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I recieved the serial cable for my new etrex today, but am having some problems with getting the PC and GPSr to talk to each other. If the etrex is in NMEA Out mode, I can connect to the COM port using hyperterminal and see data coming in. I can also use NMEA to track my position in GPSU. The problem occurs when I want to transfer waypoints etc., as in 'GARMIN' mode I recieve errors from each program I try saying 'Timed out' or 'No data recieved'. Any advice on what to try would be appreciated, and I'm running windows XP.

Not a naive assumption, but, yes, I did take for granted that you hadn't talked to the COs because if you already had reactions from the COs, I would expected you to present those in order to make that the topic. The responses you've now told us about are the real problem that we can talk about solving. It's far less productive to start with the unsupported claim that the NM attribute is useless because you don't think it's being used correctly. But, I see, this way you got to call someone innocently trying to help you with your problem "naive", so that's always fun.

I am glad our countless hours of research through logs and plethora of photos mean nothing to HQ and zero attempts are being made to keep our data available in an archived format. All this community talk is nothing but lip service to the corporate machine and bottom line.

If this is based truly on non use (vs cost cutting which I believe it is) then get rid of other things in geocaching that get little use such as caches that require special equipment such as Wherigo or project APE caches. You guys talk out both sides of your mouth!

Looks to me that the proposed category is very similar to the elongated coins category (aka Penny Smashers) in the aspect of an automaton creating/selling a touristic token. T0SHEA told me (not a week ago) that we should strive for inclusion if we have similarities to another category. So you should have a talk to the category leaders / officers first if they are willing to expand their category to accept these touristic tokens also.

Hello everyone! Here is a great place to post that you want your score updated, talk about high scoring caches, ask questions, etc. Have fun with the game, and check out the rest of my "Let the Games Begin!" series caches! GeoEskimo

Yeah, I agree with you about that. That's one one the reasons I didn't seriously think he was interested in newbies: he was just using them as an easy way to talk about the perceived unfairness of challenges that allow history even though the newbies themselves wouldn't notice it.

Regarding that we can also have a fourth option : 3a. Wayfrog promotes some other officer (perhaps the active one) and I have to talk again to the new leader. Or we could make it completely different and create a single category for each of the seven remaining countries (but for that option I would like to have a poll with at least two-thirds majority in favor for the split) ... Or something else that the community wants - just say it here. (This may include the (in my eyes really bad) idea to not have any new categories any more - but I think that should require a full approval with at least 95% of all waymarkers in favor ... And then we should close this recruiting part of the forum ... ).

Hey guy im a neww joiner so i lam unsure on what to talk about thanx guys for the help APAANDSUNLOOKINGFORFUN

According to this trip report, the road to the Boulder River Trail is washed out. Adds a mile to the hike, and parking is limited.

How ironic that I would be on here Monday and Tuesday reading about folks strange adventures while caching. Only to have one happen to us last night. For more details go here and check out my log: Bopp Playground Let's just say this made for an interesting caching adventure.

Better plan! Open enrollment is ON. Join, talk with our Wayfroggie about becoming leader. Throw out the deadwood. Invite some active Scandinavians to the group (there are a few here). Have one of them take it over, as a Scandinavian is a better choice as leader than a Canadian. Keith

Hi, I was just wondering what a few things meant when someone logged that they visited my cache. It was "FTF" and "TNLN" i was just wondering if they were abreviations like ASAP or something that i didnt know the meaning of. Thanks.

Noble Knobs that is! Just a shameless plug for my new cache placement.

Since my response is to the moderators of the site and Groundspeak et al., I will post this here weeks after the main discussion has passed. Like all of my logs, this is mostly just a rant. I... support the decision! The sport/game/hobby of geocaching has existed for so long, its long term survival outweighs what some users think about the more antiquated elements of it. I would argue benchmarking is not a priority for many users, only partially because Groundspeak has relegated it to obscurity on the website for years. Beginners, who are important customers to expand the product, don't seem to be flocking toward benchmarks. My area has been dominated by loop-holers focused more on statistics than unique hunts and only seem to log benchmarks when they can get a challenge cache out of it. The 0.13% statistic that was paraded around is probably an understatement, but I do not see the logic of paying to support something so little of the general population cares about. A majority of my gripes are not with Groundspeak's decision but the rotten system of global capitalism and the myth of unlimited business growth. Low interest, sadly, equals low profitability and thus elimination. The archivist aspect is the main element that is tragic in all this, for me. But this is a symptom of the internet at large- huge portions of the web are just being lost to the wind and almost no one seems to care. Geocaching has now outlasted web 1.0, 2.0 and if the impending demise of twitter is any indication, 3.0 as well. One of its most valuable elements then are the logs from a pre-cell phone age. There are inactive users who commented on benchmarks and their logs will be lost forever. That sucks. While scraping page by page through The Internet Archive is a great idea, it's not practical. I'll try anyway. It's not a defense of the decision, but reality. Burying the lede here, but Benchmarking is/was one my favorite elements of Geocaching. I think it is profoundly interesting from a historical aspect, and many of my most memorable experiences with caching overall have been hunting remote benchmarks. I was annoyed with how old the datasheet was and just how many of the marks were actually destroyed. Especially living in an urban area, where mindless sprawl and that myth of unlimited growth have destroyed many of these disks. But the ones I did find were fun, even if it was impossible to combine that experience into any sort of phone application. Of the 84 I found so far, 56 (66%) have been radio/water towers, cupolas, domes, flagpoles, or just tall buildings. These are a majority of the benchmarks I've noticed other users have logged. Which is logical- they are the most easily accessible. But I would also argue, not entirely worth it. For those above me who complain about lamp post hides, these categories of benchmarking are very much in the same vein. I do not want to gatekeep against either as that would be hypocritical. I strive to give my logs as much depth and information as possible, but it's pretty obvious that a State Capitol dome is "in good shape". Which leaves the other 32 (34%) of my finds- bench mark discs themselves. This is what I'll- and others here- will truly miss. I think that the amount of marks logged as missing or never logged at all are vast. That sort of eliminates the ease of accessibility. Of those 32 disks, a third of them have been found less than five times. I am the most recent finder on all of those for the past eighteen months. I was happy to recognize one of those other finders in these comments, and empathize with their disappointment, but this doesn't eliminate benchmarking. It just pushes it to a much less popular website. This is by no means the end of my benchmarking. It's just the end of me keeping track of my benchmarking online- my disapointments with Waymarking are a separate rant entirely. Talk all you want about how the best things in life are worth the challenge, but from a business model perspective it's not marketable. Which goes back to my hatred of the "game" (capitalism) not the "player" (Groundspeak) trying to promote and protect Geocaching. So in summary, while I love benchmarking, I can understand why Groundspeak would phase it out. Because it's a niche, mostly unrelated element to geocaching at large.

Okay, I'm kind of new to this, I was introduced to it a while back ('03) but LIFE occupied most of my time, so I'm just now starting to put some equipment together and have some issues. I'm using MapSource 4.09, GSAK 5.5.1, and a borrowed eTrex Legend. 1. I've DL'd waypoints from gc.com into GSAK now how do I get them over to MapSource (or the GPSr)? 2. I also have waypoints loaded in the GPSr, how do I DL those into MapSource or GSAK? In GSAK when I go to 'GPS>Receive Waypoints>Yes' it gives me "Error sending waypoints: GARMIN: Can't init COM3". MapSource seems to read the GPS from COM3 with no problem but I don't see how to load waypoints from GPSr into MapSource at all! I'm leaving for vacation on Sunday and would love to have this up and running for the trip up as well as doing some caching while in N. Georgia. Thanks, Randy

I have an interesting plan for a new hide. I need to incorporate some sort of plaque into the cache placement. Is there any body out there that would have some sort of idea on how to create one? I have considered getting small peices of marble and trying to use a dremel / rotary tool to engrave it,... this however could become expensive very quickly as I don't even have a dremel. The plaque would need to fit the following critera in the end. - Nice finish, or the ability to hold paint to apply finish - Longevity in the outdoors, aging is no problem but I don't want it to be destroyed by moisture or cold (may rule out clay, don't know) - Not easily cracked or chipped - Somewhere around 4 inch diamter, or 4 x 4 square.... not set on these dimensions but would like it to be near that size. Cannot be made of cement as the place it will be mounted that we are creating is made out of that and it would not look all that thrilling. Ideas anyone?

Three months is the bare minimum. I've had caches that were hidden for less, but it was not because I planned it - it was because they weren't viable for some reason and didn't work out. I have moved every couple years since starting, so each time I got to a new area, I knew roughly when the expiration date of my caches would be. I had a few in Oklahoma that I put out intending for them to be there for a year, and then we ended up moving six months early, so they were only there for five months. Other than that, looking through our hides, the shortest we planned to have some out was for about nine months. I'd say get 'em up now. If you end up moving next summer, take the ideas that worked and hide them in your new locale. I have returned to some hide styles (and some puzzles) over the years because they work, and because the locals don't necessarily know how to solve them in the new area. The important thing is to plan for your move. Don't wait until the last minute to try to adopt them out. Either talk to someone ahead of time about potentially adopting the listings from you, or plan to pick them up and archive them. Don't just leave them behind without a plan. All caches need maintaining, and moving without a plan just dumps the problem on the local cachers (and reviewers) you're leaving behind.

I was heading out with a friend today. Just after we put the first cache away, a Forest Service truck drove up. We ended up talking to this 24-year veteran of the Forest Service for more than an hour. She had never heard about Geocaching. She actually found a cache one time (DeCon container), but it did not have a log inside it, or any other information about it being a Geocache (only a whistle and one other thing), so it ended up in the trash. As we explained Geocaching, she was very open to the sport and thought her own children would like it. However, one thing that surprised me was when she said that even with a big label on a cache container, it wouldn't have meant anything. In this area they have to contend with a lot of trash left by illegal aliens, so without knowing about the game, even a well-marked ammo can might have ended up in the back of the truck to be tossed out. Does it surprise you that someone who works for the Forest Service has never heard about Geocaching? How would you proceed so the local Forest Service personnel become aware of our sport?

http://www.skype.com/ i find this good free inter net phone my user is craigmawdesley

Thanks both for the responses. I guess what I was trying to get at is not so much the theme of the cache as the physical nature of it. As a kind of anti-example, we don't really have LPCs in Australia but I found one that I understand was very typical when I visited California a few years ago. It was under the skirt of a lamp-post on it's concrete pillar about 3 feet off the ground, in the middle of a carpark. I can imagine that caches like that are convenient for people with limited mobility because you can get right up close to it whether you do that in a car, a chair or on foot. I can also imagine that, even if they all had great reasons to bring you to carparks, the same thing over and over would be boring. So my curiosity is more about how you might make the hide itself both accessible and interesting (perhaps uniquely so) to someone who, for example, is in a wheelchair or has low vision. And yes, I'm well aware that every person's disability is different. I used to do education talks with someone who uses a wheelchair. She can walk a decent distance but it can be slow and tiring so she largely keeps to the chair. However, she quite enjoyed wheeling into a classroom and doing the talk, then finding an appropriate excuse to stand up and surprise the kids. We weren't there to educate on disability and inclusion but I think she taught a lot of kids a good lesson doing that.

If you were a muggle (I know it may be hard to think in these terms), and your friend, who happened to be a geocacher, decided to teach you the game, what would you think? Not knowing what you know today, would you believe him to be crazy; would you regard him as an inspiration; would you disregard him?

I purchased a number of such apps. Every one of them self-destructed. As a dev myself, though, I'm somewhat sympathetic to their problem. There are a few problems that inherently makes the geocaching app market work poorly. I think it's gotten better for low-volume apps, but the OS provider (Apple, Google) gets a third of that right off the top. Now that's a fixed COGS and was hopefully built into the price model, but the dev now gets $6.50. The twist is that geocaching apps are something a user may stare at intently two days a week instead of, say, a joke-telling app that's used a few times and discarded or even something as specialized as a map converter that you only need a few times a year. Geocaching apps are just not typical App store apps: Geocaching apps are a small market. A successful app may have hundreds of installs and a really successful one may break into the thousands. So maybe that app maker made $10K. Maybe. (Download count is not the same as purchased user account...) It's a demanding market. Look at the endless raging controversy over 3 vs. 4 digits after the decimal point on some Garmin firmware. If your app works differently than the user expects, you're going to get an earful. Maybe you built - and sold as such - a bare-bones "follow the arrow" navigation app. You're going to get one star reviews because the app doesn't have native puzzle-solving abilities, such as decoding caesar ciphers on the device. That actually has nothing to do with geocaching, but there's an expectation that it's there. Maybe your app doesn't think it should be involved in travel bugs (and you made no promises about travel bugs in the app listing) but someone will say their life is ruined if your app can't automatically dip travel bugs with a log that auto increments, includes the timestamp, and reports "3/14 for the day", for each log. Oh, and it needs to handle the day ending when they went to bed, not at midnight because they were caching after dark. It's a moving target. Groundspeak was disrespectful of developer investment in their API and at least twice has restructured the way applications had to communicate with the server in an incompatible way. Not a minor, annoying, "let's change the spelling" way, but a major "rewrite the bottom half of the app" way. Multiple times. Cache types and log types and maximum API calls per hour and other things change (or at least did - I've quit following it) regularly. It's a localized target. Geocachers are worldwide. You'll need SI and Imperial. You'll need to know that altitude may be in feet, but ground distance may be in meters. You'll need at least most of the Romance languages supported. Individually these are trivial, but it's a lot of _stuff_ to keep track of and to exercise all the combinations. It's a changing target. Even within a given API level, Cache and log types come and go. Security rules around logins change. OSes change version and deprecate some service that you were using. There are new event types to handle. You'll need to build and test on phone and tablet, probably on real hardware and not the emulator because geocaching is a physical thing and it's hard to simulate the experience in the field. You'll need to handle all the new devices coming on as well as all the old devices that ever worked because someone will have a phone identical to yours, but is on a carrier that's withholding the OS upgrade so your "identical" phones offer two different sets of features to develop, test, and support. It's a demanding target. You don't control the schedule when any of this happens. OS updates get pushed and you're either on the train or your app quits working. Groundspeak changes the login process - again - and all your users are locked out. The solution space is small. You're never going to get VC funding to get an iOS dev, an android dev, a support person, a testing person, some equipment, etc. This is always doomed to be a one person operation (Every open-source attempt into this space I've seen has usually been a single-person show, perhaps after a brief flurry of introductory activity) and it's not like it's even going to be big enough money to be a full time job with insurance, etc. It's big enough to be painful (to do it well) but not big enough to actually hang a business around. Even Garmin made a run into the "geocaching" app space and eventually quietly withdrew. Not unique to geocaching is the split of the market. While there are frameworks that help you move your app between iOS and Android, they don't really cover things like the compass and the GPS and battery issues that are all crucial in a geocaching app, but less so in others. If you're a serious dev out to capture serious market share, you can then count on basically building,, testing, and marketing your app twice: Once in Swift and once in Kotlin. (And ten years ago, neither of those languages existed, so you've probably replaced the original Java and Objective C++ versions....) So now you're fighting for relevance in two markets, on two different fronts. I just looked at the android app store at the top paid apps from indy devs: #1 $5 - Sync for Reddit actually shares some of these problems. However, there are 430 million monthly Reddit users. The market is actually large enough to bring non-trivial income. Yay for them. Only they also just added monthly subscription fees ON TOP OF the base app price. This didn't go over well. #2 $3 calendar app. 1M users. (Hint: you're never going to get 1M geocaching app users) The target market is people that need a calendar. Not sure it competes on ongoing maintenance, though. #3 $1.39 watch faces. A watch face app is probably a weekend project. Build it once and you're done. 10K users. #4 $4. An application to talk to ghosts. Seems unlikely to have much tech support demand or changes from ghosts going on strike. So all of these are apps with a WAY larger potential user base and either less ongoing required dev/maintenance/support costs, or an additional monthly subscription fee to cover that. Yet, if you build an app for $10 (the same app for $2 would drive you insane with looky-loos demanding support) users basically expect the app to keep working forever, but without an economy around it that supports this. Build a $2 fart app where the market is anyone that was ever eight years old and people will forget about the app in a week and you never hear from them again. A watch face app may get a cease and desist from Rolex about using their artwork (and that could be detrimental if executed, but you're out a weekend of development) but you'll notice that other app types in the industry don't have this whole large ecosystem that they have to live in, but can't control. Mobile apps blew out the pricing of software. People now associate app prices with that $2 fart app, a $4 flashlight app, or the $1.39 watch face (honestly, I think the market for that kind of junkware has kind of blown over, but it still cratered consumer expectation of paying for software) and if you ask them to pay $50 for a specialized mapping program or some other market-specific tool, it's like you're a baby-killer. Yes, I was there for the wailing every time Clyde rolled out a paid upgrade to GSAK...and watched him put up with users going to great lengths to avoid paying for those upgrades, but still taking up his time. This isn't the article I was looking for, but it cites a lot of related articles that touch on these topics. See https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167811619300473 So, yeah. A failed $10 geocaching app is just par for this course. Sorry. If I need credentials, I've been developing geocaching-related tools off and on since 2001. I've built at least two Android apps and one cross-platform GSAK-like app for cross-platform to prototype stage. I have geocaching-specific code in GSAK and in Google Earth (drag and drop a PQ into Google Earth Pro. Thats me.). I've studied this market and I've thought about it a LOT. Concluding advice: develop geocaching apps to scratch your own itch or do it for fun, but there's no money in it.

Nun, bis auf die Möglichkeit, mit dem Händi auch mal OHNE Vorbereitung loszuziehen und ein paar Tradis am Wege abzugreifen - gerne auch mal anlässlich eines Muggelausflugs, wo man sich erst im Auto klar wird, wo es überhaupt hingeht (Elsass, Schwarzwald, Kraichgau, Pfalz...) - mach ich das heute noch so. Auch mit demselben Gerät. Und ehrlich gesagt - ich finde die Behauptung, anders wäre einfacher, Ergebnis einer Art Hirnwäsche. Jede "Abkürzung" oder jedes "bequemer gehen" bedeutet erstmal mehr Aufwand in Form von Equipement, Proggies, Einarbeiten. In zum Teil völlig abstruse Gedankenwelten, die an Umständlichkeit oder der Problematik, dass genau DAS am umständlichsten ist, was am greifbarsten als Grundfunktion benötigt wird, nicht geizen. Dem, dem das quasi körperliche Schmerzen bereitet, der wird das so weit es geht meiden wollen Das alles mag ab "stufe 7" einen Sinn geben - aber die Stufe 7 ist die Ebene, in der man anfängt, alles zu nutzen, was als Ergebnis von ganz viel vorheriger Umständlichkeit erzeugt wurde. Die Ernte eines vorherigen Aufwands. Neolithische Revolution, sozusagen. Dem User, der als Ergebnis auf Stufe 3 stehenbleibt, ist das alles ein grosser, unnötiger Rucksack. Und die Diskussionen um deren Genzen für BMs - ich bin von der GC-Vergrämungstaktik nicht begeistert, aber eine Beschränkung für ne App ist doch keine Beschränkung, solange die andere komfortablere Möglichkeit noch funktioniert. Mittlerweile hat man den Eindruck, es existiert nichts, wo es keine App dafür gibt. Aber selbst die ist auch unterhalb einer gewissen Nutzungshäufigkeit resp. - frequenz - völlig unnötig. Unnötig, aufwendig, umständlich, umweltfeindlich Was ist einfacher, als auf der Karte gucken, was da iiegt, wo man hinwill und dann per "send to GPS" bzw. leider nur noch per "gpx downloaden" die Koords aufs Gerät zu schieben, ne kleine Übersichtskatre auszudrucken, ein paar Hints drauf zu notieren und dann loszuziehen? 1 Cachetag, 6 Stunden unterwegs, Rüstzeit 15 Minuten - und zwar zuhause, aufm grossen Bildschirm, mit Talk Talk im Ohr und nem Glas Primitivo. Geht schlechter. Gruss in den wilden Süden Zappo

Please read my comment again. I'm not saying anything about PQs going away. I'm explicitly saying to migrate the PQ preview from the old buggy seek/nearest platform to the modern next.js search results. Knowing the mess that is the old seek/nearest code-base, I doubt it's that simple. I responded to similar claims here before: Yes it was working before when two ancient ca 2005 code bases were working together. Some of these issues are side-effects of trying to get a 2005 and a vastly different and advanced 2022 version to talk to each other. The best course of action would be to get two modern systems that are much more compatible to work together. That is the next step. For the present issue, while I understand your frustration, I offered you a clear workaround. If instead of continuing to have a productive conversation like we did up until this point , you'd rather point fingers and speak poorly about the people who are trying to help you, let me know and we can be done here. And to those who say "don't take it personal" - thanks, I'll stand up for my developers and QA engineers any day because I know how hard they work every day within the constraints of our systems.