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Geocaching Fox Hunt - An Event With A Difference


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We haven't had a geocache fox hunt in the UK since 2003, and although the idea has always appealed, up until recently the hardware was lacking. Now things have changed...

 

For those who haven't seen the concept before, its quite simple. To take part you need a mobile phone, a car and your gps. You send a text message to the "fox" car and receive an automated reply giving its current co-ordinates, punch em into your gps and attempt to catch the fox!

 

My question is, now I have the necessary equipment to be the fox, if I were to arrange an event like this in the South East would people be interested in taking part? There would be a set game field which the fox would remain within and it would end up at a pub somewhere for well earned refreshments.

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We haven't had a geocache fox hunt in the UK since 2003, and although the idea has always appealed, up until recently the hardware was lacking. Now things have changed...

 

For those who haven't seen the concept before, its quite simple. To take part you need a mobile phone, a car and your gps. You send a text message to the "fox" car and receive an automated reply giving its current co-ordinates, punch em into your gps and attempt to catch the fox!

 

My question is, now I have the necessary equipment to be the fox, if I were to arrange an event like this in the South East would people be interested in taking part? There would be a set game field which the fox would remain within and it would end up at a pub somewhere for well earned refreshments.

 

Sounds intruiging... I'd like to know a little more about it first. I live in the SE and am interested. :)

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This appeals to me from a technical point of view. If it was me, I would err more on the side of WAP and GPRS rather than text messages because it would cost less over the day. Either way I can certainly help with the technology side.

 

You may be interested to know that in the past, if you sent a key word to a certain radio station’s SMS number then you would receive a message telling you where we were drinking.

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This appeals to me from a technical point of view. If it was me, I would err more on the side of WAP and GPRS rather than text messages because it would cost less over the day. Either way I can certainly help with the technology side.

 

You may be interested to know that in the past, if you sent a key word to a certain radio station’s SMS number then you would receive a message telling you where we were drinking.

 

You'd have to be seriously drunk if you need a radio station to tell you which pub you were drinking in :)

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This appeals to me from a technical point of view. If it was me, I would err more on the side of WAP and GPRS rather than text messages because it would cost less over the day. Either way I can certainly help with the technology side.

 

WAP/GPRS wouldn't be a very workable solution, SMS is easy for everyone to use and the software/hardware setup I have is configured to work via SMS.

 

The major expense on the day would be mine, participants would only have to text me, whereas I would have to reply to everyone. I am perfectly happy with this however as I would like to think that people would respect this and not request the position of the fox every 5 minutes or so. The idea is to try and second guess the fox and intercept it, rather than chase around madly in its wake...

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Sim cards with free text messaging are easily obtainable, dont know if there is any bar on the number you can send in a day though.

The only other drawback I can see is if the equipment to send the reply texts is locked to a particular phone company. You might have to buy a certain value in call credit to qualify but that may work cheaper than the cost of all the messages you send, eg 300 mesages at £0.05p is £15.00 if you can get normal text messages at that price.

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WAP/GPRS wouldn't be a very workable solution, SMS is easy for everyone to use and the software/hardware setup I have is configured to work via SMS.

 

The major expense on the day would be mine, participants would only have to text me, whereas I would have to reply to everyone. I am perfectly happy with this however as I would like to think that people would respect this and not request the position of the fox every 5 minutes or so. The idea is to try and second guess the fox and intercept it, rather than chase around madly in its wake...

Fare enough. I have a SIM where you get 600 SMS messages for a £10 top up if that is of any help (500 free and 100 for the £10). Perhaps send out the messages intermittently and not have the chaser request it, or is that defeating part of the challenge?
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sounds good idea, one thing that sprung to mind is that a few years ago if you ran a car treasure hunt you had to inform police if the numbers were over a certain figure. technically it becomes a rally i think. so you may need to put a cap on the number of entries! good luck! how about doing a biking version say in "the lookout" bracknell a greener version of a fox hunt!

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We ran the very first & the original Fox Hunt prior to the Cats Great UK Hunt.

We were thinking about running another one as we now have new equipment to play with again.

 

If theCryptic Souls Crew want to get in touch with us for any help/advice - we have run another Hunt which had a few problems - then please feel free to contact us.

 

Bob & Sarah x

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we'd be up for that! Sounds like fun! If we can do it in the summer, I may even be able to use the motorbike to my advantage!

Oooh. Don't think that's fair!

 

I'd be up for this.

 

Oss!

 

Nope, its not! :blink: Although to be honest, if its in the countryside, I'm not sure a bike would be any quicker, especially as I have to stop and take gloves off and dog mobile out of pocket to make and receive txts. Oh, and maps are NOT easy to use on a bike! :blink:

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Our claim to fame - The Fox Hunt was originally my idea in 2002, and the Mark the Cat borrowed it in order to make some money for some hungry kids...

 

The details of the first game are still available on the Team tate website. Click here for details:

 

http://www.teamtate.co.uk/geocache/fox/

 

Technology has moved on, and so has the idea. Until recently, I was running Porta-Cache - a cache in the boot of my car that could be tracked via a simple website and a GPRS connection from the vehicle.

 

Use waypoint: GCKYRR

 

This ended when I was made redundant from my last job, but I now work for another tracking company and fully intend to set this up again.

 

Sarah (Mrs Team Tate) and I were discussing the pros and cons of running another Fox Hunt very soon - maybe April or May, with a Social at the end of it. If you are up for this, let us know.

 

It will be SMS and HTML based - you will need a mobile phone whilst in the field to chase the Fox, but you can also track it on a map from home using Internet Explorer.

 

Waddayathink?

 

Bob

 

PS - We got a lot of -What has this got to do with caching? - type remarks the last time we did this. The long and short of it: It using a GPS, it was fun, everyone enjoyed themselves. What has this NOT got to do with caching I say!

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