MedicP1

This might be obvious to most but I'll assume from your tadpole status that you're bordering on a newbie, if not sorry upfront. Are you using the right datum on your GPSr, that can give you a consistant offset on your unit from where you actually are. If you leave the unit sitting in the open, say at an intersection of roads, does it average out to the proper position?

Aluminum is another big sounder, this is well known to all those detectorists who have a pop tab necklace or who have discovered the park area that had the pop can hit by the lawnmower. Ah the memories of finding hundreds of aluminum frags makes me remember why I slowed down on this hobby.LOL

Firstly what specificly, if you can say, is the 'noise'? Secondly is the noise coming from TPTB or is it coming from GSAK users who are complaining about having to wade through all of the info/pages we are creating? If it is GC.com then what are 'their' suggestions? If it is GSAK users and/or nwbies, then maybe they should appreciate the wealth of information that is present from other users that by reading through the thread they could benifit from. I think one thread for each version is not unreasonable, if everyone started their own topic/thread per question then there would be a huge amount of duplication of questions and cross posting which would take up more space and make it very hard to find your answer, thus promoting a 'just post my question rather that search myself' attitude. My choice from those originally given, would be #4, with a FAQ section supporting the most recent version of GSAK (ie. remove questions/issues that were specific to a older version and solved by a newer version) and/or any still relevant issues.

Here is one down in Florida, but very good prices on most, including trade-ins and display units. http://www.kellycodetectors.com/indexmain.htm

Webscouter what type of GPSr does kc-chief use, I am creating something as I type this.

bullfrogeh, you've got email. Hope they are to your liking.

Bullfrogeh, here are two different ideas I did, let me know if you like either or any changes.

Like this AA

Ya, let's see him try to hide that cache back where it was!!!! That would make it a 5/5 for sure!!! Seriously though, congratulations on the birth...I think that qualifies as the youngest Geocacher in this hobby.

Sorry Curious George no offence intended, like I said I've not had any hands on just seeing the ads and display units and they didn't look 'optiony' more basic in design. Maybe it's just me, having swung a Whites 2DB (ancient) for so many years and at competition hunts, I have grown slightly jaded and have narrowed/refined my 'acceptable' list of options that are a must have or don't buy. I started out with a Radio Shack Microtron detector and hated it about 2 weeks after buying it.

The frozen in was more directed at stuff that was already in the ground prior to winter, and not as much stuff lost during winter. I would go for any of the brand name units, each has their unique pros and cons. Stay away from the radio shack "toys" as you will outgrow them while you are still opening the box they come in. Bounty Hunters from their looks are, in my opinion, just slightly up from 'toys'. Whites are good units but heavy, and for me that ruins the fun when you have to rest your arm after a short time hunting or just packing them into an area to go hunting. My 1st choice would be a Garrett unit, light weight, detachable battery pack with coily cord (keep the batteries warm inside coat or on hip taking most of weight off arm), great program/search modes. Fisher units are also popular, I have never used one of these in the field but have tested them at a display and was impressed. There are so many variables I couldn't possibly cover them all here and stay on topic for geocaching. Contact me through my GC.com page and we can get into more specifics.

Yahoo Tiger brand digital camera - A smoking piece of doots, not even worth the wrist tether in came with. This is a digital camera only by the most extreme stretching of the definition. Hope to upgrade to a actual digital camera that will take a picture in which you can actually make out what the the final image is.

While a metal detector will pick up a quarter sized piece of metal at about 10 inches from the base of the coil, it detects in a area similar to a parabolic arc/inverted cone extending from the width of the coil out to a point at the 10-12 inch range. Therefore the metal object say a quarter would have to pass within that detection field for the detector to obtain a 'hit' signal. With each swing of the coil small objects at the surface are more likely to be found than if they were deeper due to the decreasing size/area of the detection field the deeper you go. I have used my metal detector quite successfully in the winter, although retrieval has always been the issue for me, as most things I have found were buried in frozen ground. I have had great success locating people's keys, glasses and pagers that were lost while playing or working outside. A cache with metal objects within would be quite findable in the snow if it wasn't to deep. Keep in mind though that a coin sitting at the bottom of a 6" deep tupperware under 4" of snow is trying to be detected by a field the size of a quarter. This is like attaching a quarter flat on the end of a 3' dowel and walking around in a totally dark room, swinging the dowel back and forth trying to come in contact with a quarter laying flat on the floor. You are required to keep your passes/swings very tight and close together if you have a hope of hearing the clink of metal on metal . But being as you already have a GPS location of the cache's approximate area to minimize your search you should have a better shot at being successful. Caches in ammo boxes would have more of a presence to the magnetic field of the detector and thus be much easier to locate. If the cache was in tupperware and contained nothing metalic, I would suggest you switch arms every few hours so as to develop your forearms equally . Edit for spelling.

Please see my three logs for this cache. Actually it's just the two "notes" on March 3, 2004, that tell the story of my misadventures with the 'to serve and protect' guys. I had a blast on this day with these guys thoe. The Cache Page

If your going to be under the trees I think the Magellan is the way to go, they don't loose their locks as easily. But I have to say I have been eyeing the 60C with all of it's toys for caching and such. It doesn't sound like you are looking for a lot of toys just a solid basic unit. If you are going to be biking through any really rough terrain youmight want to go for a less expensive more write-offable unit to start with to see if they will last/survive you r expeditions.

You have probably triggered a switch/condition in your filter that you met when you first ran it but now don't. A possibilities is you have the user flag = set, but when you brought in your new PQ you cleared all of the user ticks. A way to figure out where the problem arises is to go to the filter and check all of the yellowed fields (= changed from default) and see if any of them conflict with each other, if nothing jumps out at you then go into you filter and reset each yellowed field back to default and see if that rectifies things.

That is cause the Garmin owners are standing at the edge of the woods trying to keep their SAT locks, while the Maggie owners are treking through the woods with their 10 bird lock on.

Your PQ defintion page is the Pocket Query page. Log onto GC.com, go to your "My Cache Page", click on "Run Pocket Queries", the resulting page is where you set up the pocket queries or searchs you want to have run against the GC.com database. When you have set up what you think you want, making sure you leave the day area (at the very top of the creation area) unchecked for now, save the query. When it comes back and says it has saved it, click on the "run on nearest" link this will give you the results/caches that that query will produce when run, and allow you to go back and edit/tweak your search/query till it is just right. Once you have it obtaining the results for caches you were intending and you have set the file type to GPX, then click on the day of the week you want it to run on (either in the set up screen and save it or from the list view). Keep in mind that you can create any number of different queries but can only save 20 different queries and are only allowed to have a max of any 5 in a given day sent to an email address. You can run as many tests (not setting/ticking an actual 'day to run' box) as you can think of in a given day. Good luck and have fun with them they are a powerfull tool when used right. Hope this isn't to confusing and it helps. If you need further help email me through my profile/GC.com.

GSAK currently compares a log type of "Attended" as found. Has this changed? Perhaps I'm not comparing this to the correct log description exactly However, could you also check to see if your "found by me" dates are being populated (for any cache you have found) automatically on GPX load - if not then you have a matching problem. Please send me your GSAK.ini file so I can get to the bottom of it. If your "found by me" dates are being populated, then yes it would apper GSAK has a bug in the way it handles the "Attended" log. In that case could you please send me a GPX file of a cache you have attended (plus your GSAK.ini file) so I can track down what the problem is Thanks Clyde The "Found By Me" is OK for the "Events" I have attended. It is just the "Last Found" column that is not showing anything and thereby GSAK is treating it as an unfound (by anyone) cache, even though as you can see from the picture the event was attended and logged by others.

Clyde I think I have something that hasn't been addressed yet. As I was going through my main database, sorting for unfound caches, by clicking on the column 'last found' I noted that GSAK doesn't recognize event caches 'attended' as being 'found' and as such leaves that space blank. I created a filter that only shows events and the results were all the caches that use the new 'attended' radio button show as unfound and those that use the old found show as found. It seems it is just a matter of GC.com being a bit ahead of you. That doesn't happen to often. Is this something that could be addressed in one of the future updates. Thanks again for all you hard work and dedication to us, MedicP1

The magnets are located in the corner at the large end of the swivel arm opposite the disk stack and are kidney shaped mounted on a metal bar/plate. There is usually one magnet and a keeper (metal plate) or two magnets opposite each other. If you get a garbaged harddrive don't forget to keep the actual harddrive disks as they make awsome mirrors for looking in holes, hollow logs, high areas, etc for caches or for rescue/signal mirrors as they have a ready made hole in them and they are made of metal so they don't shatter easily. Each hard drive yields 2-3 mirror/disks, 1-2 magnets, 1-2 awesome bearings, and a small variable speed drive motor for other odd projects such as small robotics. You need to cut the seal around the outside of the drive box, and either remove the screws/hex bolts or drill them out if they are the triangular head type. Then depending on the type/make of drive you may need to undo the arm, magnets and harddrive at the same time a little of each vs unscrewing one totally then the others. I've found that most small/local computer repair shops have many just sitting in a box and are happy to get rid of them for free. Also keep in mind of the magnets, although they are powerfull with a shallow field, some are made of a cast/white metal and can snap/break. As a side note the magnetic fields are extremely powerfull and will give an adult a nasty pinch if you get between the magnet and their keeper.

I was using mine for a project to plot/waypoint all of the ERs in Ontario to create a database of the ERs for out of town Ambulances to get a fix on thereby allowing them by carrying a inexpensive GPSr unit to get to the ER without having to tie up the dispatch centre.

The actual web site is http://www.geocities.com/gormikk/conexione.htm

Barrie???Central Ontario??? I thought Barrie was Northern Ontario...No wait that's right it's only Northern Ontario when you are using the Toronto Datum on your GPSr... HEHEHEHE!!!!! You can count on us being there with the whole crew. Looking forward to the newest event in Ontario, let me know if we can be of any help.

I use a MAG315 so I don't know about the Garmin line but I would suggest whatever unit you get him make sure it uses the same pin out connetion as yours so that you can download caches/waypoints for him on your computer. Also maybe start him out with a full (less80 or so) waypoints from around him to save his fingers on all that entering.