+MamaKatS Posted January 3, 2011 Share Posted January 3, 2011 OK, I'm happy... another day of taking my GeoKids and my Magellan out to hunt for caches, and we were successful five out of six times. They were all 1/1 or 1.5 level (but seemed challenging to me, yikes! LOL!) but the kids had such a good time this weekend! We found five caches, and saw three bunnies and one frog. I've been motivated to start a Geocaching blog to chronicle our adventures (http://geocachingadventures.wordpress.com/). Feel free to follow along if you wish. Hopefully will add pics soon if I ever get a camera. G'night everyone - hope your Monday goes smoothly. Quote Link to comment
+jbar Posted January 3, 2011 Share Posted January 3, 2011 Congratulations on your day. I got out my self this afternoon. Manged to get the first 3 of the new year. Welcome to the obsession. OK, I'm happy... another day of taking my GeoKids and my Magellan out to hunt for caches, and we were successful five out of six times. They were all 1/1 or 1.5 level (but seemed challenging to me, yikes! LOL!) but the kids had such a good time this weekend! We found five caches, and saw three bunnies and one frog. I've been motivated to start a Geocaching blog to chronicle our adventures (http://geocachingadventures.wordpress.com/). Feel free to follow along if you wish. Hopefully will add pics soon if I ever get a camera. G'night everyone - hope your Monday goes smoothly. Quote Link to comment
+MamaKatS Posted January 3, 2011 Author Share Posted January 3, 2011 One thing I'm trying to get used to is learning how to correctly read & follow the GPS (I have a Magellan GC). I will head off towards where the cache is located on my GPS, and then suddenly, it will jump to the right (or left, whichever way I'm NOT going). Then, when I change course and head in THAT direction, it jumps again somewhere else. Definitely doing a LOT of zig-zagging back & forth & all around. Is that the nature of the beast, or do I need to be doing anything differently? Quote Link to comment
+t4e Posted January 3, 2011 Share Posted January 3, 2011 One thing I'm trying to get used to is learning how to correctly read & follow the GPS (I have a Magellan GC). I will head off towards where the cache is located on my GPS, and then suddenly, it will jump to the right (or left, whichever way I'm NOT going). Then, when I change course and head in THAT direction, it jumps again somewhere else. Definitely doing a LOT of zig-zagging back & forth & all around. Is that the nature of the beast, or do I need to be doing anything differently? assuming you mean eXplorist GC, have you applied any updates to it? looks like this one is supposed to fix your problem http://support.magellangps.com/support/index.php?_m=downloads&_a=viewdownload&downloaditemid=203 Quote Link to comment
+MamaKatS Posted January 3, 2011 Author Share Posted January 3, 2011 THANX! I will check that out. :D Quote Link to comment
+Trucker Lee Posted January 3, 2011 Share Posted January 3, 2011 One thing I'm trying to get used to is learning how to correctly read & follow the GPS (I have a Magellan GC). I will head off towards where the cache is located on my GPS, and then suddenly, it will jump to the right (or left, whichever way I'm NOT going). Then, when I change course and head in THAT direction, it jumps again somewhere else. Definitely doing a LOT of zig-zagging back & forth & all around. Is that the nature of the beast, or do I need to be doing anything differently? Be sure to recalibrate the compass when first starting out. May help with some of that. Quote Link to comment
+MamaKatS Posted January 3, 2011 Author Share Posted January 3, 2011 One thing I'm trying to get used to is learning how to correctly read & follow the GPS (I have a Magellan GC). I will head off towards where the cache is located on my GPS, and then suddenly, it will jump to the right (or left, whichever way I'm NOT going). Then, when I change course and head in THAT direction, it jumps again somewhere else. Definitely doing a LOT of zig-zagging back & forth & all around. Is that the nature of the beast, or do I need to be doing anything differently? Be sure to recalibrate the compass when first starting out. May help with some of that. thanks! Um.... how do I do that? ;0 Quote Link to comment
+BCandMsKitty Posted January 3, 2011 Share Posted January 3, 2011 You don't say how close you are to the cache when it does this. Handheld GPSrs will do this all the time when you are almost at ground zero. I don't know the technical terms or reason for this, but I've read that almost all GPSr units can suffer from this, and experience it myself all the time. When it does this, I put my gps unit down somewhere to let it settle down, and while it is gathering it's wits, I hunt for the cache, looking in the most likely spots.After 10 mins. or so, I go back to the unit,pick it up and follow it wherever it is now pointing, and almost always it leads me right to the cache. Quote Link to comment
+michigansnorkelers Posted January 3, 2011 Share Posted January 3, 2011 Does your GPSr have a compass? If so, are you using it? Or, are you in BEARING MODE? Many GPSrs do not have a compass, but work off of a BEARING. Even if your GPSr has an electronic compass, it might not be the default setting. Many people, includin me, use BEARING mode even though we have a built in compass. In BEARING mode, the arrow you are looking at on the screen is a BEARING to the cache, not a compass POINTING to the cache. In bearing mode, the GPSr will point to where the cache is RELATIVE TO THE STRAIGHT LINE YOU ARE WALKING. It takes a little while of straight walking for this to work. If you are walking a varying path, then the arrow will not point to the right area until you are on a straightaway again. To practice this, go in your backyard and MARK a waypoint. Now, walk about 50 feet away, and walk the bearing back to that spot. The arrow will be pretty accurate. Next, try it again, but walk a curving path through the yard and see where the arrow points. Interesting? Quote Link to comment
+MamaKatS Posted January 3, 2011 Author Share Posted January 3, 2011 It varies how close i am to when it jumps around. sometimes its somewhere in the middle of the trek; and yes, often it is when we are closing in. It will say I'm six feet away from it, then jump and say 30 feet if I turn wrong, LOL. Quote Link to comment
+MamaKatS Posted January 3, 2011 Author Share Posted January 3, 2011 Does your GPSr have a compass? If so, are you using it? Or, are you in BEARING MODE? Many GPSrs do not have a compass, but work off of a BEARING. Even if your GPSr has an electronic compass, it might not be the default setting. Many people, includin me, use BEARING mode even though we have a built in compass. In BEARING mode, the arrow you are looking at on the screen is a BEARING to the cache, not a compass POINTING to the cache. In bearing mode, the GPSr will point to where the cache is RELATIVE TO THE STRAIGHT LINE YOU ARE WALKING. It takes a little while of straight walking for this to work. If you are walking a varying path, then the arrow will not point to the right area until you are on a straightaway again. To practice this, go in your backyard and MARK a waypoint. Now, walk about 50 feet away, and walk the bearing back to that spot. The arrow will be pretty accurate. Next, try it again, but walk a curving path through the yard and see where the arrow points. Interesting? Yep, that does sound right. For example, I KNOW I was headed in the right direction yesterday, but the path was very curvey (and there was a creek/deep ditch between me and where it WANTED me to go, so barrelling on thru wasn't do-able, LOL). I just kept following in the general direction, and once we rounded that curve, it started behaving more. Quote Link to comment
+niraD Posted January 3, 2011 Share Posted January 3, 2011 It varies how close i am to when it jumps around. sometimes its somewhere in the middle of the trek; and yes, often it is when we are closing in. It will say I'm six feet away from it, then jump and say 30 feet if I turn wrong, LOL.At a distance less than 30 feet, any GPSr is going to jump around. When you're that close, put the device away and just look for the cache. Quote Link to comment
+michigansnorkelers Posted January 3, 2011 Share Posted January 3, 2011 Another thing: The GPSr only gets you in the VICINITY of the cache. It is not unusual for the distances to start drifting when you're supposedly several feet away. Yet another thing: There is a "Lag Time" before the GPSr "knows" where it is. You can be walking toward the cache ... 50 feet ... 30 feet ... 5 feet, and now you think you're there. But, the GPSr has been anticipating where you're going and suddenly "corrects" itself to show itself 30 feet away. You've actually walked PAST the cache. This is especially noticable if you are walking quickly. Advice: When in the vicinity of the cache, stop and smell the roses before walking all the way to the cache. Stop at 30 or 40 feet and watch the GPSr readjust. In a short time, you'll become accustomed to this overshooting. Just the way it is. Quote Link to comment
+NYPaddleCacher Posted January 4, 2011 Share Posted January 4, 2011 You don't say how close you are to the cache when it does this. Handheld GPSrs will do this all the time when you are almost at ground zero. I wonder how the GPSr knows when it's close to ground zero and to start jumping around. As someone else suggested, putting away the GPSr when you get "close" and start looking for the cache is a common suggestion. Consider this. If the object of geocaching were to see how close you could get to the published coordinates, following the compass or using a map screen with the bearing/distance would likely get you fairly close most of the time. However, that's not the object of the game. The goal is to find a geocache. If you just blindly follow the GPSr as it moves from 30' in one direction, then 6' in the other, then back 20' in a different direction, my may walk around in circles (commonly called the drunken bee dance) and be totally oblivious to the large tree stump on the ground that's 25' away. One of the approaches that I use is that I'll check the bearing/distance (I rarely use the compass) and even when I'm as much as 300' away I'll try to estimate the distance/bearing and identify the general area where the cache might be. As I get to 100' or so, I'll start looking for potential hiding spots. If I see something obvious I'll head right toward that object and start to search. As you get more experience you be able to recognize potential hiding spots better and be able to estimate distances as well. Quote Link to comment
+MamaKatS Posted January 4, 2011 Author Share Posted January 4, 2011 You can be walking toward the cache ... 50 feet ... 30 feet ... 5 feet, and now you think you're there. But, the GPSr has been anticipating where you're going and suddenly "corrects" itself to show itself 30 feet away. You've actually walked PAST the cache. This is especially noticable if you are walking quickly. Yep, I did that several times on our last cache of the day Sunday, LOL. Advice: When in the vicinity of the cache, stop and smell the roses before walking all the way to the cache. Stop at 30 or 40 feet and watch the GPSr readjust. In a short time, you'll become accustomed to this overshooting. Just the way it is. Good advice. Once we were "somewhere around it," the kids started looking all over the place and my nine-year-old located it. I'm still standing there trying to figure out my GPS, and they are off actually finding the darn thing, hehe! ;-) Practice makes perfect. Quote Link to comment
+MamaKatS Posted January 4, 2011 Author Share Posted January 4, 2011 One of the approaches that I use is that I'll check the bearing/distance (I rarely use the compass) and even when I'm as much as 300' away I'll try to estimate the distance/bearing and identify the general area where the cache might be. As I get to 100' or so, I'll start looking for potential hiding spots. If I see something obvious I'll head right toward that object and start to search. As you get more experience you be able to recognize potential hiding spots better and be able to estimate distances as well. THANX! All good stuff to keep in mind for this weekend. :-) Quote Link to comment
+popokiiti Posted January 5, 2011 Share Posted January 5, 2011 Another thing: The GPSr only gets you in the VICINITY of the cache. It is not unusual for the distances to start drifting when you're supposedly several feet away. Yet another thing: There is a "Lag Time" before the GPSr "knows" where it is. You can be walking toward the cache ... 50 feet ... 30 feet ... 5 feet, and now you think you're there. But, the GPSr has been anticipating where you're going and suddenly "corrects" itself to show itself 30 feet away. You've actually walked PAST the cache. This is especially noticable if you are walking quickly. Advice: When in the vicinity of the cache, stop and smell the roses before walking all the way to the cache. Stop at 30 or 40 feet and watch the GPSr readjust. In a short time, you'll become accustomed to this overshooting. Just the way it is. This is why I am always tailing behind.....saves backtracking.....and my legs aren't as long as those belonging to the holder of the GPSr Quote Link to comment
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