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If you are looking for a rugged GPS without mapping features then I would look at the eTrex (the original yellow one), or the GPS 12 from Garmin, or the Magellan 315. All three of these units are very rugged. You can read all type of horror stories of someone leaving theirs on top of their car and such and the unit surviving. As long as you get a modern 12 channel GPS then they all have the same accuracy. You do have to watch with some of the low end Magellan units like the 300 and 310 they display less precision on their nav screens. The big think to think about here is not accuracy as much as the sensitivity of the receiver. All 12-channel GPS units use a similar algorithm to calculate their position. This position gets better when it can talk to more satellites. This is why many people claim that the Magellan 315 is more accurate then the Garmin eTrex. Its not more accurate but the 315 has a better antenna then the eTrex and thus in a some difficult situation like heavy tree cover it usually can use more satellite to calculate its position. Thus giving you a more accurate position. The greater accuracy here has nothing to do with the computer inside but the about of information it has to use So if being very rugged and have a good antenna then the Magelland 315 is pretty good for the price. If you can sacrifice a little ruggedness then I would take a look and the Garmin II+(not the II). This unit has one of the best antenna receiver setups going in a handheld short of running and external amplified antenna. This is the Grandfather of the III, III+ and the just released V. Most users out there will tell you that in heavy tree cover and other adverse conditions you can?t bet the II+, III+ unit for there reception. The only way that you will get more accurate is to go to a differential capable unit. There is two type of differential correction. The older technology used a separate receiver that receive a ground based signal that was then feed to a DGPS capable GPS unit. This is bulky and expensive but most hand held out there can do this. You just have to by the separate Differential receiver and hook it up. The other way is call WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System). This uses a new satellite to broad cast the differential correction to the unit. WAAS is a new system and slightly more accurate then the older DGPS beacons but, the only non-mapping WAAS units I can think of are the Garmin GPS 76 and the Garmin eTrex Venture. The WAAS differential correction should take you from and estimated position error (EPE) of 15 meters down to about 3 meters. The problem with WAAS is that is usually the first signal you loose as you head into the woods. It is good in the open but gets real spotty when condition get difficult. I am assuming that you want a non-mapping unit to keep the cost down so with that in mind I think I would recommend the Garmin eTrex basic, Garmin 12, or Magellan 315. Of these I would lean to the Garmin 12 but I am partial to Garmin. But if you can wing the money take a look at the II+ or III+ I don?t think you would be disappointed with the performance. Sorry I got wordy. mcb

The marker was located in Anderson County, Kansas. I looked at the web page, and it does sound as if it may be one of the markers used in the adventure game near Melvern Lake, however part of it doesn't make sense. The events this described talk about going from one campsite to another at Melvern Lake, and finding as many discs as possible in a two hour time period. I do know where Melvern Lake is, I have been there. The disc I found would be about a 45 minute drive from the nearest point of Melvern Lake, and the coordinates that it mentioned would be located in Woodson County, which would be further from the lake still. If a person left Melvern lake and knew exactly where these discs were located, I don't think they could get rubbings from just these two and return to the lake within a two hour period. Doesn't seem like it would be much of a game if the winners had one rubbing, and second place had none at all. The sounds of the challenge game sound as if the discs are placed around or at least within a 5-10 mile radius of the lake. The disc does say "Do Not Remove" on it, so I don't want to ruin something for other people, any more than I would want my caches stolen or vandalized. I would think if someone was doing something as a one-day event, they wouldn't have used something as permanent as this appears to be designed to be. I still don't know what to make of it. If it's a left-over from a game held in the past, I wish they would remove it. It is a heck of a nice place to put a cache

All this talk dissing WAAS! I'll admit to an awareness that WAAS isn't always a system that is very reliable, but hey! I don't care-- I'm a neuvo-techie and I enjoy the tech part of the devices as much. Oh well. So the bird sits low on the horizon, eh? I'd be seeking out no. 47, I think, in the air, the Pacific Ocean Region WAAS satellite. Well, I'll let you all know how it works out. Why a WAAS enabled GPSr might not receive more specific coords than a non-enabled device isn't clear to me from your explanation, IronChef!

Have you guys seen #30? Talk about SWEET!! Moun10Bike...how did you do it?

Talk about obsessed! How far did you have to drive to get that duck? I was thinking of putting Kermit in T-Bird. What do you think? Bob

Talk about obsessed! How far did you have to drive to get that duck? I was thinking of putting Kermit in T-Bird. What do you think? Bob

These arguments are why I believe the text descriptions of the caches are way more important than the numbers. We can talk about this until we are blue in the face but there is no way to get the numerical values perfect. I think we should use the form brokenwing proposed above to get the numbers because it's a great starting point and probably as close as you can get to a universal, usable numerical value. However, when someone hides a new cache let's prompt them to enter *quality* descriptions (perhaps using text from the GCRS system questions). When I see 1's and 2's they are the same to me anyway because I realize people view ability differently (as well as 4's and 5's being similar at the other end). I give much more credence to the *description* entered by the originator than the numbers. -exConn [This message has been edited by exConn (edited 10 September 2001).]

Unfortunatly its too late, but probably the worse thing to do is post their activities on the forum. They are reading this you realize. Unless they have a personal grudge against you, they did it just to see us talk about it. Ignore them, don't give them the satisfaction of the post, and they will go away out of boredom.

quote:Originally posted by fr:I am interested in getting a Summit or Vista for the electronic compass but am a little concerned about the clickstick on the Vista. Yes, I also narrowed my choices to the Summit and Vista for the same reason - the compass (and altimeter). The only difference really is if you want mapping capability. I eventually chose the Vista so I could load topos and use the maps while tracking mountain bike trails. Even if I didn't bike, I figured if I ever had more reason for maps in the future I wouldn't have to upgrade to another unit. I decided to spend a little extra now. In a nutshell, I'm very happy with the Vista. However, I've only had it for a few weeks and the talk above about the clickstick concerns me. I'm also wondering if Garmin tightened the battery compartments on newer units so that it doesn't shut off like mentioned above. When I load batteries, it is very tight and I have never had mine shut off (and I've been mountain biking on tough trails with it). The first time I ever took the unit out, I was mountain biking up a tough hill and it began to pour down rain (and continued for a good 30 minutes). The unit was drenched but never blinked and performed flawlessly. Sure, I believe a unit with an external antenna will perform better, it has to. But, the Vista has never really let me down in the woods. I love it so far... -exConn [This message has been edited by exConn (edited 09 September 2001).]

It's funny-- while I believe that public forums are the best way to expose the truth about things, it's kinda backfired here, and the result is one that has painted my wife in the least delightful manner. Yeah, you're right-- there was no compromise. The notion of 'let's talk about it' means-- this is what I want you to do for me to feel comfortable In terms of compromise in this particular issue, there is none. It seems as if she's won-- but I've found that there are areas where she surrenders as well. The more one gets pressed and attempted at being controlled, the more it spills out elsewhere. This week in Santa Cruz during my business trip I went on four geocache trips. I had fun. And frankly, without eyes present to judge, I dressed in my normal manner. On the face of it, to keep it all in perspective, other than certain areas of... intractability in her personality, she's a good woman who loves me deeply. I've also learned a bit about airing my 'dirty laundry' a bit-- I get more info than I want! Oh, I may do it again, but sheesh!!

A NAND gate is a logic chip. It consists of four two input logical AND gates, each can be used independentaly. The 'N' in front of AND indicates that there is an inverter on the output of each gate. So, if input 1 AND input 2 of one of the gates are both ON, then the output of that gate is OFF. But if either of the inputs, or both, are OFF, then the output is ON. See? Both inputs have to be ON to turn on the gate, and since the output is inverted, when the gate is ON, the output is OFF. The 74xx series of chips were very early (mid 1970s) Transistor Transistor Logic (TTL) that ran on a single 5 volts. Pin 14 is +5, 7 is ground. In my teens, I used hundreds of these chips. Boy, talk about old memories!

m going down there later this week to talk to the ranger to see what the situation is about whether or not the park is expected to re-open soon. I MAY have to just remove my container and archive the page. It kinda sucks 'cause it was just now starting to get some visitors AND the only reason I hid it there in the first place was to encourage caching in middle Tennessee.

On Sunday Sept. 9, I will giving a short (1 hour) and simple demonstration of Geocaching to my local computer club SEMCO (http://semco.org) at the Oakland University Science Building Room 172. The talk is scheduled to start at 1:45. Any other area Geocachers are welcome to come out and join me. Bring your GPS units for show and tell! If you need better directions, the Science Building is located at North 42 degrees 40.253 minutes and West 83 degrees 13.051 minutes.

quote:Originally posted by Chris Juricich:My wife has always been supportive of my interests and hobbies, but of late, my interest in geocaching has been screwed with by virtue of a couple of her mighty concerns: My God! All this talk about someone else picking out your clothes for you, telling you what shoes you should wear, and taking away your favorite toy. If you substitute the word "Mother" for "Wife", it sounds like a teenager complaining about his parents. Other than a marriage counselor, I can't think of anything to suggest. [This message has been edited by c.mathis (edited 03 September 2001).]

Man talk about something blown out of proportion.This has got to be one of the most harmless thing man has ever done(geocaching).I have never understanded how the gov. thinks. I live on a lake that is owned by the army corp.of engineers,the parks are ran by the NPS,the parks have posts at the gate for people to pay to get in,but there is never no one at the post to take the money and these parks stay packed. I'am not kiddind PACKED!! They can't pay someone $8 bucks an hour to take money to enter the park,but they can spend time and money trying to find a harmless geocach.Just think about that for a minute.Someone said in a post "this kind of stuff goes on in the in the private sector also" One big difference they make money not waste money.I will give you a good example, the rangers that patrol the parks and the work crews all drive V-8 pickups,they don't have any towing hitchs on them so why a V-8? Maybe its to help pass the artic drilling act.Just rember someone once said "A gov. for the people by the people".And by the way if the NPS reads this I would gladly pay 10 bucks for a permit to hide a cache on OUR land.

One of my employees has this model, and he let me borrow it to play with. Using his Pioneer is what made me decide not to buy one, despite low prices on eBay. Its a sequential model, rather than a parallel receiver. What this means is that it can only talk to one satellite at a time, having to rotate between them. Parallel models have 12 receivers, so they can listen to 12 satellites at a time. Sequential models are SLOW to lock in and prone to tracking errors. Buy a modern model with parallel recievers.

I figured out which cache you were talking about and read your log. I'm not sure if you edited your log or not as there were no coords listed in your description. I think I might know part of the reason for his tone. In your log you stated, "...I even had one of the people from the school ask me what I was doing. After explaining to them what geocaching was and my Magellan 330, they still didnt seem to happy to have that cache there. You might want to talk to someone at the school and get the okay to have it there, or I am sure it will be gone soon." The fact that you suggest that the cache may soon be gone or is in a bad spot might account for some of the "tone" in the email he sent you. There are obviously other issues playing into his email as well, but I still don't think he should have sent you such a nasty email. I'm happy to have other coordinates posted seeing as how I'm running an old Eagle Explorer. When people find my caches I'm so relieved!! As far as posting the coordinates where you found the cache, I say keep on doing it. I'm sure this was just an isolated incident.

quote:Originally posted by Bob_and_Genny:It's easy to say that people should use their judgement in a case like this. But I'd be willing to bet that, given access to a program like this, 9 out of 10 people would just go with the rating the program spits out.[/b] They haven't (in general) yet. I've been stating on my cache pages that they're rated using the system, but I've been out on others that don't even come close to what I would rate them using the GCRS. Until we get a consensus that the system is good (not necessarily perfect), and have everyone update their caches with the new guidelines (retrofitting their ratings), all this talk is in a vacuum. We need to come to an agreement that the GCRS, while not 100% accurate, is a good guideline on how to rate your caches, based on consensus agreement of many cachers using the forums. It is nothing more or less than that.

Jeremy, I like the way you have organised the Canadian and Australian caches by province! Maybe we could do the same for the New Zealand caches? To date, I have included the name of the nearest significant town or city to each of my caches in parentheses at it end of its name. I would like to continue using this system (maybe without my parentheses), with the New Zealand province listed at the end of the name (as in Canada and Australia). The only problem I can forsee, is that all of the existing New Zealand geocaches would need to be edited to show the province in which they reside. I could provide you with an annotated list of all of the caches in New Zealand showing their province (that is, if cache owners don't get around to editing their own caches). Anyway, here is a list of provinces (actually regional councils and unitary authorities from section 1.5 of the Atlas of New Zealand Boundaries 1996; I have seperated Stewart Island from Southland): North Island: Northland Auckland Waikato Taranaki Bay of Plenty Gisborne Hawkes Bay Manawatu Wellington South Island: Tasman Nelson/Marlborough West Coast Canterbury Otago Southland Other Islands: Stewart Island Chatam Islands Territory These provinces can be split up onto even smaller regions (e.g., using the Mereorlogical services regions from section 2.1 of the above reference, Otago can be split into Central Otago, North Otago, South Otago, and Dunedin and Canterbury can be split into Canterbury High Country, Canterbury Plains, and Christchurch City and/or South, Mid, and North Canterbury (using the Federated Farmers provinces shown in section 4.7)). As you can guess, the local interpritation of the boundaries between provinces varies depending on who you talk to, it is usually a mixture of all three of the systems mentioned above. What does everyone else think? Have I made any mistakes? I would probably stick with the major govenmental provinces that I listed at the beginning, in that way we won't have to scroll down a massive list of provinces to find the right one (the list currently contains all of the provinces/states for the USA, Canada, and Australia). Cheers, Donovan.

Jeremy, I like the way you have organised the Canadian and Australian caches by province! Maybe we could do the same for the New Zealand caches? To date, I have included the name of the nearest significant town or city to each of my caches in parentheses at it end of its name. I would like to continue using this system (maybe without my parentheses), with the New Zealand province listed at the end of the name (as in Canada and Australia). The only problem I can forsee, is that all of the existing New Zealand geocaches would need to be edited to show the province in which they reside. I could provide you with an annotated list of all of the caches in New Zealand showing their province (that is, if cache owners don't get around to editing their own caches). Anyway, here is a list of provinces (actually regional councils and unitary authorities from section 1.5 of the Atlas of New Zealand Boundaries 1996; I have seperated Stewart Island from Southland): North Island: Northland Auckland Waikato Taranaki Bay of Plenty Gisborne Hawkes Bay Manawatu Wellington South Island: Tasman Nelson/Marlborough West Coast Canterbury Otago Southland Other Islands: Stewart Island Chatam Islands Territory These provinces can be split up onto even smaller regions (e.g., using the Mereorlogical services regions from section 2.1 of the above reference, Otago can be split into Central Otago, North Otago, South Otago, and Dunedin and Canterbury can be split into Canterbury High Country, Canterbury Plains, and Christchurch City and/or South, Mid, and North Canterbury (using the Federated Farmers provinces shown in section 4.7)). As you can guess, the local interpritation of the boundaries between provinces varies depending on who you talk to, it is usually a mixture of all three of the systems mentioned above. What does everyone else think? Have I made any mistakes? I would probably stick with the major govenmental provinces that I listed at the beginning, in that way we won't have to scroll down a massive list of provinces to find the right one (the list currently contains all of the provinces/states for the USA, Canada, and Australia). Cheers, Donovan.

talk to the Cache-U-Nutsm in utah they planned and executed a fun poker game at our last get together....their idea worked real well

What the heck, we helped with the first. I am sure that I can talk Rhonda into helping with anyothers. Sorry, I haven't been around caching much lately but the Dive team has kept me VERY busy lately. But, we are back into the swing of things. I can't believe that there are all these caches in KC now..... I have to get busy. Ryan and Rhonda

Never mind protecting the park land. Protect your own butt. Ms. Keener says that Rangers have an "obligation" to "accost" people who don't play by the rules, although she doesn't know what the rules are. So hide your caches in local parks, where Rangers feel an obligation to *talk* to people instead of to accost them. ------------------ Chip the Big Folk

Yeah, I e-mailed Buxley and asked him to consider making a detail map... and it was done within 12 hours. Talk about service! Thanks, Ed!

Check the media page for the 702 interview: The Computer Show is presented by Malcolm Russell every Saturday afternoon at 1:00pm on 702 Talk Radio and 567MW Cape Talk. Interview with Prof Charles Merry (UCT), 11 August 2001, duration 7:12. ------------------ Peter Scholtz www.biometrics.co.za