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Determining Ground Zero


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Have you tried contacting the Cache Owners (COs) for a nudge in the right direction? Are they puzzle caches? Please post the GC # - we can then say for sure to contact the CO or it may be one of those things to put on the back burner and try again when your brain has had a chance to refresh itself.

Good luck, and welcome to the forums!

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I don't have the answer, but I believe I can clarify the question.

 

If I'm not mistaken, it's a type of puzzle where you need to determine the precise 'location' of a zip code. As in 'Where is 85281?'

Strictly speaking, '85281' is an area, not a single point on the map...yet there are websites where the 'location' of '85281' is 'boiled down' to a single spot on the map.

 

Or maybe I just imagined the whole thing.

 

Ask the CO for help.

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Speaking of help....

 

I am working on a cache where I've decoded most of the clues. You decrypt several clues and that makes the lat long of GZ. The clues turned out to be world airports so now I can plug in data right?

 

Wrong...how do you find EXACT coords for a world airpot? Take JFK (that wasn't even one). The airport is HUGE. I need a lat / long down to the second. Plus, you look at several web sites listing airport lat/longs and different sites list different coords. Not far off, but a little and I need it to the second. Is there an official goto place to look up the EXACT lat/long of world places?

 

By the way, I'm a pilot and have access to government charts listing airport lat / longs and even those get off a little between sources when you drill down to the second. My Jeppessen chart subscription does not cover the world so it doesn't really help with world airports anyway.

 

So, in a nut shell...do geocachers have a standard place to look up Lat / Longs of airports and other prominent places?

 

Thanks in advance,

 

GTB

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Ok. Yeah. Ask the CO... I get it. I was simply asking for a tip on how to find the actual GZ of a town, any town, not for someone to tell me where the cache was so I could walk right up to it and sign the log. I thankfully just figured it out and I can't believe it was that easy... right there on the main page.

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I am not asking about a specific cache. I am asking a general question. It is only the last sentence that I'd like answered. The rest was just for background.

 

I did a local cache, placed by an airline pilot, that required made use of the lat/lon for the airport (or a certain object at the airport). With some digging, I figured it out, and had it to the second.

 

There may be differnet points for an airport, so I would try to figure out what they are looking for based on clues in the description or the encrypted hints.

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I am not asking about a specific cache. I am asking a general question. It is only the last sentence that I'd like answered. The rest was just for background.

 

I did a local cache, placed by an airline pilot, that required made use of the lat/lon for the airport (or a certain object at the airport). With some digging, I figured it out, and had it to the second.

 

I did one that had a list of lat/long values that gave the location of a specific feature at different airporst the could be "read" by looking at satellite photos for each location.

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So, in a nut shell...do geocachers have a standard place to look up Lat / Longs of airports and other prominent places?

 

 

Define "standard". The problem with some mystery caches like this is that "standard" != "distinct". There are several places where one can look lat/long coordinates given a "feature" name. If there were a single authoritative source for geocoding features that everyone used an distinct set of lat/long coordinates could exist for every feature. However, if there is more than one data provider, there is the possibility of looking up a prominent place, and getting different results, depending on which data provider you chose. When there is a level of indirect (for example, looking up a zipcode on the geocaching.com site) there is the possibility if getting one set of values one day, and if the site changes data providers, getting a different set of values the next.

 

As an example, do a Google search for Washington Monument Coordinates. You'll find several sites which provide this information, and the answer is not always the same.

Edited by NYPaddleCacher
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