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HQ can’t stop the User from logging your Listing(s) per se, but they can have a talk with them, and take the opportunity to refresh their memory on the Terms of Use that they agreed to when they established their account. Depending on how the conversation goes, more drastic measures can be put to use. Assuming they have have some sort of proof, HQ also has the ability to reinstate their log entry and lock it from further deletion.

No, i was beginning to think that existing saved tracks could not be reloaded as i could not find a way to do this either looking through the manual or going through the menus on the unit. But i think i got it figured out after i learned how to talk to the menus. HIGHLIGHT SAVED TRACK/ENTER... HIGHLIGHT OK/ENTER.

It would be an interesting twist to a multi if you could use existing caches though. Talk about potential confusion! I agree with the thoughts regarding the listing as a ? cache, based on what the OP has offered up as their potential plan.

Yes, it has been quiet. I can only speak for myself, but I think the sentiment is close to the same. Groundspeak speaks like they're eager to recognize the project, but their actions say the opposite. As far as I can tell, geocaches mentioning any of our work aren't supposed to be published. Over the years, I have gotten a few draft partnership agreements. The last few took nine months of waiting before getting some minor word changes. I finally wondered if Groundspeak even cared, so I went silent for more than a year to see if anyone would contact me. Nope. They do talk like they're excited to do something, but the action feels like one of apathy. So for me personally, I'm just exhausted. It has taken about a decade for my self-generated drive and energy to thin out. Short of a group of people miraculously appearing and supporting me, egging me on, I imagine it'll take a couple years for me to replenish all that motivation. Apathy does tend to be destructive towards your volunteer base. So, why do I care so much about Groundspeak's involvement? It's like this: the builders and players we have are the main things keeping Wherigo afloat. Pretty great, right? But those who want to thank you in their cache listings can't because the company your work is benefiting doesn't want your work to be mentioned. So is what you've done welcome or not? Should you continue putting effort into it? Why help when you don't know if it's appreciated? And you really want to innovate, but you can't because the site that lists the cartridges won't be able to compile any of the new things you want to add. You'd really need to control the compiler on the listing site in order to do anything fun, hence the Wherigo Foundation's listing service. So the Wherigo Foundation site was created so we can have our own compiler so we have the ability to innovate. However, the site would need to become the de facto listing service so the new stuff can compile. And that's where the wall was hit. The reviewer rule as stated to me is caches aren't going to be published if they're listed on anything but the official listing service. If it doesn't look like Groundspeak is going to allow it, how can you justify spending a lot of time working on something that might not see the light of day? I've considered making major updates to the Wherigo Foundation site and Kit, but that's going to take several hundred hours of my life (the site, API, Invaders, spec improvements, streaming service, multiplayer, owner HUD: the project would take several years of my time when what we need would be a team of people, plus an eager community to keep everyone's motivation high). For the Wherigo Foundation site, that just feels like a losing gamble, creating something that can't be used. I've considered giving it one last hurrah, with the intent of a hostile takeover. But if Groundspeak could legally force me to take down something I create (or have their reviewers refuse to publish caches), and if I manage to create something people would want to use regardless of that, I fear that situation might cause the destruction of the very thing I meant to save. Or perhaps I'm just overstating everyone's importance and Wherigo would have gone along all right without us. You never can tell.

+me and countless others !!! +me too!!! Seriously, does Groundspeak (or whoever the shadowy characters are behind the scenes) even acknowledge that this is a problem? Have they responded at all to the complaints? I haven't seen anything but stone cold silence....no change to make the search results more readable, no change to the ridiculous 30 mile limit, not even a link on the search page to a list of instructions on how to use the darn thing, nothing! At the very least, they could simply leave a link up to the old search. + us and most of the local (Hawaii) cachers who never come to the forums... I used to have an old car. I had a mechanic who was reliable, I could call him up and talk to him (or his one assistant) on the phone. He'd help me decide if I needed to bring the car in right away or not... When he was done he'd show me the hole in the hose, or the old worn out parts and ask if I wanted them back. He always believed there was something wrong it I told him the engine was making a funny noise or the brakes were squeaking too much. Now I have new car, it's fancy enough to come with "free" routine maintenance, for which I have to return to the dealer. I don't talk to a mechanic (or anyone who works on cars). I have a "service advisor" who never answers the phone. I get to play phone tag with someone who doesn't know much about me or my car. After the visit, the service advisor seems most concerned about the ratings I will give on the survey I'm going to get in an email. I miss the mechanic. I am beginning to think Groundspeak has gone the way of the car dealer... It seems no one who works on the code or designs the site has been here to tell us why they messed with our perfectly usable search engine & why we can't keep it. jrr

Hello all, Success! I have come up with 2 methods to load individual caches onto older Garmin GPS's Note: I have edited Method 2 since my original post after JimJinks pointed me to a utility that will convert a batch file to an executable .exe file. I left a posting on the original Release Notes thread a while ago where I explained how this change affected my parents and their ability to selectively load caches in their older GPSMap 60 series GPS s. The post is here: Over the last few months I have been loading their GPS s with GSAK for them but I have been meaning to get back to this issue to see if there was a solution that would allow them to regain the ability to load a cache, one at a time. This weekend I knuckled down and came up with two methods depending on your version of Windows. Method 1 with EasyGPS you can do it in 5 clicks per cache Method 2 and GPSBabel (using a slight variation of above technique) you can load a cache in 2 clicks! I use Windows 10 at home and worked out the first system but could only get it down to 5 mouse clicks. I went to my parents who use Windows 7 but could not get the first method to work on their machine. I tried variations of the batch file technique from @JimJinks and got it to work and it is more streamlined than any version I have seen so far. Method 1, Windows 7, 8, or 10 and EasyGPS program Do once to set it up: Install the Free version of EasyGPS. Download it here https://www.easygps.com/download.asp Run the downloaded installer program to install the application. Follow the prompts and use the default location for installation. Run the EasyGPS program and under the "Edit" window choose "Preferences" and Add your GPS Make and model so it knows how to talk to it. This will also associate GPX files with the EasyGPS program To load caches with the GPS connected and turned on : On the cache page click on “Download GPX” near the top of the page below the coordinates, or from the pop up window on the map page when you click on a cache. Make sure “Open with” is selected and EasyGPS is next to it. Click on “OK” When the EasyGPS program opens: Click “Send” button near the top of window Click "OK" on Send to GPS popup window Click the “X” in the top Right corner of the EasyGPS window to close it. Go to the next cache and repeat Method 2, Windows 7, 8, or 10 and GPSBabel program. Do once to set it up. It seems like a lot but it is a detailed step by step and only needs to be done once: Install free GPSbabel program. Download it from here: https://www.gpsbabel.org/download.html Run the downloaded installer program to install the application. Follow the prompts and use the default location for installation. Create a batch file in a folder on your computer. Here is the step by step: Note a click on something uses the normal Left button on the mouse and Right click uses the other button on the right side, that you usually don't use. I have put a copy of this batch file on my Google drive and the link below will allow you to download it. You can preview it to see what it contains. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_unRSYD9cDiOSxSQbBCqM5Pux63mzNBY/view?usp=sharing The above section with the line through it will only work on Windows 7. A better solution now is this next section which will work with all versions of Windows. I created a tiny program called SendToGarmin.exe which replicates the actions of the batch file JimJinks created. You can actually put it anywhere on your hard drive. My instructions below specify a new folder step by step. Feel free to put it somewhere else if you are comfortable with Windows. Here is a link to it. https://drive.google.com/file/d/19xkd_wXWTD7F59XFF9C7lVwucF4ZF8-h/view?usp=sharing Right click on the line above and select "Open in new tab" on the popup window. Go to that tab and choose "Download" to save it to your computer. When prompted click on "Save File" In the new window where it prompts you where to put it, scroll up or down on the left pane of the window to find your the "C Drive" and select it by clicking on it. Click on the "New folder" button near the top of the window. Type LoadGPS to name it and press the Enter key to name it. Double click in this new LoadGPS folder to open it. Click the "Save" button to save it there. This is what is in the batch file / executable: If you or someone you know wants to, you can create your own batch file by copying these commands into a text file and renaming it to a bat file. It is essentially the same as the command in the top post except I removed the quotes around %1 in the first line and added a second line to delete the downloaded GPX file after it gets sent to your GPS. "c:\Program Files (x86)\GPSBabel\gpsbabel.exe" -i gpx -f %1 -o garmin -F usb: del %1 Setup continued... Click on the windows icon on the bottom Left corner of your monitor and type "internet" on the keyboard. It will pull up a list of programs and commands that start with Internet. Click on "Internet Options" under the heading Control Panel Click on the "Programs" Tab Click on the "Set Programs" button Click on the line "Associate a File Type or Protocol with a Program" Scroll down the list until your see ".gpx" on the left and click on that line to select it Click on the button on the top right called "Change Program" Click on the "Browse..." button to bring up a selection window In the box near the bottom next to File name type in C:/LoadGPS/Sendtogarmin.bat Or alternatively you can navigate to this file using the folder and file lists windows Click on the "Open" button to set the batch file as the program associated with gpx files Close the windows to get back to the desktop. You are done the one time setup! To load caches with the GPS connected and turned on : On the cache page click on “Download GPX” near the top of the page below the coordinates, or from the pop up window on the map page when you click on a cache A small window will appear at the bottom of the screen prompting you to open the gpx file. Click "Open" The file is converted and sent to the GPS by GPSBabel. That's it. 2 clicks! Method 1 is an easier setup but more steps to load each cache. Method 2 it is more complicated to set up but it is as easy to load as it was before. The only thing keeping Windows 10 from being able to use the second method is that you can not associate a file type to a batch file, as far as I can tell. Only .com and .exe files. If someone can find a way it would allow you to use the second method. We have to use a batch file to allow us to pass command line arguments to GPSBabel. I tried to use a shortcut to the program and add the arguments to it's properties but that did not work. Fixed now that I created an exe file. The first method would work better if repeated downloads of .gpx files would load into an already open instance of EasyGPS. You could download a bunch and send them all to the GPS at once. Unfortunately each time you download a .gpx it opens a new copy of EasyGPS with that single cache in it. You have to send the cache to the GPS and close each window. If anyone finds a better method or a tweak for one of these please let me know or comment in this thread. If you need more details for some of these steps, I or others on the forums will be glad to help. Thanks @JimJinksfor the batch file. My Mother is very happy that she has the ability to load caches again like she used to. Lee Go Play Outside

Hello all, Success! I have come up with 2 methods to load individual caches onto older Garmin GPS's Note I have edited Method 2 since my original post after JimJinks pointed me to a utility that will convert a batch file to an executable .exe file. I left a posting on the original Release Notes thread a while ago where I explained how this change affected my parents and their ability to selectively load caches in their older GPSMap 60 series GPS s. The post is here: Over the last few months I have been loading their GPS s with GSAK for them but I have been meaning to get back to this issue to see if there was a solution that would allow them to regain the ability to load a cache, one at a time. This weekend I knuckled down and came up with two methods depending on your version of Windows. Method 1 with EasyGPS you can do it in 5 clicks per cache Method 2 and GPSBabel (using a slight variation of above technique) you can load a cache in 2 clicks! I use Windows 10 at home and worked out the first system but could only get it down to 5 mouse clicks. I went to my parents who use Windows 7 but could not get the first method to work on their machine. I tried variations of the batch file technique from @JimJinks as posted by @kunarion above and got it to work and it is more streamlined than any version I have seen so far. Method 1, Windows 7, 8 or, 10 and EasyGPS program Do once to set it up: Install the Free version of EasyGPS. Download it here https://www.easygps.com/download.asp Run the downloaded installer program to install the application. Follow the prompts and use the default location for installation. Run the EasyGPS program and under the "Edit" window choose "Preferences" and Add your GPS Make and model so it knows how to talk to it. This will also associate GPX files with the EasyGPS program To load caches with the GPS connected and turned on : On the cache page click on “Download GPX” near the top of the page below the coordinates, or from the pop up window on the map page when you click on a cache. Make sure “Open with” is selected and EasyGPS is next to it. Click on “OK” When the EasyGPS program opens: Click “Send” button near the top of window Click "OK" on Send to GPS popup window Click the “X” in the top Right corner of the EasyGPS window to close it. Go to the next cache and repeat Method 2, Windows 7, 8, or 10 and GPSBabel program. Do once to set it up. It seems like a lot but it is a detailed step by step and only needs to be done once: Install free GPSbabel program. Download it from here: https://www.gpsbabel.org/download.html Run the downloaded installer program to install the application. Follow the prompts and use the default location for installation. Create a batch file in a folder on your computer. Here is the step by step: Note a click on something uses the normal Left button on the mouse and Right click uses the other button on the right side, that you usually don't use. I have put a copy of this batch file on my Google drive and the link below will allow you to download it. You can preview it to see what it contains. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_unRSYD9cDiOSxSQbBCqM5Pux63mzNBY/view?usp=sharing The above section with the line through it will only work on Windows 7. A better solution now is this next section which will work with all versions of Windows. I created a tiny program called SendToGarmin.exe which replicates the actions of the batch file JimJinks created. You can actually put it anywhere on your hard drive. My instructions below specify a new folder step by step. Feel free to put it somewhere else if you are comfortable with Windows. Here is a link to it. https://drive.google.com/file/d/19xkd_wXWTD7F59XFF9C7lVwucF4ZF8-h/view?usp=sharing Right click on the line above and select "Open in new tab" on the popup window. Go to that tab and choose "Download" to save it to your computer. When prompted click on "Save File" In the new window where it prompts you where to put it, scroll up or down on the left pane of the window to find your the "C Drive" and select it by clicking on it. Click on the "New folder" button near the top of the window. Type LoadGPS to name it and press the Enter key to name it. Double click in this new LoadGPS folder to open it. Click the "Save" button to save it there. This is what is in the batch file: If you or someone you know wants to, you can create your own batch file by copying these commands into a text file and renaming it to a bat file. It is essentially the same as the command in the top post except I removed the quotes around %1 in the first line and added a second line to delete the downloaded GPX file after it gets sent to your GPS. "c:\Program Files (x86)\GPSBabel\gpsbabel.exe" -i gpx -f %1 -o garmin -F usb: del %1 Click on the windows icon on the bottom Left corner of your monitor and type "internet" on the keyboard. It will pull up a list of programs and commands that start with Internet. Click on "Internet Options" under the heading Control Panel Click on the "Programs" Tab Click on the "Set Programs" button Click on the line "Associate a File Type or Protocol with a Program" Scroll down the list until your see ".gpx" on the left and click on that line to select it Click on the button on the top right called "Change Program" Click on the "Browse..." button to bring up a selection window In the box near the bottom next to File name type in C:/LoadGPS/Sendtogarmin.bat Or alternatively you can navigate to this file using the folder and file lists windows Click on the "Open" button to set the batch file as the program associated with gpx files Close the windows to get back to the desktop. You are done the one time setup! To load caches with the GPS connected and turned on : On the cache page click on “Download GPX” near the top of the page below the coordinates, or from the pop up window on the map page when you click on a cache A small window will appear at the bottom of the screen prompting you to open the gpx file. Click "Open" The file is converted and sent to the GPS by GPSBabel. That's it. 2 clicks! Method 1 is an easier setup but more steps to load each cache. Method 2 it is more complicated to set up but it is as easy to load as it was before. The only thing keeping Windows 10 from being able to use the second method is that you can not associate a file type to a batch file, as far as I can tell. Only .com and .exe files. If someone can find a way it would allow you to use the second method. We have to use a batch file to allow us to pass command line arguments to GPSBabel. I tried to use a shortcut to the program and add the arguments to it's properties but that did not work. Fixed now that I created an exe file. The first method would work better if repeated downloads of .gpx files would load into an already open instance of EasyGPS. You could download a bunch and send them all to the GPS at once. Unfortunately each time you download a .gpx it opens a new copy of EasyGPS with that single cache in it. You have to send the cache to the GPS and close each window. If anyone finds a better method or a tweak for one of these please let me know or comment in this thread. If you need more details for some of these steps I or others on the forums will be glad to help. Thanks @JimJinksfor the batch file and @kunarion for starting this thread, contributing to the other ones and working toward a solution. My Mother is very happy that she has the ability to load caches again like she used to. Lee Go Play Outside

When I first started caching, I did not make myself really familiar with the rules before starting out. I thought the talk of buried treasures would be fun and exciting, boy was I wrong. Get to my very first GZ, could not find anything, so back to the truck, grab my shovel and I start digging (not knowing any better) Ended up digging up human remains... Called police..bla..bla..bla... Long story short, I did DNF the cache and I'm no longer allowed back at that cemetery. LOL

Thank You Buka2. I got it and have replied. I found out that they use Straight Talk for the phone. So they have unlimited Talk, Text, and Data. So, the only road block is them being able to afford the phone that can geocache. Currently Straight Talk has two android phones that are GPS enabled. One is $149.99 and the other is $179.99. I think that would allow for paperless caching. In their current situation that may as well be a couple million. LOL! But, it is good knowing that the capability of the plan is there, they just need to save for the phone.

I just went to test my theory that that version 315 was stripping a space in the action names. I renamed my action "Talk to" on the first character to "Talk". I just went to play it and i still get "Talk nothing Available". So there is a more fundamental issue. I am not using proximity. I was in the middle of a large zone. My iphone was very stable. Not sure what the issue is but it really needs to be fixed. I also just received an answer from Groundspeak saying that they are working on the issue: Hello Arnaud, The developer of the app has been notified of this issue and is working on a fix. Please let us know if the problem is not resolved in a timely manner. Best Regards, Jon ("Moun10Bike") Community Relations Liaison to Engineering Groundspeak - The Language of Location Hopefully there will be a fix soon.

In the example above, you can avoid the upside-down labels by choosing to stay with north-up display. (It's not landscape that triggers that.) Not perfect, but I live with it. On a tablet, you'll see much more map, and the clutter around the screen edges becomes much less noticeable. Oh, and the navigation will talk to you, and even work on trails.

So I was on my way home, from the biggest event to date in Colorado with 250+ attendies, the geochat,,, when i saw something florescent yellow swerve in front of me,,, I thought of you guys here and gracefully took the phone from the door of the car and had to press 1 button to snap a photo,,(i have it set up that way for a quick photo if something happends while im driving(other then that i dont talk on the phone while driving) also the only coin i took to drop at the event was a look twice coin- its nice to be apart of the project. i was susposto drop it,, but never had the chance to,,talk talk talk ..lol

Hi guys, I'm doing a talk this Friday at Amsterdam Nerd Nite on geocaching, and did the run through yesterday with the organizers. Should be a fun talk! But they had an idea that on the last slide for the Q&A session I put a picture of a treasure chest or similar as lots of people go for the "treasure" angle when first hearing about it (even tho obv that's not why people stay). So I thought it would be more fun to put a picture of a geocache that is modeled like a treasure chest. I mean, surely this exists somewhere, but Google doesn't give me too many cache-specific ones. Anyone know of one? Thanks!

I'm pretty sure attendees will forgive you if you're late by just a couple minutes, especially if some of them are with you while hiking up. If they can forgive you, you should be willing to forgive yourself for being a minute late. If you're an hour early, continue hiking 28 minutes in the opposite direction so you have a 28 minute hike back to the summit and therefore only have 4 extra minutes. You don't have to stay at the summit if the event hasn't started yet. Go explore and enjoy your time doing the thing you love to do until it's time to be at the posted coordinates. This talk about how hard it is for a heterogenous group to figure out how long it will take to get to the summit is purely for the sake of argument. It's really nice that you care that everyone gets to the event on time, but since you're an attendee (and not the host), the only person you should worry about is yourself and getting there on time. I'm pretty sure the rest of the attendees are thinking about how long it will take them to get to the summit and planning appropriately. It will take a heterogenous group a variety of times to walk 1 Km on a paved street. It could take 4-6 minutes if they walk at a REALLY fast pace, 7-10 if at a steady and quick pace, 10-15 at a leisurely pace, and even longer under other situations. The same goes for a hike to the summit. If you don't know your pace (which in your case I find hard to believe) and how long it will take you to get there, contact the host and start asking questions. Exactly how long is the hike (or close enough to get a good time frame)? What is the trail like? Rocky? Packed dirt? Animal trail? What sort of elevation changes? Slow and steady rises? Flat except at one stretch where it's really steep? Switchbacks to increase the length to lessen the elevation changes? Once you have as much information as you need, you post to the page and say I'm meeting at the trailhead at this time to start my hike because this is how long it will take me to get to the summit and still arrive slightly before the start of the event. Some will be faster hikers, some will be slower hikers, and some hikers will be near your pace. Those that are faster might slow down to talk with slower paced hikers and slower paced hikers would be well-served to allow some extra time, just in case.

Yes. Nice that the person joined just to tell you they "found" it . Did you actually talk to them, or are you simply relying on their log ? Curious, as "I found this by mistake but I’ll re hide with goodies inside I work for Durham county council and found whilst working today I’ll log it so it can be found again " sounds (to me) that maybe they may not really understand the hobby. - "Logging it" not what enables it to be found again, and instead needs to be returned to that same spot.

We'll discuss it with the CO of the ISS cache after you talk an astronaut into bringing the ISS cache back for you to sign, then go back up to the ISS to return it. If I were the CO, I'd be amused by you chutzpah...and your connections. But, to be more practical, I agree that there's a line: at some point, you aren't at GZ, so you can't be said to be using a tool to get the cache by sending someone else to bring it to you. The case we're talking about is where I'm in the same place whether I use a 20' grabber or send my son up the tree to get the cache for me. To me, there's no interesting difference.

My biggest peeve is throwdowns (why do the people after me get to log a find just because they replaced a container that may or may not have been missing?), but since this has been mentioned many times, I will talk about this guy in St. Louis who either takes the logs, or the containers themselves. He even notes it in his logs. "Easy find. Took log." People who come after note that the log is gone, and sometimes there's only DNFs after he logs an "Easy find." Granted, he's sort of new, so maybe he doesn't understand that you're not supposed to actually take the cache or log, but wow, it's annoying.

Then why do you want to socialize with them? Why not? There are many people I enjoy to talk to who are not my friends. Most of the geocachers I know I do not know well enough to make them eligible for being called friend. Yeah, it's hard to make friends when you can't stand in one spot for long enough to talk to someone.

I see at the top there is a link that says "talk Geocaching in:" listed by links to various states... but when I click on Indiana, it takes me to a new page that doesn't have a discussion forum. Is this expected? Or are there cache forums for state/region? Trying to reach out to the people in our area.

We have regional forums (you're in Midwest...), and they're very slow as it is. By state you'd hear crickets just leaving recordings of their chirping. - Last post before yours was September. Some regions see more... Definitely not faceboook, where most seem to talk today. If me, I'd click on your state in the regional forums, and look for an event nearby to attend (and ask there about local cache groups). I click on my state for events near me, and new caches that are outta my area for notifications.

Well, I'm happy to say that the new mapping experience finally works for me. Whatever the problem was, it was fixed with a Chrome update. I'm just going to add my 2¢, much of which has probably been discussed as long as this thread has become. 1. Let me start by saying Thank You (again) for making a more interactive map and search experience. I know back in the days of Opencaching, this was more of the format they had and it was quite efficient. This new map is getting there, but still needs some work. For those of us with older computers, the new map is quite resource heavy. I suspect with newer hardware, it'll run a bit smoother. But still something to consider. 2. Let's talk about aesthetics. There's a lot of unnecessary and wasted space in that side bar. Can we eliminate some of that padding, and maybe only display the cache name along with its small type symbol to display more caches in the list on a single page, letting the rest of the details become visible when clicking on a cache or its name. We don't all have large screens to work with. So let's minimize the amount of wasted space. 3. Auto-refreshing. I think this was initially part of the new map? At any rate, it's kind of a pain to have to click the refresh button on the map after zooming or moving the map. Maybe some users like it. Can we add automatic refreshing and make it an option that can be turned on or off by the user? 4. Raise the 500 cache limit. At least to the 1000 caches limit to make the search compatible with pocket queries and lists. 5. Pocket Queries and Lists. Next to the filters button, perhaps we need another button to let us select lists and PQs to view/preview on the map. Also, the old map had the option to use the map view as a start for a PQ. I think with the new map and the filters, we have the opportunity to make that feature even better. But first it needs to be brought to the new map. 6. Selectability. It's nice that we can bulk add the results to a list. But sometimes we just want to select specific caches and bulk add them to a list, as we did in the old search results page. Please bring this option back. 7. Old search results page. As great as the new map is, the old table format for search results had its benefits too. I think both formats complement each other, and both should be available for users to have at their disposal. 8. Direct download of search results. This is one of the features that made Opencaching great (of course, the rest of the site/service was terrible and unable to compete with geocaching.com). The results on the map/list could be downloaded in bulk as a single GPX file on the fly. I feel this should be one of the goals to accomplish here. Adding to a list is great, but directly exporting the search results to a file on the GPS would streamline the process.

FRS/GMRS Radios are, as the name implies, dual-band radios that can transmit on either the FRS (Family Radio Service) or GMRS (General Mobile Radio Service) bands. The European PMR radios transmit on yet another band, can have more power output and external antennas, but of course are not legal in the US. Generally the channels 1 through 15 are FRS and 16-22 are GMRS. FRS does not require an FCC license. GMRS requires a ridiculously expensive FCC license that practically no one buys. If you are old enough to remember what happened with CB licenses, same thing... it seems that the FCC learned nothing. Geocachers have chosen channel 2, an FRS channel, as the primary contact channel. What this means is that everyone monitors channel 2 and when a contact is made the participants move off to another channel to carry on the conversation. The FCC giveth and the FCC taketh away. They gave us civilian access to these bands and frequencies, then limited the type-accepted radio's power and antenna capability. Limited them so much, in fact, that if you can't hit who you are talking to with a rock then they probably can't hear you! The FRS band is limited to, I think, 3 watts and the built-in antenna. The GMRS band is limited to, I think, 5 watts and may have an external antenna. In radio it's all about the antenna, power isn't so important. Since geocachers have chosen channel 2 (FRS) as their contact channel (in order to avoid buying the GMRS license), and the built-in stubby antenna on FRS radios can't transmit or receive very well, don't expect a lot of contacts from anyone who can't actually see you. If you are properly licensed then once you make contact on channel 2 you can move to a GMRS channel and get a bit more distance. When it comes to radio specifications manufacturers lie. They do so by telling the truth in ways that you don't expect. An FRS/GMRS radio advertised to communicate 17 miles won't do it in your hands. It will do it, at night, under certain atmospheric conditions, from the upper levels between boats over salt water. Since it can do it, albeit under laboratory conditions, that's what the advertise, thereby lying to you by telling you the truth, just not the whole truth. The radio waves on both FRS and GMRS are line-of-sight. How many times can you see the person you want to talk to 17 miles away? Even 1 mile away? Rarely. If you can, if there's nothing between you, if there's no sun activity, and if atmospheric propagation is just right, you might can talk that far. Realistically... you can't. You can expect decent FRS/GMRS communications up to a maximum of one-half mile, and much less than that in an urban environment, reliably... there will be exceptions based on topography and atmospheric band conditions. {Someone will invariably reply to this "I regularly talk 7 miles on mine!" ... great... show me. You won't often do it even in Alabama's mild hills!} So, here's the interesting part... FCC type-accepted FRS/GMRS radios all have exactly the same capabilities! The $19. Cobra set from WalMart will work just as well as the $79 Motorola set from REI! The expensive sets usually have more whistles and bells, none of which you need, but they all transmit and receive under the same FCC limitations. Just read the specs for output power and if the radio transmits at 3 watts FRS and 5 watts GMRS then it's as capable as any other of its type on the market. CB Radio (11 meter) is a step up, allowing up to (I think) 7 watts and much more effective antennas, but very few geocachers have CBs, especially hand-helds. Amateur (ham) radio is another step up, with up to 100 watts output from a hand-held (Handi-Talkie), and very effective antennas with dozens if not hundreds of miles range, but extremely few geocachers use them. Where there is cell coverage, your best bet is cell phones (they are radios but without some of the limitations) and the PTT (Push-To-Talk) cell phones can be used just like a hand-held radio... in fact they are one, just with world-wide range! Where there is no cell coverage, any FRS/GMRS radio is about equal. Save your money. 73 de Ed W4AGA

Hi all, FYI, Emoji talk tread is also here, which I probably will post from now on, but not here. Forum link "Emojis in Cache Names" Thanks!

I've been happy with my old Etrex H, had to go shopping for drivers and cables when I moved up to Windows 8.1 but all good. Just had to move to Windows 10 and latest (7.whatever) version of EasyGPS, same issues, won't talk to my vintage GPS for upload/download. Anybody know if there are drivers and cables out there that will bring it back to life, as it is still working fine for my needs? Spare me the lectures, by the way, about "join the 21st century." I'm asking a simple question, as I'd like to stay with my current stuff until it dies, not for $$$ reasons, just because it gives me the enjoyment and challenge I want from our hobby. Does anybody know for a certainty that the Etrex H/EasyGPS 7.???/Windows 10 configuration can be made to work? If not I'm fine with spending a few bucks to upgrade, but I enjoy doing things the legacy way as long as I can.

I have already mentioned that we used to have events that were not bound to fixed coordinates for many years and people could find them and could use their GPS-receivers to do so. All went well and everyone who attended was happy. I have not been at an event where someone was chained to a chair either. I have attended however quite a number of events where moving around to get to talk to someone whom I wanted to talk to was almost impossible due to the crowdedness at typical indoor events in restaurants. I almost stopped to attend indoor events. I'm fully aware of the fact that there are typically more types of outdoor events in North America than in my area due to the infrastructure and the legal situation. In the very early years private gardens could be used, but these have become much too small for the exponential growth of geocaching. Hiking events have been a chance to offer an option targeted towards a particular audience for which the workaround approaches are rather ridiculous.