PQ GPX for a whole country?

[Iceman 88]

Hi fellow GCers..

Please help.

ive jus got myself a magellan explorist gC and i was wondering if i cound get a GPX file with all the present caches in NZ.? would such a req be possible?

 

There are about 16000 caches in the whole country.. North and south islands.. The Gpx file will not be really big.. so would it be possible to do this ?

 

I travel around NZ quiet a bit if i could have the whole lot in my GPS i don have to load each location everytime .. if its possible how would one go about it ?

 

Thoughts and suggestions are much appreciated.

Edited August 20, 2012 by Iceman 88

[+Isonzo Karst]

Pocket Queries are limited to 1000 caches.

 

There are currenlty 8899 caches in North Island NZ - search page with total number at the top

 

To get them all, the best way would be to do a series of date ranged queries, ie, from caches placed from 05/26/2000 to October somedate 2007 will yield 1000 caches (too lazy to check the precise Oct day for you on a PQ page).

 

Keep editing dates forward until you've got 9 queries and all the caches. You can put dates in the PQ form, and preview to check if the dates are right.

 

From that search list, you can get rough dates that will bracket 1000 caches, by jumping forward 50 pages (50 pages of 20 caches = 1000 ).

 

Repeat for South Island (7153) and if you're going to make it to the Chatham Islands, just grab all 2 of them ;-)

Edited August 20, 2012 by Isonzo Karst

[+eusty]

And also remember the explorist gC can hold a maxiumum of 10000 caches. One option would be to put the GPX files on a couple of SD cards, one for North the other South.

 

How you would work out the PQ area is another matter!!

 

[+Bear and Ragged]

Try using GSAK and the Groundspeak API to get more caches than the PQ's alone can generate...

[+Gitchee-Gummee]

You need to ask yourself a question before you load 'all that are available'......

 

Just how long is it going to take for you to find 10,000 caches? For that matter, how long for 1,000?

 

It might be nice to load all you can and not worry about it for a while.... but "a while" is the problem.

 

Caches have this strange habit of being Disabled or Archived. It's no real fun to look for a cache that isn't there.

With 'stale' data, that is what you'll have -- caches that aren't there or don't exist -- not to mention new caches that were placed since your last PQ, say like two or three months prior.

 

Just because your unit will hold 10,000 caches, doesn't mean that you have to load it full. In fact, you are better off to not fill it up, but rather just keep it "refreshed" with areas that you know or believe that you will have immediate access to, leaving room for an impromptu Query for those spur-of-the-moment trips.

 

Old data is bad data. If you like it, go ahead and (try to) use it.

[Iceman 88]

hey thanks for the thoughts .. ive jus made a PQ for a 1000 caches in and around christchurh city ..PQ around a central cache is the strategy i used.. hunting city by city seem like the way to go. so wen im about to goto the next city i will run another PQ for the next 1000 around there. this way the data might stay current

[+wolf9545]

I did something similar for the NY state area. My PQ's are setup so they all are from my house, go out 100 miles (figured that would be the farthest we would travel in one day), return results for caches that I didn't find AND are enabled. The first PQ starts from Jan 1st of the first year you can choose and goes out until it hits around 980. Then the next one starts on the next day and continues until it hits around 980 caches again. It repeats unit I go up to December 31st of the last year that you can choose.

 

Basically what I do is like what the first replier states. I then tell the PQ's to run on a certain day then un-check them self (not delete) so I can run them later. After a few weeks (about 2) I re-check the day of the week I want them to run on and re-load my GPSr. The main reason I do it this way instead of just loading a few caches on the unit is if we are out somewhere we can just turn on the GPSr and say "hey, there is some caches around here, lets do them".

[Iceman 88]

I did something similar for the NY state area. My PQ's are setup so they all are from my house, go out 100 miles (figured that would be the farthest we would travel in one day), return results for caches that I didn't find AND are enabled. The first PQ starts from Jan 1st of the first year you can choose and goes out until it hits around 980. Then the next one starts on the next day and continues until it hits around 980 caches again. It repeats unit I go up to December 31st of the last year that you can choose.

 

Basically what I do is like what the first replier states. I then tell the PQ's to run on a certain day then un-check them self (not delete) so I can run them later. After a few weeks (about 2) I re-check the day of the week I want them to run on and re-load my GPSr. The main reason I do it this way instead of just loading a few caches on the unit is if we are out somewhere we can just turn on the GPSr and say "hey, there is some caches around here, lets do them".

 

yup .. thats wat i was going for.. but i fly around quiet a bit so sometimes im in the north island sometimes in the south

so jus working out an efficent PQ

[+Lowther Gang]

Ive been running a PQ just the once (no days entered) for 100 caches around the town im visiting.

 

I load them onto my Etrex 20 and away i go, do as many as i can whilst im there and do the same thing again with the next area im looking to visit.