Grawp

"place 1 cache for every 10 found" Why? If I find a good spot, I'll hide a cache. I couldn't care less about how many I have found.

1. How much are you prepared to spend on a cache? As much as it takes to ensure it is of a high standard with good value goodies in it. More often than not, I hand make the log book from hand-made paper. 2. What type of swag do you put into your caches? I try to put a reasonable variety of swag. Some low value, some high value, but always try to be original. There's enough variety for just about anyone to trade up or trade even. 3. What type of containers do you use? This varies enormously depending on the proposed site. Usually the locking type of container, but any reasonably sturdy plastic container with a really good sealing lid will do for me. 4. How do you prepare your container? Again, this depends on the location. Sometimes in a camouflage bag, sometimes painted in camo colours, sometimes disguised as "other things" 5. Post photos of your finished cache container If I knew how to post pics to the forum, I'd do so .......

I think we all, at some time, have been guilty of this. I agree that common courtesy dictates that the owner be kept informed of the TB status. My well-travelled TB went "missing" during its time in Europe, for a LONG time. I had no response from emails, notes on the page, pleas to other cachers to try and track it down so assumed it was gone. But a good few weeks later, it popped into a cache and is still travelling well (around 45000 kms so far). So .... sometimes it appears all is lost, but due to unforseen circumstances, delays occur. In the case of my TB, the owner had been having serious heart surgery! Understandable in this case, I guess!!!

This is a CRAZY place! I had no import duty on mine - it simply arrived in my post box - no charges at all. Why it should be different for yours is beyond comprehension ...... Oh no it isn't, silly me - Gov'ment need new luxury cars this year!!!!

Mine has to go to Behghazi, Libya (from South Africa). Not an impossible task by any means, but there is (was) only one cache in the entire country - out in the desert, GC866F, place 8/29/2002 and last visited for a find on 1/20/2003. I have no idea whether it is still there. I have emailed the owner although his profile states "Not Validated Member". I have had no reply as yet. But I will place the tb, in a specially built cache with a diabetes theme and try to get it on its way.

I got mine today. It's destination is Benghazi, Libya. I'll be placing it in a special Diabetes-aware cache within the next two weeks.

Vinny & Sue Team: Wow! Now THAT is a reply of note! Very interesting (as this whole thread has been) so many thanks for the time to reply to my post in particular. I look forward to seeing more about this whole topic, as I am learning a great deal - even at my advanced age! For instance - I didn't know about the water affecting the gps. If my little Explorist is soaking wet in the rain will my reception be adversely affected?

Have to agree with the business card scenario. We were caching yesterday and found business cards in three caches. The containers weren't entirely waterproof, casing the cards to become a tangled mess of papier-mache in the bottom of the box. Added to that - one of the cards was ink-jey printed, the ink had run and caused staining as well. Yeuch!!! We made up a simple, laminated card, printed in colour, with our nickname and an "African" image on the front. The rear has a "Grawp was here, thanks for the cache" and a photograph of an African animal (evrything from elephants to dung-beetles). They have proved to be popular with finders as we are forever being asked for more. The cost was minimal. We printed the cards ourselves, laminated by a print-shop. They are a bit larger than a standard business card - no advertising - just a simple "we were here" presence in the cache.

Interesting comments about water content. I wonder if this could be related to the body's conductivity. We were fooling around with a digital multimeter the other day, and several individuals took turns holding the probes with the meter set to resistance. My resistance (holding a probe in each hand between forefinger and thumb) was a tad over 5 megohms. Male 1 = 1.3 meg Male 2 = 1.7 meg Male 3 = 3.1 meg Female = 130 kilo ohms! VERY low! I found this to be fascinating - why such a vast difference. (I checked mine again - still very high) So ...... if the body has a low resistance, there is an easier elctrical path to earth (ground), which, electrically speaking, means that the body is acting as a "grounded vertical conductor" which could cause the signals to weakened. Maybe! Another weird observation ...... the older the test subject the higher the resistance. Now this is getting totally "X-Files"! This is an interesting thread. I would love to get to the bottom of this one ......

I contacted the techie at our local Magellan agency and he also confirmed that it would only be the compass that could be affected by metal body parts, and only if they exhibit a certain amount of magnetism themselves. The magnetic force would be minimal to cause a problem with compass readings. Metal parts should NOT cause any anomolies with satellite reception. The techies I spoke to are very intrigued by this question and have offered to find out more information. I'll keep you informed.

Some people have metal plates in their heads - how cool it could be to turn it into a patch antenna!!

All the hype! All the comments! Enough to encorage me to go look and see what it's all about - MEMBERS ONLY. What a bummer! Guess that cuts the number of attempts down by quite a bit!

We experienced a similar situation the other day with two IDENTICAL Explorists. ALL settings were identical, both were brand new, both had new batteries, but they displayed slightly different co-ordinates, even when placed side by side and left alone for a while. Interesting!

Unfortunately, what geocacher_coza has said is factual. I have also lost a cache or two. One even had a very poorly written note in the empty container telling me in no uncertain terms that "wite mens game is not wanted in SA". I wonder who could have written that one........ It IS a fact that the country we have chosen to live in is fraught with danger. The fact that we all pussy-foot around the real circumstances and pretend we ARE all the same is also a ridiculous sign of the times. More often than not, when some hardened criminal escapes from prison (an almost daily occurrence), we, the petrified public, are given a basic description of the individual, warned not to approach because he is an incredibly dangerous individual, all without once giving an inkling of what colour the fugitive is. Stupid, head-in-the-sand attitude as far as I am concerned. The forum is a vehicle to make comment. I would rather have people "tell it like it is" rather than hide away under a "politically correct" blanket.

Seeing the lame hints makes me wonder whether the VERY explicit hints I give to some of my caches are what the players are looking for. Take Glenholme #2 for example. VERY poor coverage, so VERY explicit hints. Maybe I should have just said "By the river"! Or Mpiti Falls - "Somewhere by the Mpiti Waterfall" On the other hand, some are very obvious from the description and the co-ordinates - there is an OBVIOUS hiding place. In this case - in plain text, in the description: "No additional hints required".

Does anyone else feel the same as us about the encrypted hints on a cache page? Surely they should be HINTS not a method for stating the obvious. Things like .... "It's by a tree" for a cache in a forest. "It's REALLY small" for a cache that has already been defined as a nano-cache, "Under a rock" in a field containing about a thousand rocks. And so on. After we've spent a lot of time looking, we resort to decrypting the clue, only to find that it re-states the obvious. Anger and frustration is the result. Use the encrypted hint to provide additional CLUES to assist the player in finding the cache. Simple? I guess not ...........

I remember seeing one on the forums a while ago which appealed to me so much that I had some made up:- "I use multi-billion dollar military satellites to find plastic containers hidden in the bush.What do you do?"

Quarry Cache (GCK36Y) was placed on 25/7/2004. It's had 6 visitors so far. The reason? It's a serious 4X4 trail to get there, although one team managed it on mountain bikes. The cache has been muggled twice, so far, but I will continue to try keeping this one active as it's one of the few off-road caches in the immediate area and those who have done it, thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

Thanks to all who responded. No I'm not on dial-up - thank goodness - ADSL! Interesting qestion about individuals teaming up .....

Sorry to hear the news. The magazine was a great asset to us here in South Africa, letting us know what the "other side" of the world was up to in the caching game. I know we're far away, but if there's any way we can help give us a shout.

When the team of "Azaruk" broke up due to one member going overseas, my cache partner was going to take over the Azaruk name. So I logged a new name to play under. I hope that satisfies the curiosity. Though why it should bother anyone is beyond me.

Well found - thanks a lot. I'll do the necessary .....

Interesting to see a LandRover behind the truck. Where and what was this?

I hope this doesn't open up a whole can of worms ..... Due to personal circumstances I stopped playing the game under the "Azaruk" name and opened a new account under the name of "Grawp". As Azaruk, I had a fair number of finds which obviously don't appear under the new name. Is it permissible practise to re-log the finds, using the original date that Azaruk found them, so that they reflect as finds under my new name. I no longer play as Azaruk at all. I have adopted all the Azaruk caches that are still active into the Grawp name. I look forward to your comments......

I used to play in another team (2 of us) which unfortunately broke up. I was out of the game for quite a while as I don't like caching alone. I now have a new caching partner, and a new team name. I have adopted the caches that I had placed under the old team name, but before doing so, used my caches to teach my new partner all about the game. I ofered no assistance as to the location of the caches - she found them entirely by herself, and signed the logs under the new team name. Once she was happy playing the game (totally hooked, in fact) we adopted the caches. I don't see anything wrong with this, as long as it's done ethically. Which I did.