Oregon 450 & 550 losing found caches.

[+Trail Cachers]

A few days ago several of us did the Route 66 series. On one day, my Oregon 450 showed that I had logged 302 caches but when I downloaded them into the field notes on Groundspeak it only showed that it downloaded 288. The same thing happened to 2 other cachers who were with us...they had Oregons... a 450 and a 550. The next day the same thing happened. The numbers were a bit different but they all showed less than actually found. In looking at the ones dropped, it was a random bunch. Just one here and there. I called Garmin and Groundspeak and both of them said it for sure was not their problem.... it was the other guy. It is a bit frustrating to have found them... but something is losing them. It is not so bad on a series because you can go back and find the dropped caches on the map and log them there. However, if you were just caching around town and your gps dropped some caches, you would not be as likely to remember which ones you lost. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[+ecanderson]

There are a couple of ways that this can happen. One thing you need to learn to avoid, if you weren't already aware of it, is the use of the quote " character anywhere in your "notes" when you create a log. That character will blow up the parsing at geocaching,com, and the record will be dropped, often dropping all subsequent logs as well. That's the primary way that this can occur. The only way to actually sort this out is to compare your geocache_visits.txt file to what is reported by gc.com, but while you're looking at your logs, be sure you didn't use something like 18" FROM TREE or similar that contained a quote character.

[+Trail Cachers]

There are a couple of ways that this can happen. One thing you need to learn to avoid, if you weren't already aware of it, is the use of the quote " character anywhere in your "notes" when you create a log. That character will blow up the parsing at geocaching,com, and the record will be dropped, often dropping all subsequent logs as well. That's the primary way that this can occur. The only way to actually sort this out is to compare your geocache_visits.txt file to what is reported by gc.com, but while you're looking at your logs, be sure you didn't use something like 18" FROM TREE or similar that contained a quote character.

 

Thanks for the reply. As we were on a long series of identical caches none of us put anything in field logs at all. Just hit the found cache and onto the next one.

[+ecanderson]

Thanks for the reply. As we were on a long series of identical caches none of us put anything in field logs at all. Just hit the found cache and onto the next one.

Bummer. Well, call it Power Trail Karma, but the only way to determine whether the logs were lost in the Oregon or at gc.com is to load up your geocache_visits.txt into a word processor and count the "Found" entries. Quickest way to do what would be to search on the word "Found" or use the search/replace feature and see what the count is that way.

[+Stugel2012]

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Most likley those you think are "Missing" where already loged on GC.com. This has happen to me if I upload feildnotes and forget to delet them on the GPSr

[+Z_Statman]

Perhaps GC, or the unit, simply got tired of logging finds? (lol)

 

Pun aside, agree with Stugel, take a look at the log file if it hasn't been deleted

[+Trail Cachers]

Perhaps it did get tired. I know that I did. However I have already deleted the file. I don't think that it has anything to do with the field notes as we did not do any and I wiped all of the finds and prior caches off the unit before loading the power trail.

[+Unobtainium]

Once you've pressed 'found' you need to press either 'Done' or Find Next Closest'. If you don't do this, the cache is not marked as found. Just one possible explanation.

[+maristua]

I have the same problem. Geocaches that has been marked as found on my Oregon 550 for weeks suddenly last week shows up on my GPS as not found.