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How far off was a cache from the coordinates that you had?


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How far off was a cache from the coordinates that you had? If you are at ground zero per say, about how far away was the cache from the coordinates?

 

And..............If you did find the cache (and let's say it was far from ground zero) how did you end up finding it!?

 

Looking for real world experiences to help the learning process, thanks :)

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Edited by deeznutzs
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How far off was a cache from the coordinates that you had? If you are at ground zero per say, about how far away was the cache from the coordinates?

 

And..............If you did find the cache (and let's say it was far from ground zero) how did you end up finding it!?

 

All depends on how sure you are about the cache coordinates. For a traditional you must hope the CO made an accurate measurement. Most of the time this is the case and you shouldn't be off more than 5 meters. However, if you're in the woods AND the leafs are wet reception will be degraded and you might be 10-15m off (GPS might send you left and right with no fixed location when you're standig still).

 

If you calculated the coordinates yourself (mystery, multi) and there's no checker there's no way to know how far you're off :lol:

 

We found caches that were 20-30 meter off because most of the time there's something that looks like a good hidingplace or at least a logical place for a cache. Sometimes it's just plain luck.

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I ended up finding one more than 200 feet from GZ and one other more than .10 of a mile from GZ. The first one was just horrible coordinates. Our city park system celebrated its 100th birthday by hiding caches in all of its parks that could hold a cache and this was one of the last ones found. I ended up finding it by applying the clue provided as it was a smaller park and easily walkable. The other one was purely a hunch as GZ was in a farm field and the clue was LPC. Turns out they had transposed a digit when entering the coordinates and my "guess" was right. The HUGE majority of the time (95%) I find myself within 30 feet of the posted coordinates when making a find. The rest of the time it's usually just outside that range.

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The furthest off I've found a cache was half a mile away from it's published co-ords, and I got FTF :-) The cache had been published and a local cacher tried to go to the co-ords which were in the middle of a private field, following his DNF the cache was temporarily disabled but I was pretty certain I knew which path it would be on so I walked the path looking for an item that matched the hint and I found it in less than 10 minutes.

 

After I found it I gave the CO the correct co-ords but when he eventually published it he had moved it to another spot, which made me think there must have been a proximity problem with the original co-ords so I went back again and walked up the path another 161m checking out any likely spots and found the final of a puzzle cache that I hadn't solved so I ended up getting two finds without having the co-ords for either one :-)

 

Under normal circumstances you should reasonably expect the cache to be within about 30ft of where your GPS takes you.

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Are you only interesting in accuracy? A few times I've run into cache with a digit wrong in the posted coordinates. One was early in my career, so I ended up walking right past the cache (and missing the week old FTF opportunity) because the posted coordinates showed it a half mile away. Someone with more experience eventually figured out the posted coordinates couldn't be right and determined the correct location. In a second case, I realized the coordinates were wrong myself and figured out what the mistake had to be, but the hide was too subtle, so I missed the find. The coordinates were corrected the next day.

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I've heard of examples where the coordinates were off by miles/kilometers, generally because the CO's coordinates included a wrong digit somewhere, but the description/hint was specific enough that someone very familiar with the area could figure out the location.

 

The furthest from GZ that I've found a cache was about 150ft. I had solved the puzzle incorrectly, and after searching GZ, I noticed a feature that matched the hint about 150ft away.

 

In another case, after searching GZ fruitlessly, I read the hint (which didn't make sense to me) and read a few past logs. The logs referred to the cache being 50-60ft south of GZ. So I walked 50-60ft south of my GZ and found a feature that matched the hint. Sure enough, there was the cache. The weird thing is that when I took new coordinates at the cache location, my GPSr gave me the same coordinates as the original GZ. In the city, I would have blamed multi-path errors, but on the top of an open grassy hill, I have no idea what caused this anomaly.

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125m (413 feet).

 

After the CO was alerted with the first (and some angry) DNF logs, he then posted a more descriptive hint. First we found a GPS unit, soon later we FTFd the cache nearby.

 

GPS unit was the owner's. No wonder the coordinates were way off... :)

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Nik's First Cache

 

Found this a few days ago. This cache had issues from the day it was published. The CO knew the coords were off and let it be. Later, with a damaged container and NO log book, the CO STILL left it un-maintained <_< . They did try to update the coords at one point, but they were/are still off by about 120'.

 

I'm still amazed no one logged NA before I did. This cache is a perfect example of how NOT to hide and maintain a cache...

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7.2 miles from where the posted coordinates took me. I didn't actually get to ground zero because it was 1/4 mile from the highway.

 

What's weird is... later on I found the container 32 feet from one of my caches when people started reporting my cache was an ammo can rather than the sneaky (but favorited) micro I had hidden in plane sight. It seemed that the newbie cacher liked my spot so much that she put her own cache in the same place.

 

From the new cache description I eventually sused out that it was the one posted 7 miles away. The newbie cache owner never fixed the problem or responded to very friendly and helpful emails so I posted a NA, which happened, and then moved their container 550 feet and made it a new cache.

 

I posted a Note on the bad cache page about what was done and that they could adopt my new cache or simply take back their container at anytime. Of course, no response.

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7.2 miles from where the posted coordinates took me. I didn't actually get to ground zero because it was 1/4 mile from the highway.

 

What's weird is... later on I found the container 32 feet from one of my caches when people started reporting my cache was an ammo can rather than the sneaky (but favorited) micro I had hidden in plane sight. It seemed that the newbie cacher liked my spot so much that she put her own cache in the same place.

 

From the new cache description I eventually sused out that it was the one posted 7 miles away. The newbie cache owner never fixed the problem or responded to very friendly and helpful emails so I posted a NA, which happened, and then moved their container 550 feet and made it a new cache.

 

I posted a Note on the bad cache page about what was done and that they could adopt my new cache or simply take back their container at anytime. Of course, no response.

I thought you're talking about GC11GR4 which I FTFed 21 miles away from the posted coordinates?

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7.2 miles from where the posted coordinates took me. I didn't actually get to ground zero because it was 1/4 mile from the highway.

 

What's weird is... later on I found the container 32 feet from one of my caches when people started reporting my cache was an ammo can rather than the sneaky (but favorited) micro I had hidden in plane sight. It seemed that the newbie cacher liked my spot so much that she put her own cache in the same place.

 

From the new cache description I eventually sused out that it was the one posted 7 miles away. The newbie cache owner never fixed the problem or responded to very friendly and helpful emails so I posted a NA, which happened, and then moved their container 550 feet and made it a new cache.

 

I posted a Note on the bad cache page about what was done and that they could adopt my new cache or simply take back their container at anytime. Of course, no response.

I thought you're talking about GC11GR4 which I FTFed 21 miles away from the posted coordinates?

My farthest find was only two miles from the posted coords :anicute:. That one, from the description, seemed to be by the high school. Others were closer, just beyond the typical Cacher's search radius. When I arrived, veteran cachers had already searched, so I could rule out 30-feet in every direction from GZ. I knew it was beyond that, and the description seemed say the cache was at the sign -- across the street.

 

If the cache spot is in the centerline of the street, suspect that the CO forgot to turn off "Street Routing" when taking the coords. The cache may then be in a straight line parallel to the street, but on either side, and could be quite far from the street.

 

If the cache seems to be a couple of miles away, reverse the last two digits of Lat or Lon, and see where it would take you. That's just a little Fat Finger thing. :laughing:

Edited by kunarion
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7.2 miles from where the posted coordinates took me. I didn't actually get to ground zero because it was 1/4 mile from the highway.

 

I thought you're talking about GC11GR4 which I FTFed 21 miles away from the posted coordinates?

 

Yikes! That's the one! Yes, now that I'm looking at the map it was 21 miles and not 7. Thanks, again, for trying to visit our Snag It (GCHWC6) cache and getting so close. At least you got to log the rogue cache as found.

 

What are the odds that you would be reading my comments on this day and you would be the FTF on that cache??? B)

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7.2 miles from where the posted coordinates took me. I didn't actually get to ground zero because it was 1/4 mile from the highway.

 

I thought you're talking about GC11GR4 which I FTFed 21 miles away from the posted coordinates?

 

Yikes! That's the one! Yes, now that I'm looking at the map it was 21 miles and not 7. Thanks, again, for trying to visit our Snag It (GCHWC6) cache and getting so close. At least you got to log the rogue cache as found.

 

What are the odds that you would be reading my comments on this day and you would be the FTF on that cache??? B)

Indeed!

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Found one .3 miles away. Mostly by the description and hints. And geosense. The CO mentioned a name of a bar. I looked it up on line then the hint said Black, looked at everything black. Then contacted the CO their coords were off.

 

What I don't like is when cachers mention a (traditional) cache is "way off" and don't post better coords. It would be helpful for the next cachers and the CO to fix their coords.

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I'm not sure that this helps with the OP's request to help the "learning process", but as I've posted before, I once got an FTF on a cache where the coords were out by 187km - the placer had put E135 instead of E137.

The rest of the digits in the coords were correct and the cache name was a dead giveaway for a location only about 1km from where I lived!

Perhaps the lesson from this is "always take notice of the cache name and read the cache page"!

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- I logged FTF on a cache which was about 2.8 km from its posted coordinates. The coordinates were quite obviously completely wrong, but with the description, the hint and some knowledge of the roads in the area it wasn't too difficult to find.

- A local power trail started with caches #01, #03, #04 etc. #02 was listed off by about 60 km(!), because the CO had mistyped the longitude as E10° instead of E11°. The cache accumulated hundreds of finds before the coordinates were finally corrected ;) .

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My wife and I tracked one down that was 14 kilometers off, in a different city. We found it based on some clues in the listing, mentioning a park (though they made new up a name for the park). No idea how they were so wrong on that one. However, that was about 20 minutes after a separate cache, by the same owner, that was about 400 feet off.

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