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Cache saturation test! Join in!


Coldgears

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Out of curiosity for those in more cache dense areas what are your caches basically? When I was traveling this past week I found places with more caches than here and it appeared to be heavy on the micros. Here I'm used to smalls and regulars and some micros that I can easily ignore if I want to. But there's an array.

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Interesting idea. It will be fun to see the results.

 

It took 3 PQs to get the full count, but from my home near Sacramento, the total is 2255 within 10 miles.

I feel terrible! I wish I had that kind of saturation! It takes me like a 3 minute drive to get to the nearest cache! :P:D:lol::D

 

EDIT: crude muffins, most of you guys have amazing saturation. How can I change this for my area? I want more people to place them at every parking lot like you guys instead of mostly in the parks, I love being able to stop at my local food place/mall/any store and check my GPS nearest caches and have one in the parking lot! But that is almost non existant now... Should I put out fliers in my area?

 

Double Edit: The flier thing was a joke, but I was serious about being upset about the current saturation in my area. I didn't want people to take that the wrong way.

Edited by Coldgears
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Interesting idea. It will be fun to see the results.

 

It took 3 PQs to get the full count, but from my home near Sacramento, the total is 2255 within 10 miles.

I feel terrible! I wish I had that kind of saturation! It takes me like a 3 minute drive to get to the nearest cache! :P:D:lol::D

 

EDIT: crude muffins, most of you guys have amazing saturation. How can I change this for my area? I want more people to place them at every parking lot like you guys instead of mostly in the parks, I love being able to stop at my local food place/mall/any store and check my GPS nearest caches and have one in the parking lot! But that is almost non existant now... Should I put out fliers in my area?

 

Double Edit: The flier thing was a joke, but I was serious about being upset about the current saturation in my area. I didn't want people to take that the wrong way.

Hey, what is this... first the "Can I hide caches in baggies" thread, now you want to hide caches in parking lots? Has your soul been taken over by someone from the Orlando area recently? :D

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Interesting idea. It will be fun to see the results.

 

It took 3 PQs to get the full count, but from my home near Sacramento, the total is 2255 within 10 miles.

I feel terrible! I wish I had that kind of saturation! It takes me like a 3 minute drive to get to the nearest cache! :P:D:lol::D

 

EDIT: crude muffins, most of you guys have amazing saturation. How can I change this for my area? I want more people to place them at every parking lot like you guys instead of mostly in the parks, I love being able to stop at my local food place/mall/any store and check my GPS nearest caches and have one in the parking lot! But that is almost non existant now... Should I put out fliers in my area?

 

Double Edit: The flier thing was a joke, but I was serious about being upset about the current saturation in my area. I didn't want people to take that the wrong way.

Hey, what is this... first the "Can I hide caches in baggies" thread, now you want to hide caches in parking lots? Has your soul been taken over by someone from the Orlando area recently? :D

Honestly, I didn't take my medicine today. The plastic bag thing was a semi-legitimate question with a hint of satire. I needed a cost effective container for a multi, (check my other multi I used a pill bottle and playdough container, you don't get much cheaper then that) Because my other multi with similarly used cheap items didn't work so well. The playdough container ruined the magic eye, and the lamination made it too tough to read (I have previously thread about this). The pill bottle is so light weight it kind of just moves away with the rain. It failed, obviously I wanted another multi but with a better cost efficative container. So, me being myself without my medicine jumped the gun and added humor towards the post by talking about plastic bags, knowing I would get suggestions for other container similair in the way to what happened in other threads. And it worked...

 

As for the parking lot caches, I do in all honestly like to find parking lot caches when I'm just going to a local store. When I go caching I plan days around nice parks. Look at my most recent finds, I drove about 20 miles from my house to get 8 in a day, 6 from peace valley park/lake galena, one 8 miles away in another park (for a series i've been working for) and one parking lot at a store I stopped at to get refreshments. I spent the whole day walking the trails finding nice caches. Even a REALLY creative micro, a ammo box, and a few nice lock and locks and a virtual. I even spent the afternoon BBQing with the family.

 

That being said I love finding caches in parking lots if I visit that store. I was actually really upset when the cache thief stole a multi in the parking lot of a store I visit once every few months. I honestly wanted to do that one when I visit. Would I ever plan days around driving from parking lot to parking lot? NO! But it is great to have a few to find when I just visit a store...

 

Sorry for such a long winded post, but I really do not want to be mistaken for a joker/prankster such as ashinkes, I was serious in someway in both of my posts, but the fact I didn't take my medicine I kind acted funny with the other thread I made...

 

Sorry. :(

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Anyone do the math to figure out what the theoretical maximum is?

I would presume it would be +10,000 (EC and Virts don't count for saturation).

This assumes one at every .1 miles from the center.

I did some math and came up with 9 073.57

 

Area of a 10mile radius circle

=pi*r^2

=314.16sqMiles

Now, according to this site, the Volume Fraction of closely packed circles in a hxagonal pattern is 0.9069.

So area in you 10 mile circle that is filled with 0.1 mile "cache circles" is

=314.16sqMiels*0.9069

=284.91sqMiles

 

Area of a 0.1mile "cache" circle

=pi*r^2

=0.0314

 

divide the two areas

=284.91/0.0314

=9 073.57

Edited by Andronicus
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Out of curiosity for those in more cache dense areas what are your caches basically? When I was traveling this past week I found places with more caches than here and it appeared to be heavy on the micros. Here I'm used to smalls and regulars and some micros that I can easily ignore if I want to. But there's an array.

 

I have a solid mix, with plenty of challenging puzzles and multis, several Earthcaches, two or three virtuals, a webcam, several Letterbox Hybrids - even after five years of caching, I can keep myself quite entertained without going very far from home. Ottawa has plenty of greenspace, a great geocaching community, and a handful of local geocaching "pioneers" who set the bar pretty high from the early days of the game.

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Anyone do the math to figure out what the theoretical maximum is?

I would presume it would be +10,000 (EC and Virts don't count for saturation).

This assumes one at every .1 miles from the center.

I did some math and came up with 9 073.57

 

Area of a 10mile radius circle

=pi*r^2

=314.16sqMiles

Now, according to this site, the Volume Fraction of closely packed circles in a hxagonal pattern is 0.9069.

So area in you 10 mile circle that is filled with 0.1 mile "cache circles" is

=314.16sqMiels*0.9069

=284.91sqMiles

 

Area of a 0.1mile "cache" circle

=pi*r^2

=0.0314

 

divide the two areas

=284.91/0.0314

=9 073.57

 

36,275?

 

Most dense situation is (if I'm not wrong) using equilateral triangles of 0.1 size. Each cache at the left bottom vertex needs two of the triangles to teselate the whole world.

 

Area of 1 triangle = 0.05 * sqrt(0.1^2 - ((0.1)/2)^2) / 2 = 0.05*0.1*sqrt(3)/2

 

n = pi*r^2 / (0.05 * 0.1 * sqrt(3)) = 36,275

 

A lot of caches!

 

Edited: Oooops! One missing /2 ...

 

Area = 0.05*(0.1*sqrt(3)/2)/2

 

n = pi*r^2 / (0.05 * 0.1 * sqrt(3)/2) = 72,551 ... Really? where am I wrong?

 

Edited again (blonde day!)

 

Area = 0.1 * (0.1*sqrt(3)/2)/2

 

n = pi*r^2 / (0.1 * 0.1 * sqrt(3)/2) = 36,275

 

my first number was correct even if the formulas were copied incorrectly.

Edited by DeepButi
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Out of curiosity for those in more cache dense areas what are your caches basically? When I was traveling this past week I found places with more caches than here and it appeared to be heavy on the micros. Here I'm used to smalls and regulars and some micros that I can easily ignore if I want to. But there's an array.

 

Tried the PQ but for some reason it kept defaulting to 100 and so did the advanced search with a results of 1004.

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200 caches within 10 miles of my local zipcode. 23 are mine. A couple of years ago I had found all caches within 15 miles but I'm not caching as much locally as I used to. I really wouldn't want a greater saturation then what it is now. I think it would likely degrade the over all quality of the hides. Right now there are only 2 LPCs withing 10 miles and a handful of guard rail hides.

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Anyone do the math to figure out what the theoretical maximum is?

I would presume it would be +10,000 (EC and Virts don't count for saturation).

This assumes one at every .1 miles from the center.

I did some math and came up with 9 073.57

 

Area of a 10mile radius circle

=pi*r^2

=314.16sqMiles

Now, according to this site, the Volume Fraction of closely packed circles in a hxagonal pattern is 0.9069.

So area in you 10 mile circle that is filled with 0.1 mile "cache circles" is

=314.16sqMiels*0.9069

=284.91sqMiles

 

Area of a 0.1mile "cache" circle

=pi*r^2

=0.0314

 

divide the two areas

=284.91/0.0314

=9 073.57

 

36,275?

 

Most dense situation is (if I'm not wrong) using equilateral triangles of 0.1 size. Each cache at the left bottom vertex needs two of the triangles to teselate the whole world.

 

Area of 1 triangle = 0.05 * sqrt(0.1^2 - ((0.1)/2)^2) / 2 = 0.05*0.1*sqrt(3)/2

 

n = pi*r^2 / (0.05 * 0.1 * sqrt(3)) = 36,275

 

A lot of caches!

 

Edited: Oooops! One missing /2 ...

 

Area = 0.05*(0.1*sqrt(3)/2)/2

 

n = pi*r^2 / (0.05 * 0.1 * sqrt(3)/2) = 72,551 ... Really? where am I wrong?

 

Edited again (blonde day!)

 

Area = 0.1 * (0.1*sqrt(3)/2)/2

 

n = pi*r^2 / (0.1 * 0.1 * sqrt(3)/2) = 36,275

 

my first number was correct even if the formulas were copied incorrectly.

 

I assumed a basic grid out, and a square since that is what the PQ does.

Nesting circles might have been something I could have solved 5 years ago, but now.... not so much.

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For out here a general location / radius search works OK... answer 8 within 10 miles. All found except two.

Those two are in the next river valley, several hundred kilometre drive to get there unless you have a quad or horse... almost at the radius, and even with alternate routing as possible much further than 10 miles via the only passes... three of the others are similar situations, you have to drive 30 plus km to access them only a few km from town due to road / bridge combinations, but walking thru bush or quadding/ biking is possible. One of the others is a 1.5 km hike from the trail head... one more is a replacement/new listing for one that was 'removed' by something... unknown... If we want more caches we travel, but a new cacher in town promises to plant a few and I always intend to, but other things interfere... I also maintain a bunch not to much further away for absentee owners... that's saturation on that front.

 

Doug 7rxc

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999 from home,

1000 on the dot from work... what a coincidence.

 

Have a mix of hiking/hills/urban nanos/LOTS of puzzles (compared to other places)/quite a few multis/couple virtuals/an earth cache or 2.

 

I would say a majority of the hides here are urban micro/smalls.

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