Stone Mountain Gang

Good thoughts, Gitchee-Gummee, but the cliff went down from our location, not up! We had substantial access to open sky on that side. And the other location was also not so very congested, being next to a quadruple football field... In any case I wonder if a blocked signal would lead to this strange offset in the distances. I would expect inaccuracy or no data at all... -Adam- Just a guess... but the above statement goes a long ways in telling me that you had signal blockage. Signal blocked = no cell coverage. It is the same for a GPS signal to the device regarding signal acquisition in canyons or heavy canopy. Just remember, a GPSr antenna is designed to do ONE thing, receive satellite signals. A cell phone antenna is designed as a multipurpose antenna -- think about it. If you did have coverage, it almost certainly would have been affected by reflected or bounced signals. This can happen to either a phone or a GPSr.

I'm new both to geocaching and to GPS, and am doing my best with what I have, which is a Samsung Galaxy Note GT-N7000. I have c:geo downloaded -- not sure what else I should have that did not come with the phone (suggestions welcome). We have a terrible phone signal out here, usually. Indeed, sometimes c:geo is unable to load anything in its live map except the 'me' arrow and some orange-ringed cache spots on a blank background -- no water, no land, no details. Still, it does give a distance to the caches, e.g., if I switch to the compass. But here's the thing: As we approached what I'll call Cache A, the location was shown approaching 50m or so...then on passing the cache the number climbed again. It never went below about 45. We found the cache very close to that central '45m' point...about five meters from there! This happened again: As we approached a point along the shoreline trail, the distance counted down to 96 m, then started climbing again as we passed what seemed like a good cache location. Since we had a cliff on one side of us and intense shrubbery on the other, there's no way the item could be hidden some 90m away if, as the description implies, it's right along the trail. (We were not able to find it, leading me to wonder if the phone is completely off.) Is this a known problem, e.g., with 1) the Galaxy Note (or phones in general) or 2) c:geo or 3) remote locations like ours (Llantwit Major/St. Donat's) or 4) the result of some software I am missing? Again, it's not that we get a wildly inaccurate reading; it's just that it seems to baseline between 50-100m off! Secondly, is there a way to improve this situation short of buying a GPS device? -Adam-

Hi! To add a newbie twist to this thread: Does the same rule apply to photos for the profile picture (i/e/. for my Geocaching account)? Must it already be online somewhere?