J-Way

Contact the owner. Some owners would welcome the help, some will thank you for the information and replace it themselves, some will ignore you or never get the message, and some will get peeved. Then go on with life.

I need to start doing a better job of reading the posts I'm replying to before posting a response. Sorry about the error

Actually, I meant that arriving at a designated place at a designated time would be a "classic 1-star event". Re-reading my original post, it does appear that I was saying this should be a 1-star... but that was not my intent, and I apologize for the confusion. I would back a 3- or 4-star for one night away from civilization. Also, "specialized equipment" keeps being mentioned as justification for a 5-star, but if you re-read the clayjar descriptions "specialized equipment" is for a 4-star. A 5-star required "very specialized ... equipment". As stated by others, the few items needed for a 1-night stay do not qualify as "very" specialized. Change this to a mandatory 3-day wilderness campout and you've got a 5-star. I'll never agree that a single night on an isolated island, with a group of people, and with no predators would ever qualify as a 5-star. Using your arguments, because the boat doesn't stay at the dock more than a few minutes and only visits once a day, ANY cache ever hidden on the island would require an overnight stay and would be rated as a 5-star difficulty. Even an ammo can painted day-glow orange and placed in plain sight 1/4 mile from the dock.

Good advice about the container. I've never seen a dry standard hide-a-key unless it hadn't rained in the area for a month, or the hiding spot was completely out of the weather. Unfortunately, the soft coords advice is horrible. Almost everyone here has mentioned how much the needle-in-a-haystack hide is despised. Soft coord hides are even worse. Good coords are If you add soft coords to a needle-in-a-haystack, and word gets around, the cache will never be found because everyone will add it to their ignore list. "Almost impossible"? No, but "significantly above average" doesn't cut it. Your standard "average" cache would have a rating of 2 to 2.5. "Significantly above average" would put you squarely in 4-star territory: If you want a fun, memorable, 5-star cache you'll usually need multiple stages, usually with riddles and/or puzzles to solve. Something where most of the "multiple days" are spent at home working on puzzles (multiple hard puzzles are more fun to work on than a single "almost impossible" encryption), or following clues to find multiple hard stages in the field. Trekking again and again to the same spot on the same island to spend hours turning over rock after rock after rock would definitely be memorable, but not in a good way. Some cacher somewhere will eventually do it for the find, but few (if any) people will like it.

Yes, it's possible. I've found caches in 4 states in one day (SC, GA, TN, NC), all while driving 500 miles in about 6 hours. I've woken up in a hotel in California within a few miles of the Arizona border (I found two caches in AZ about 11PM the night before), driven all the way across southern California (grabbing one cache along the way) to Ontario, and catching a plane to Atlanta, GA (three hour layover, plenty of time to grab a cache but I didn't), then on to home in Tennessee. If I'd wanted to I could have found caches in four states over 1800 miles apart in the same day. Also, as already stated, maybe they just don't bother to worry about find date when they log a week or month's worth of finds. And finally, who cares? This isn't a contest. You do NOT win a prize if you have the most finds. If they log one of your caches, then delete it. Otherwise, ignore it and go enjoy life.

Depends on which tax you're talking about. TN doesn't have a state income tax (good), but the sales tax is 9.25%+ (not so good). Incidentally, I've found caches on both coasts (all three if you count the Gulf of Mexico) and the north and south ends of the USA. But I still haven't found a cache in all counties that border on my home county after 2.5 years of caching.

is the service itself discontinued? or just the download because i have it in my GE and it still works. As of right now just the download has been discontinued, as discussed (quite heatedly) in the link posted above. Mine still works as well, fortunately. Eventually the service will be discontinued. Maybe when TPTB decide to flip the switch, maybe when the next GE update comes out, and maybe it just randomly stops working one sad day. MM: Thanks for the fix! I've also used the GSAK macro in the past, and there's another one that draws 528-ft circles around existing caches. Run both and you see the caches with 528-ft circles around them so you can see where new caches can be hidden (except for unknown and multi-stages and such).

I think I see your problem, highlighted in bold. You didn't look for enough caches Even experienced cachers have a DNF rate in the 1:4 to 1:10 range. There are dozens of caches around the Redneck Riviera (I've found a couple of them). There are many times more caches at Ft. Walton, so you should have better luck. I personally live only about 1/8 mile from "out of state", so my first one was only a few days after starting caching.

I've always called it an UFO - Unnatural Formation of Objects

tweezers towel flashlight headlamp hardhat/reflective vest/clipboard (urban camo) Inka write-anywhere pen on my keychain

All events local to you (I believe a 100-mile radius?) are included in the weekly email newsletter. If you still get it just read it. Events must be published at least 2-weeks before the attendance date, so each event should show up in at least two newsletters.

Is it legal? Yes, it is. There are no laws against this. But it's also legal to pass gas in a crowded elevator, drive 45mph in the left lane on a multi-lane highway (in some states, anyway), and to fill your plate by taking all the crab legs at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

If you're talking about the KML download, that's been discontinued. If you're talking about dropping a GPX file, I've never successfully made that work (it always errors out and only shows a few caches).

The Quest for the Golden Goat

Thank you for asking. In your justification for rating this event 5-stars in difficulty you've provided many details pertaining to your actual plans for the weekend in question. You will require a multi-day supply of food (unless your planning on eating off the land... I read something about managed deer hunting on the island), water filtration supplies, shelter from the elements, navigation, carrying enough backup batteries to be able to use a GPS receiver to find the departure point (after all, GPS usage is a requirement before you can list it on geocaching.com), deodorant, etc. This event, IMHO, easily qualifies as a 5-star difficulty. The one you actually listed, where someone could cruise over on a boat the morning of the 21st in time to sign the log at 9:00AM, does not qualify. No offense intended, but a small child could survive 24-hours away from civilization, in the summer, on an isolated island, with no predators. Said child would be hungry, thirsty, whiny, scared, and quite miserable when the boat arrived the next day, but the child would be alive. Increase the time frame to 3-4 days and things get much more interesting. You could modify your event so that attendees must gather at a set time on a set day (say, 11:05AM at the dock on the 18th) to sign a check-in log. Then the entire group must stay together or must have some way to verify no one leaves the island daily until the final gathering at 9:00 AM on the 21st. In effect, modify the requirements of the event such that ALL attendees must do what you and your core group of hardy survivalists are planning to do anyway. Make 'em earn those stars. Some people will still say this will not qualify as a 5-star difficulty. But these people are obviously nay-saying nincompoops who only want to get their hands on your dilithium crystals. They are of even less importance to the grand scheme of life than I am. I seriously wish I could attend, but you're a little far from my normal caching range, plus I used up all my scarce wife-allocated caching days during and around Geowoodstock VII. My allowance went WAY down when she went and got knocked up.

Correct. Incidentally, I couldn't care less how they rate events up there, and I never had the vaguest notion that they would even consider changing the ratings to actually follow the standards of this site. Especially since they didn't change the ratings when they had the exact same event last year, bragged about it in the forums, and were criticized for several pages. But if you're going to advertise an over-rated event in the international forums, expect to be criticized. Maybe others will read the objections and not try to mock the rating system so they can brag about hosting and/or attending a "5/5 event".

I do this for EVERY trip, as do lots of cachers. This is basic stuff, and nothing that would indicate a 5-star difficulty. You need all that gear to hang around for 24 hours away from civilization? Seriously? The boat shows up at 11:00AM on the 20th, kicks you off, then leaves. Exactly one day later the same boat arrives at 11:00AM and you get on for the ride back. A light pack with some food and water, and maybe a blanket/towel, is all you need, assuming there are primitive toilet facilities near the ranger station. Tents, sleeping bags, cookware, stoves, bug-spray, etc. would make you more comfortable, but are not necessary for survival for a single night. WHY??? Is all that part of the Event? You mentioned at least a 24-hour layover, so I'm assuming you won't let people cruise over the day of the event on a private boat, arrive at 8:59AM, and sign the log, correct? If the 32-mile trek isn't required to log the event, then you can't include in the ratings. Besides, a 32-mile trek is purely terrain, not difficulty. Same comment as your second point. None of this is required to survive 24-hours away from civilization. Again, this is the same point using slightly different words. Ummm... I wouldn't advertise the fact that it's taken you that long to prepare for 24-hours away from civilization. If participants are required to join in the 32-mile, 3-day camping trip to log this event, then you ARE approaching a 5-star difficulty because of the requirement for extra gear (quite a few people will insist this is still all terrain, not difficulty). But if all an attendee has to accomplish is miss a few hours of TV and suffer a few bug bites, then you're only trying to fool yourself. If I were in the area I'd love to join you on the 3-day primitive trek. It sounds like an awesome time. But if it isn't required to log the event, then you can't count it. Analogy time: Lets say I parked my car at southern trail head for the Appalachian trail on Springer Mt., Georgia. I then walked over 2100-miles along said trail to Mt. Katahdin, Maine. I then hid a film can in the parking lot at the northing trail head. Based on your logic, because I took the harder route and because others *might* also choose to take that route, I could rate it as a 5/5. But in reality it's a 1.5/1.5. How should I rate it?

What do you mean by "smaller airport"? The Chattanooga airport is considered a "small regional" airport, but it has regularly scheduled commercial flights all over the eastern half of the country. No way you could get a cache published there, even with permission. Pretty much anything with a tower would be off-limits. Even a smaller urban with no tower and no scheduled flights, but with moderate to heavy commercial traffic (charters, flight schools, etc) would probably never work out. But a cache near a small rural airport with no tower, very limited traffic (preferably no commercial), and written permission from the local air traffic authority might have a chance on appeal. And as already stated, other than maybe providing an argument that could help your case on appeal, nothing typed in the forums is binding in any way. From a spectator's point of view, the best forum appeals are when someone comes in and blasts their local reviewer about how unfair they are. Everyone agrees that the reviewer is unfair. Then the local reviewer jumps in and provides a few missing details, which of course changes everything about the story. Great fun.

I LOVE this example!!! I've heard time and again that the published coords for a letterbox cannot be just to the parking lot because that doesn't require enough GPS usage. The immediate question that springs to my mind it, what about caches that are in parking lots? Can I put the listed coords somewhere else in the parking lot and have the seeker follow clues to the cache? Do I have to put the coords somewhere on a nearby trail and have them come back to the parking lot? How does this affect LPCs?

Nah, the Navy's too violent. I watch the news every Tuesday at 8:00 PM. At least one person dies every week, and that's just the people on leave here in the states!

But that's only if you will always cache together and the same person does all the logging. If you'll sometimes cache separately you could just keep individual accounts and make up a team name. Some people do both; keep individual accounts and have a separate account under the team name. Usually the team account is only used for publishing caches and events and managing travel bugs.

Another reason for limiting the number of PQ's each person is allowed to run is to prevent the creation of offline databases.

Bingo![soup Nazi voice]No bingo for you! [/soup Nazi voice] Mine's still working. I'll be back in full frothy rant mode when it finally stops

Default location: Mine's sorta there already. The default cache search location on the main page is my home coordinates. I click "go", then "map it", and I'm looking at Google maps at my home coordinates.

Here's one near me. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...ff-1afd41ccec61 Doesn't comply with the requirements, but it may be grandfathered in. I believe the official change in the guidelines that requires all traditional caches be at the listed coordinates occurred about a month after that cache was listed.