rassilon256

Thanks for replying! Unfortunately I'll be arriving on the 26th so I'll miss those events, but I hadn't thought of events so I'll take a look whether there's any others I might get to, great suggestion.

So I'm hoping that some Australians have recently had adventures in California and can give me some advice. I'll be in Los Angeles and San Diego for my honeymoon in a few weeks time, and my beloved has left a few minutes free in our schedule. Any recommendations for things to do/see/eat/buy would be much appreciated! Of course caches and caching-related things are of particular interest but anything is welcome. Our big stops include Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm, Legoland, Santa Monica Pier and surrounds, San Diego Zoo and Safari Park, Sea World, and Balboa Park. One thing that really disappoints me is that we couldn't get up to the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, so anything Peanuts-y would be particularly good. Thanks in advance! *And yes I've double-posted in the Southwest USA sub-forum to get a local perspective.

Hi there Californians! I'm an Australian and I'll be in Los Angeles and San Diego for my honeymoon in a few weeks time, and my beloved has left a few minutes free in our schedule. Any recommendations for things to do/see/eat/buy would be much appreciated! Of course caches and caching-related things are of particular interest but anything is welcome. Our big stops include Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm, Legoland, Santa Monica Pier and surrounds, San Diego Zoo and Safari Park, Sea World, and Balboa Park. One thing that really disappoints me is that we couldn't get up to the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, so anything Peanuts-y would be particularly good. Thanks in advance!

Thanks, neither do I. Hopefully someone else does.

Is that a yes, no or don't know? I have nearly 200 logs and I don't remember which ones I spoiler-tagged. I don't really want to go through them all if I don't have to. 200 isn't that many compared to a lot of people, but it's more than enough to keep me busy for hours.

I specifically left logging a cache until tonight to use my PC rather than my phone app because I wanted to write a spoiler-tagged sentence. But the new Markdown coding doesn't seem to have spoiler tags. Is that not an option? If it isn't an option, does that mean that all of my previous logs with spoilers are now plain text?

Thank you all for your help. I suspected there was nothing I could do for the non-premium members, but the edit page link is a good idea for the premium member. That said, one of the non-premium members produced a marvellous plan for the day with maps and routes and all sorts anyway, so my pocket query is really only useful for getting the caches onto my GPS now.

I'm going on a caching walk with some friends next week so I set up a pocket query based on our approximate route. The results looked good and I thought I'd like to tell the others. Is there any way I can send them the preview results, or the query itself? Only one of them is a premium member. Thanks in advance.

Upon seeing a news report about a major drug bust: "Hey, good camo!" This actually just happened to me. There were some PVC stormwater pipe sections really nicely disguised as logs and stumps.

Fantastic! Well I've reached my initial target but keep going. These are great, and the more the better.

I'm sure this must already be a thing on the forum but no amount of vague search terms turned it up. I logged a cache recently with this sentence: Things only geocachers say #17: "That rock looks suspicious.". What else could you add to the list? Obviously I need at least 16 more to make my randomly chosen number make sense.

Oh yeah, just out of view on my screen - "Save As Pocket Query". That works perfectly, thanks so much! I knew it would be simpler than I was making it. Now I'll just need to translate all of the French data somehow...

In a week I'm going on a cruise around a few islands in the South Pacific. I don't know if I'll get a chance but I wanted to try and pick up some caches on the way. However, I can't make a query to fit. I've tried to just map the route. It doesn't work, probably because the "Find caches along a route" function assumes you'll travel on roads, not water. Plus it only takes into account start and finish points, so I can't map the cruise as such. Also, it doesn't seem to recognise Vanuatu or New Caledonia as places on the map, and just shows me Seattle. I've also tried to choose a single point (Erromango, one of Vanuatu's islands) and then use it's coordinates as a central point to search a wide circle around. I got the lat/long from this site, then used this site to convert them to GPS (I couldn't find instructions on how to do it myself, if you have some please let me know). All the results from that are around 2500km too far west. I'm failing pretty epically here, so all help much appreciated. I really don't want to have to download 65+ GPXs individually onto my GPS.

Thanks guys. I did indeed log from my phone. All fixed now. Thanks for pointing that one out!

I went out on EarthCache Day and found the cache I wanted, had a walk around and then did the tasks required. Early that afternoon I logged it and sent the answers to the cache owner. I haven't heard back from them, and my log hasn't been deleted. But three days later I still don't have the souvenir. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I can do? I wanted the souvenir of course, but also the special thing and its time-linked nature was part of what inspired my partner to join me for the trip. If I don't get it she'll be a bit disheartened by the whole thing.

Well a 4-compartment pouch with some webbing eyeleted to the back and a stretch nylon webbing belt with a box-buckle turned out to be ideal, slung across the body. Great for roadsides when I wanted to pull it on and off quite often, easy to keep out of the way when moving in close quarters, and always kept everything accessible. I still think the Kangatek one would be better, but not much better, and I'll probably never know for sure.

Another nice bag. I've bought some stuff from the disposals store earlier this week and I'll set it up tonight, all ready to go out on Earthcache Day. I'd still love to know where I could get my hands on some of the more suitable gear I've had recommended here, and the Kangatek of course. Unfortunately none of the outdoors or sporting stores around me carry anything remotely similar.

Thanks for all the comments so far. I have considered the nylon holster for the Explorist but I didn't know how durable it would be. Also I've not had a good experience with Magellan so I'm not in a hurry to give them any more money. I figure that most of the time I will be holding the GPSr, but if I need both my hands I want to be able to put it somewhere. The lanyard isn't good enough but it was free. If I make a leap or move through a tight space I'm not keen on having the GPSr in a hip pocket or holster as I'm likely to bash it up. It seems durable but I'd like to avoid testing it. The Maxpedition-style packs that I've seen seem more prone to movement as they have one large point of mass, and while I've a few tools I'd take with me I'd barely half-fill the smallest I've seen. The bulk, minimal though it is, just seems unnecessary and potentially inconvenient. Although a belt tie-down seems like a good solution. I think I can still do better for my needs than a Maxpedition with a pouch from a disposals store and some webbing from my workshop. But if anyone can help me out with the questions in my original post please do!

I've recently gone from being a smartphone app cacher to being a GPSr cacher with assorted tools / bits and pieces. I'd like to get the GPSr off the lanyard around my neck, and the other stuff out of my pockets. I'd also like to make sure that when I walk out the door I have everything. Since I don't go far or carry much, I'm really keen on the Kangatek TekPak. Their online store is closed, I emailed them last week about other sources and I haven't gotten a reply. Has anyone got one of these, and what are their pros and cons? For instance I'm not sure from photos that my Explorist will be that easy to get in and out of a pocket. Does anyone know anywhere online or preferably in NSW, Australia that I can buy one? Can anyone point me to another brand that does a similar style pack? The more common style I find (random example here) are bigger than I need, and I could do better for a few dollars from my local army surplus store. All help much appreciated!

Well, it took over two months and six devicesbut I finally got a resolution from Magellan. To avoid duplication I'm just going to link to my other post on the subject.

Firstly, thanks gpsblake, sorry I didn't reply but your suggestions were useful and appreciated. Well, it took over two months and six devices but I finally got a resolution from Magellan. One of the reasons I chose a Magellan device was that a number of recent reviews I read noted that their customer service in recent times was far better than Garmin's. I can safely say that they have the WORST customer service I have ever encountered, and my career has encompassed the IT industry, education, science and government agencies. I know bad customer service. If you're Australian, Magellan make Telstra look like the most competent company in the world. I'll be complaining to the ACCC. Their service department seemingly consists of no more than five people in India whose job is to apologise from a script, incorrectly enter your data into their system, provide solutions that wouldn't work to problems you don't have anyway, and their special trick: promising to contact you within a set timeframe then ignoring you until you call them, at which point they are completely baffled because they thought they had already resolved a different problem for you. I started by telling them I suspected that they had either a faulty batch of 510s or a buggy firmware update. I tended to assume the former because I only found a little evidence of similar problems. After I and an authorised store representative of theirs replicated the problem on four devices and sent the fifth back to them untouched (at their request), they finally sent me a fully up-to-date 610 with a piece of paper in the bottom of the box saying that there was "an issue with the 510 firmware update". Given that the same update package was used on the 610 and the main difference is a few additional features on the 610, that seems improbable as I said. Still, I did get a 610 at a price that was quite cheap for a 510 in the end. I've spent a few days trying it out and it seems like quite a good unit. In the end, I'm 95% sure I'm happy with my Explorist 610, but if you want a 510 I would highly recommend you buy an Etrex 20. Or Etrex 30, which is only a bit more expensive when on sale and I was days away from buying.

Thanks Graculus! Thats exactly the sort of thing I wasn't able to find myself for some reason. I'm surprised the Explorist Forum never turned up in my researches. My units also came from Dick Smith, I think its clearly a faulty batch. I was suspecting that might be the case. Interestingly, that thread says *not* to use VP. And I'm 99% certain the update file is fine, its a self-extracting .zip and I've never known them to be resilient when corrupted. But without something like a checksum you can't be totally sure. I contacted Magellan after the first unit bricked, I'll call them today, see if I can manage to get them to fix the situation. Ideally they might send me a replacement from a different batch with the update already in place. We'll see how far they want to go.

Originally posted in the newbies forum: The story so far: I'm a recent convert to geocaching and have been using the iPhone app, which is great but occasionally a bit jumpy. So I figured it would be worth buying a proper GPSr for the accuracy, durability and general usefulness. Also, I have an overseas holiday coming up and I thought if I got a paperless geocaching enabled unit I could preload caches for the trip and not have to pay for international phone data. So, with extensive research I looked at all the stores near me that sold GPSrs, Googled reviews, read the ratings here and on geocaching.com, and decided that the best unit I could afford was the Magellan Explorist 510. I duly bought one, got on the Magellan website for a full manual, and discovered that there was a firmware update that sounded very useful (see here). I downloaded it, followed the instructions to the letter, and 10 minutes later had a brick. It brought up a BSOD message, I can't remember the exact words but it was close to If I cold-booted it it simply returned to the BSOD. Assuming I had a faulty unit, I rang Magellan. They said return it to the store where I bought it for a replacement. I did that today, brought the new unit home and carefully reread the instructions on the firmware and ran it again. I now have what may be a brick. For the past 4 hours it has displayed a blue screen with the words in the middle and at the bottom. I'm assuming it has simply frozen, and a cold-boot may fix it, but I'm tempted to just let it run down the batteries overnight and see what happens just in case. Practical upshot: does anyone know anything about this problem or have any suggestions to fix it? Feel free if you do to be technical, my experience of WinCE systems is limited but I was in tech support for a few years so I should cope.

Thanks NiraD, I wasn't sure about whether to post there or here. I'll repost there, I hope that's not bad form.

Right... Anyone have any useful suggestions?