren't always quite where they should be... and their clocks are sometimes slightly "off". The satellites transmit corrective data to warn your GPS about these inaccuracies (called the "ephemeris"), but it can take 15 minutes for the full message to be sent - so your GPS might not be as accurate as it could be until 15 minutes after you turn it on. The other thing that can cause problems is "reflections" of signals off nearby objects - e.g. cliff faces, tall buildings etc. Attempting to use the GPS in a gorge can cause real problems! Urm... that's all I can remember off the top of my head...

quote:Originally posted by The Hornet:I'm not suggesting making alcohol available to all under-18s. I am suggesting a little parental responsibility to supervise their own children when caching. This is all well and good when there ARE parents around to exercise discretion - the problem is, can you guarantee that every cache is always going to be found in the company of an adult? I would guess that the vast majority of caches that go missing are found by gangs of kids. (case in point - there's a huge thread over on the "general" board right now concerning a log book that a mother found in her 12-year old son's bedroom - she saw the geocaching URL in the book, and logged on here to find out what the book was to do with. Turns out that a gang of kids (son included) had accidently found a cache, taken it away and split the booty between themselves(!)). Suppose the cache was full of alcohol, knives and condoms? Bad press waiting to happen, IMHO

quote:2) Alcohol?? I see nothing wrong with a small bottle of something 'reviving'. After all it is perfectly legal and IN MODERATION has been proved to actually benefit your health. All of the above is true.... BUT, isn't there a legal issue with making alcohol freely available to under-18s?

We've noticed that bars of soap seem to be one of the worst items for attracting the attention of hungry critters. I was quite surprised the first time I found a cache with a large hole gnawed in the side (and a quarter bar of soap remaining within...)

quote:I know this might upset a few people out there but what can I do. No complaints from me (in my capacity as runner-up) - number 2 was clearly in the lead from the get-go. Congrats to the winner - great design

Heh heh... The Register picked up the story, so I guess they probably had an unexpected traffic surge shortly after

Paypal seem to be having problems with their exchange rates today. They're currently charging £1 for 97c. I don't imagine it will last for long, as people who've built up a surfeit of $ cash in their accounts are currently withdrawing in £s and making a huge profit(!) ...but until it's fixed, make sure the error doesn't work against you!

quote:In light of the recent events at airports in the UK, we have temporarily disabled our "Gatwick Bug Hotel" . In case anybody has missed the thread over in the general forum, there's been an incident in the U.S. this week where a bridge near a military base was closed + the bomb squad called in, after a "suspicious character" was spotted visiting a cache under the bridge - Just goes to show how timely T+J's advice was!!