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Please don't hog the GPS signals


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With the increase in number of geocachers, there is a shortage of GPS signals to go around. This results in longer time for the GPSr to lock on to the satellites, and in wildly inaccurate coordinates.

 

Obviously, if this is allowed to continue, geocaching as a hobby may well cease to exist.

 

How, then, should we go about solving this problem?

 

I propose that all geocachers be divided into 12 groups, and each group be given a 2 hour window every day to go geocaching. This should provide a temporary relief to the situation until a more permanent solution is found.

 

Your group ID and geocaching timetable will be sent to you shortly. Please do your part and keep geocaching alive. And have a good April 1st.

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I really wish people would listen before we have to ration or geocaching gets banned. Sadly I don’t think people will take this seriously until it’s too late. In light of this new information I propose that we change the mascot from a frog to a hog as is fitting since we all know how addictive the sport is. I can’t seem to turn my GPS off even when I’m sleeping because I don’t want to miss anything. So I would take a dozen of the signal hog coins.

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I really wish people would listen before we have to ration or geocaching gets banned. Sadly I don’t think people will take this seriously until it’s too late. In light of this new information I propose that we change the mascot from a frog to a hog as is fitting since we all know how addictive the sport is. I can’t seem to turn my GPS off even when I’m sleeping because I don’t want to miss anything. So I would take a dozen of the signal hog coins.

 

Will this do?

 

Signal-Hog-Geocoin.png

Edited by Jackalgirl
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This just goes to demonstrate the inefficiency of governments in general. When Congress first addressed this possibility in 2005, they were greeted by scorn. I don't remember the hippie's name off the top of my head, but I remember clearly the CNN soundbite showing him, replete with tie-dyed T-shirt and leather thong headband chanting "Free Signal" with all his hippie friends, as if he honestly believed that his Hollywood rants would be taken seriously. Freekin' hippies. When he was interviewed on The Rosie O'Donnell show, all he kept whining about was how the system was created by the government, and as such, should remain free to everybody. Our government's response was to impose a tax on GPS devices that was supposed to generate 365 billion dollars over 5 years, to be used to build/launch a whole new series of satellites. Well, that part worked. They took our money. The only downside is that our government is so horrendously inefficient it has cost us 368 billion dollars to collect the tax. Now they are talking about GPS signal rationing. Sigh...

 

But at least I'm not bitter!

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I really hope you are joking? Just assuming you are not joking, radio waves do not work like that lol <_< Just like, oh let's just say DirectTV satellites. There is no cap on the number of receivers.

BUT, I am sure this was just a post in humor, so I posted this truly assuming that this was a humorus post. :laughing:

 

Walter

 

With the increase in number of geocachers, there is a shortage of GPS signals to go around. This results in longer time for the GPSr to lock on to the satellites, and in wildly inaccurate coordinates.

 

Obviously, if this is allowed to continue, geocaching as a hobby may well cease to exist.

 

How, then, should we go about solving this problem?

 

I propose that all geocachers be divided into 12 groups, and each group be given a 2 hour window every day to go geocaching. This should provide a temporary relief to the situation until a more permanent solution is found.

 

Your group ID and geocaching timetable will be sent to you shortly. Please do your part and keep geocaching alive. And have a good April 1st.

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Simple solution is for everyone to turn on WAAS (We All Are Sharing) This lets your GPSr share the signal with other units. If your GPSr doesn't support WAAS, you should really do the responsible thing and upgrade soonest.

 

I turned WAAS off. I'm entitled to use that signal without the degradation caused by sharing it. Just wait your dadgum turn!

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I like that one! Never thought of it that way <_< But I turned WAAS on all my units since they were right out of the box. I am not stingy, I share. :laughing:

 

Walter

 

Simple solution is for everyone to turn on WAAS (We All Are Sharing) This lets your GPSr share the signal with other units. If your GPSr doesn't support WAAS, you should really do the responsible thing and upgrade soonest.

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*Team KORFUS give a big Homer Simpson DOH! YOU GOT ME, that was an Aprils Fool post* I have not fell for one in over 25 years, you ruined my streak! :laughing:

 

With the increase in number of geocachers, there is a shortage of GPS signals to go around. This results in longer time for the GPSr to lock on to the satellites, and in wildly inaccurate coordinates.

 

Obviously, if this is allowed to continue, geocaching as a hobby may well cease to exist.

 

How, then, should we go about solving this problem?

 

I propose that all geocachers be divided into 12 groups, and each group be given a 2 hour window every day to go geocaching. This should provide a temporary relief to the situation until a more permanent solution is found.

 

Your group ID and geocaching timetable will be sent to you shortly. Please do your part and keep geocaching alive. And have a good April 1st.

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*Team KORFUS give a big Homer Simpson DOH! YOU GOT ME, that was an Aprils Fool post* I have not fell for one in over 25 years, you ruined my streak! :laughing:

 

This is no joke. I’m old enough to remember when magnetic compasses were all the rage and the devastating affect they had on the earth’s magnetic field. Deviations and variations of ten, fifteen, even twenty degrees in some areas were the disastrous results that we still live with today. Signal sharing seems like a good idea whose time has come.

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I was out yesterday and on my 10th find it said I have reached my quota for the day and if I wished to continue my accuracy would drop to +- 100ft.

 

Yeah, I've gotten that too...I think that's why so many caches these days are attached to stuff (like transmission towers, and lamp poles in parking lots) where you can make out the location from the map. Then +- 100ft works okay.

 

 

But at least I'm not bitter!

 

Riffster, take a bath, then we'll slow roast you and find out if that's true....

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I thought Groundspeak’s “528 rule” was specifically enacted to prevent this very problem, i.e., “the dilution of signal strength due to cache placement proximity”. As everyone knows, dilution of signal, or more commonly known as DOS, has been the source of many problems for a long, long time.

 

Slightly OT, if Groundspeak enacts a new signal sharing policy where premium members have priority over non-members, will platinum members still have exclusive access to the “enhanced accuracy” signals? Also, will this have any effect on the platinum’s “FTF advantage program” of pre-published cache notifications?

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Simple solution is for everyone to turn on WAAS (We All Are Sharing) This lets your GPSr share the signal with other units. If your GPSr doesn't support WAAS, you should really do the responsible thing and upgrade soonest.

 

I turned WAAS off. I'm entitled to use that signal without the degradation caused by sharing it. Just wait your dadgum turn!

 

If you can't find a cache with the +/- 150 foot accuracy afforded with WAAS turned on, you should really just find another hobby. :laughing:

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With the increase in number of geocachers, there is a shortage of GPS signals to go around. This results in longer time for the GPSr to lock on to the satellites, and in wildly inaccurate coordinates.

 

I disagree. When at least one sat is over my state because of the lower population we don't given begin to use all the available locks. Go tell California to back off on usage and leave us alone.

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I propose that all geocachers be divided into 12 groups, and each group be given a 2 hour window every day to go geocaching. This should provide a temporary relief to the situation until a more permanent solution is found.

 

Your group ID and geocaching timetable will be sent to you shortly. Please do your part and keep geocaching alive. And have a good April 1st.

 

We instituted this in my area several months ago, and I got stuck with the 2AM-4AM time slot. Looking forward to the new timetable.

Edited by Cedar Grove Seekers
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What if premium members are allowed exclusive rights to all FTF's before they are made available to the other members. This would cut down on a rush of signal suckers to specific areas. Swiz

 

Why just FTF? Non-PM should only be allowed 1 cache per week.

 

And set a distance guideline that a search only reveals 1 cache per 10 square miles.

Edited by BlueDeuce
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The US has more than enough GPS signal to last for CENTURIES underneath Alaska. But certain people won't let us access it because a few caribou and grizzly bears won't like the noise. Without that, we'll grow more and more dependent on foreign global positioning systems (GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo).

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I was out yesterday and on my 10th find it said I have reached my quota for the day and if I wished to continue my accuracy would drop to +- 100ft.

 

Yeah, I've gotten that too...I think that's why so many caches these days are attached to stuff (like transmission towers, and lamp poles in parking lots) where you can make out the location from the map. Then +- 100ft works okay.

 

 

But at least I'm not bitter!

 

Riffster, take a bath, then we'll slow roast you and find out if that's true....

 

Oh yeah, and please make sure to wash your hat. We want to be able to approach the feast!

 

I'm not planning on going caching today. Anyone want to rent my signal allottment for the day?

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This is clearly yet ANOTHER assault on the Geocaching community as a whole. Cemetery caches a FELONY in South Carolina? check. Geocaching bomb scare in Louisana? Check. Now this?!?! The real culprit is all the zillions of people with the car GPSr units. Half these people can't get to grocery store for a quart of milk without using their Garmin or Tom Tom. They are hogging the GPS bandwidth in searching for something (grocery store) that they should know where it is. Don't blame us!

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HAHAHAHAHAH!

Good thing I hacked my Mio so I could run more than navigation programs.

I just loaded "Signal Sipper" and took it for a test.

I'm only having errors of up to 21 inches now.

I'm sure the rest of you don't mind that I'm only borrowing 5mm of accuracy from each of you. :laughing:

Edited by Vater_Araignee
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This is clearly yet ANOTHER assault on the Geocaching community as a whole. Cemetery caches a FELONY in South Carolina? check. Geocaching bomb scare in Louisana? Check. Now this?!?! The real culprit is all the zillions of people with the car GPSr units. Half these people can't get to grocery store for a quart of milk without using their Garmin or Tom Tom. They are hogging the GPS bandwidth in searching for something (grocery store) that they should know where it is. Don't blame us!

 

No, no, no. You got it all wrong. It's the GPS-enabled cell phone users. 90% of them don't even use the GPS function, but they turn it on because they think a team of Navy Seals will rescue them when they fall off a mountain.

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With the increase in number of geocachers, there is a shortage of GPS signals to go around. This results in longer time for the GPSr to lock on to the satellites, and in wildly inaccurate coordinates.

 

Obviously, if this is allowed to continue, geocaching as a hobby may well cease to exist.

 

How, then, should we go about solving this problem?

 

I propose that all geocachers be divided into 12 groups, and each group be given a 2 hour window every day to go geocaching. This should provide a temporary relief to the situation until a more permanent solution is found.

 

Your group ID and geocaching timetable will be sent to you shortly. Please do your part and keep geocaching alive. And have a good April 1st.

 

Can someone please attach a link somewhere about this topic. I am very confused and would like to know more about this. Is this a joke? I read a couple of post down that someone said they reached their cache limit for the day? Theres a cache limit?

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Can someone please attach a link somewhere about this topic. I am very confused and would like to know more about this. Is this a joke? I read a couple of post down that someone said they reached their cache limit for the day? Theres a cache limit?

Don't worry about it dude, BMs get to leach from inactive PMs.

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This just goes to demonstrate the inefficiency of governments in general. When Congress first addressed this possibility in 2005, they were greeted by scorn. I don't remember the hippie's name off the top of my head, but I remember clearly the CNN soundbite showing him, replete with tie-dyed T-shirt and leather thong headband chanting "Free Signal" with all his hippie friends, as if he honestly believed that his Hollywood rants would be taken seriously. Freekin' hippies. When he was interviewed on The Rosie O'Donnell show, all he kept whining about was how the system was created by the government, and as such, should remain free to everybody. Our government's response was to impose a tax on GPS devices that was supposed to generate 365 billion dollars over 5 years, to be used to build/launch a whole new series of satellites. Well, that part worked. They took our money. The only downside is that our government is so horrendously inefficient it has cost us 368 billion dollars to collect the tax. Now they are talking about GPS signal rationing. Sigh...

 

But at least I'm not bitter!

 

:laughing: I am disappointed you failed to mention the indisputable truth! "Hippies are dangerous, Kyle".

Edited by NeecesandNephews
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With the increase in number of geocachers, there is a shortage of GPS signals to go around. This results in longer time for the GPSr to lock on to the satellites, and in wildly inaccurate coordinates.

 

Obviously, if this is allowed to continue, geocaching as a hobby may well cease to exist.

 

How, then, should we go about solving this problem?

 

I propose that all geocachers be divided into 12 groups, and each group be given a 2 hour window every day to go geocaching. This should provide a temporary relief to the situation until a more permanent solution is found.

 

Your group ID and geocaching timetable will be sent to you shortly. Please do your part and keep geocaching alive. And have a good April 1st.

 

Can someone please attach a link somewhere about this topic. I am very confused and would like to know more about this. Is this a joke? I read a couple of post down that someone said they reached their cache limit for the day? Theres a cache limit?

Sure... no problem. Glad to see that you are taking this seriously enough to be concerned.
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Your group ID and geocaching timetable will be sent to you shortly. Please do your part and keep geocaching alive. And have a good April 1st.

How will that work? The world is running out of IP-addresses shortly. What if someone accidently deletes the internet?

 

GermanSailor

 

Hey! What does THAT button do?

 

inetswitch.jpeg

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Can someone please attach a link somewhere about this topic. I am very confused and would like to know more about this. Is this a joke? I read a couple of post down that someone said they reached their cache limit for the day? Theres a cache limit?

Don't worry about it dude, BMs get to leach from inactive PMs.

 

I am not going to be a BM for long. I am planning on hiding my first cache this weekend. And I would like it to be a PM cache. So this is serious then? So basically theres only so many satelites in the sky right. And each one only has the power to link up with lets say 1000 Gpsr's. So what it boils down to is that is getting harder and harder to hook up with the satelites with more and more Geocachers useing up all the signals?

Edited by Shrekito
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What if Non-Premium Members were only allowed to use a topo and compass for their first 100 caches? That should help out and get rid of a lot of GPS users who only cache once in a while. Maybe have a machine for each cache that you need o put a quarter in to get the cache. It wouldn't take long to buy an extra satellite or 2. Swiz

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What if Non-Premium Members were only allowed to use a topo and compass for their first 100 caches? That should help out and get rid of a lot of GPS users who only cache once in a while.

But then people would just find a 100 parking lot micros which don't need a GPS to find anyway, so the net savings would be nil.

Edited by Dinoprophet
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