Why not a Pocket Query of a whole country?

[+Laird McKai]

You plan your holidays well. Going for example to Scotland to travel around you thought of everything. You have checked the map and downloaded lots of different PQ to cover the whole area.

But there you are now in the middle of somewhere and there is a geocache, but it is not marked on your GPS. It is missing in your list. What went wrong?

 

Have you ever experienced THE GAP?

 

I did - several times! That is frustrating especially if there is no wifi or 3-4G around to compensate.

 

It would be such much easier if you could download a PQ of a whole country in one go! Imagine all the caches in your GPS.

 

No more gaps, no caches missing.

 

Some might say they plan their caching holidays well and are not in trouble, but there is chaps like me who go on holiday and then look around if there is a cache near by. No. I am not planning to search all of them!

Some might say their GPS can only run a certain amount of caches and therefore they are limited, but lets face it GPX is old fashion, GGZ-file is what counts and with GGZ you can cover more than one country.

 

Groundspeak it is up to you to solve that problem! I for my part pay my Premium Member every year, but would not hesitate to download a PQ Scotland, Germany, France etc. at extra costs before I go on holiday.

 

I guess a lot of you will support my idea.

 

I'm looking forward to read your response.

[RuideAlmeida]

Depending on the size of the country and the limitation of the results amount on a PQ, is possible.

On the search page, define the country as a whole, when the results page open choose "Map this location"... on the map page, on the left bottom, above "Set map preferences", choose "Save as Pocket Query", by instance.

Edited June 14, 2015 by RuideAlmeida

[+Mausebiber]

This brings up two questions:

 

1. How do you know that there is a gap? You do not have the cache on your GPSr and you don't have Internet, so how do you know?

2. Even if you have all cache of the whole world now on your GPSr, tomorrow there will be hundreds of gaps of new published cache. What are you gone do about this shortfall?

 

Do you know project-gc?

http://project-gc.com/User/Login

 

See http://project-gc.com/Tools/PQSplit to download a whole country.

 

Greetings

MB

[+NYPaddleCacher]

Depending on the size of the country and the limitation of the results amount on a PQ, is possible.

On the search page, define the country as a whole, when the results page open choose "Map this location"... on the map page, on the left bottom, above "Set map preferences", choose "Save as Pocket Query", by instance.

 

When selecting a country (Italy, for example) using the new search page, it will show something like "Showing 1,000 of 15,000+ results", When you use the "Map these Results" link, the displayed map does not have a "Save as a Pocket Query" link. In order to see that link you have to click on the "Clear Search Filters" link, which then shows caches outside the country.

In the case of the OPs request, Scotland isn't listed as a distinct country (though Northern Scotland and Southern Scotland can be selected as regions).

 

Personally, I can't imagine how being able to create a PQ which includes every cache in Scotland, France, or Germany for a holiday trip is all that useful. It's not like someone is going to find even a small fraction of all the caches in a countries with as many caches as these countries do, even in a lifetime. The number of caches we can download per PQ, and the number of PQs available is, IMHO, more than enough for the purposes of actually finding caches.

[+narcissa]

Why stop with one country? I want all the caches in my GPS just in case.

[+Walts Hunting]

It is pretty simple to take a netbook and do PQs along the way or even an Android phone or tablet to run and download them to then attach the GPS and load them up. It also means the data is current, not days old.

 

There is alo Project-GC which only took me 10 minutes to get all 8114 caches in Ireland downloaded to my tablet and from there if I wanted on to my GPS. For some reason I couldn't find Scotland (or even England) listed but it has to be there under some other name.

 

I don't think your situation is common enough to warrant a great deal of time by the GS staff. There are things that are more needed by the wider community.

 

Spock "The needs of the many, not the few."

[+NYPaddleCacher]

It is pretty simple to take a netbook and do PQs along the way or even an Android phone or tablet to run and download them to then attach the GPS and load them up. It also means the data is current, not days old.

 

There is alo Project-GC which only took me 10 minutes to get all 8114 caches in Ireland downloaded to my tablet and from there if I wanted on to my GPS. For some reason I couldn't find Scotland (or even England) listed but it has to be there under some other name.

 

That's because Scotland, England, and Wales are not recognized as distinct countries, but instead as part of the UK. It's not just the Groundspeak list of countries either. The U.N geopolitical ontology nor does the ISO-3166 country codes standard list them as distinct countries.

 

Taking along a laptop and downloading PQs as needed is a good suggestion as long as you can find a wi-fi connection. When Geocaching while on holiday or traveling on business it really helps to pre-plan as much as possible. Created PQs (but don't schedule them) for all the areas where you'll be traveling and run them when necessary. Download all the maps you might need beforehand and translated cache listings if necessary before leaving home. I don't try to find every cache while at home and even less so while traveling.

 

 

[+The Leprechauns]

If you're experiencing "gaps" in your pocket query coverage, then I'm betting you are constructing your pocket queries based on radius searches. You should be querying for all caches in a country, state, province or region, separated by placement date. (This assumes you're not using the official smartphone apps.)

 

I maintain GSAK databases for much of the northeastern and midwest states, and extending south all the way to the Carolinas -- anything within a day's driving range. Once I download the pocket queries in GSAK, I use the API to "refresh" previously downloaded caches, at the rate of 6000 caches per day, while also downloading pocket queries at the rate of 10,000 caches per day. And, by defining my original searches through pocket queries, I can exclude caches I don't want to hunt, such as puzzle caches, Wherigo caches and disabled caches. A GPX file for an entire state or region would return caches in which I'm not interested.

[+Walts Hunting]

Thanks for the info. It does show UK and the N and S Scotland. So you can get the whole country there. It appears there is a 10,000 limit so you would have to do the eight counties (of what ever they are called there) individually. But it can be done

[+The A-Team]

...but lets face it GPX is old fashion, GGZ-file is what counts and with GGZ you can cover more than one country.

Tell that to anyone not using one of the Garmin Oregon 600 series, Monterra or GPSMAP 64 series and see what kind of response you get.

[+Laird McKai]

This brings up two questions:

 

1. How do you know that there is a gap? You do not have the cache on your GPSr and you don't have Internet, so how do you know?

2. Even if you have all cache of the whole world now on your GPSr, tomorrow there will be hundreds of gaps of new published cache. What are you gone do about this shortfall?

 

Do you know project-gc?

http://project-gc.com/User/Login

 

See http://project-gc.com/Tools/PQSplit to download a whole country.

 

Greetings

MB

 

At the moment my data is hidden from Project-GC. The reason for that is that my GC acount statistics are hidden, but you could us Project-GC to check my statistic. This was done once by a chap to proof a found of mine of one of his challenge caches. To stick to privacy I therefore asked to be deleted from Project-GC. The PQ-Split tool on the other hand seems to be interesting. I'm thinking about it.

[+gpsblake]

I can see them not wanting to strain their servers by people running pocket queries containing 10,000s of caches...

 

But why not though a daily or weekly gpx file for PM by state/Provence/region that is generated by Groundspeak for PM to download that doesn't require one to run a PQ? Might even take a lot of pressure of the servers by allowing users to do the sorting themselves from the data rather then multiple pocket queries being run.

[+Laird McKai]

This brings up two questions:

 

1. How do you know that there is a gap? You do not have the cache on your GPSr and you don't have Internet, so how do you know?

2. Even if you have all cache of the whole world now on your GPSr, tomorrow there will be hundreds of gaps of new published cache. What are you gone do about this shortfall?

 

Do you know project-gc?

http://project-gc.com/User/Login

 

See http://project-gc.com/Tools/PQSplit to download a whole country.

 

Greetings

MB

 

To answer your question: Have you ever checked an area you visited as soon your are in reach of 3 or 4 G? Oh, there was a cache there as well. What a pity! Or imagine you prefer caching with your GPS and discover a gap. Hard work to type the coords in the GPS, much easier mit GGZ.

 

Good idea with project-gc. So far I ignored that programme, but the offered posibility to get what I'm looking for changed my mind. I can choose an area or a country and set which kind of caches I like to look for in PQSplit. But where is the start button? How can I get PQSplit running?

I have no idea and the FAQ in project-gc is without a search possibility.

[+Laird McKai]

If you're experiencing "gaps" in your pocket query coverage, then I'm betting you are constructing your pocket queries based on radius searches. You should be querying for all caches in a country, state, province or region, separated by placement date. (This assumes you're not using the official smartphone apps.)

 

I maintain GSAK databases for much of the northeastern and midwest states, and extending south all the way to the Carolinas -- anything within a day's driving range. Once I download the pocket queries in GSAK, I use the API to "refresh" previously downloaded caches, at the rate of 6000 caches per day, while also downloading pocket queries at the rate of 10,000 caches per day. And, by defining my original searches through pocket queries, I can exclude caches I don't want to hunt, such as puzzle caches, Wherigo caches and disabled caches. A GPX file for an entire state or region would return caches in which I'm not interested.

 

Thank you for your answer.

I'm doing a radius search. In my PQ settings I have eliminated all the caches I don't want to find. All my PQs go into GSAK to form a GGZ.

I delete the GSAK file every fortnight or so and start building it again. That keeps the amount of "dead" caches small and my GGZ is almost up to date considering you can run 70 PQ a week.

 

I still think it would be much easier if I could download a whole country or area, especially if you could adapt the settings like you can do with an ordinary PQ.

[+MartyBartfast]

I can choose an area or a country and set which kind of caches I like to look for in PQSplit. But where is the start button? How can I get PQSplit running?

I have no idea and the FAQ in project-gc is without a search possibility.

 

That's not how it works. When you select your country/region and hit the button it just gives you a list of start and end dates, you must then go to geocaching.com and create PQs selecting the "placed between" dates option and specifying those start and end dates, you then have a list of 1000 cache PQs which will return all the caches in your chosen area.

[+on4bam]

I delete the GSAK file every fortnight or so and start building it again. That keeps the amount of "dead" caches small and my GGZ is almost up to date considering you can run 70 PQ a week.

 

You know you can do a "status check" on your database? That way you can delete/move archived caches away from your active db.

 

I run 25 PQ's (split by placed date)every week in order to keep the 23K+ database Belgian database up to date. Every Monday I run a status check on the database ans move archived caches to my "achived" db. Also, after a cachingday, found caches go to the "found" database where I keep all info found during multi's and the way mysteries were solved.

The day before a cachingtrip I update the selected caches by "refreshing" them through the API, grab images and send the GGZ file and images to my Oregon 600.

[+nwaman]

I delete the GSAK file every fortnight or so and start building it again. That keeps the amount of "dead" caches small and my GGZ is almost up to date considering you can run 70 PQ a week.

 

You know you can do a "status check" on your database? That way you can delete/move archived caches away from your active db.

 

I run 25 PQ's (split by placed date)every week in order to keep the 23K+ database Belgian database up to date. Every Monday I run a status check on the database ans move archived caches to my "achived" db. Also, after a cachingday, found caches go to the "found" database where I keep all info found during multi's and the way mysteries were solved.

The day before a cachingtrip I update the selected caches by "refreshing" them through the API, grab images and send the GGZ file and images to my Oregon 600.

[+nwaman]

I just downloaded 3500 caches through gsak using the rectangle on the map, How would I set this up to refresh on a weekly basis? Thanks

[+Walts Hunting]

At the bottom of the get caches there is a save button. Save the search and run it manually each week. There is no way to run it automatically.

[+nwaman]

Thanks for the quick reply,I did notice the save button but didnt know why I would save it Now I know, I also have another related question,I downloaded a PQ yesterday and went caching,I found several caches,so this morning I went to the geocaching button in gsak and clicked" check" the database for that query,nothing appeared that shows that I found to delete. So then I went back and checked "refresh" and the caches I found yesterday were still in the database.

Maybe because I did not save the search originally. Is there a way to go back and save it,or should I just make another one.

thanks Gary

[+FunnyNose]

...but lets face it GPX is old fashion, GGZ-file is what counts and with GGZ you can cover more than one country.

Tell that to anyone not using one of the Garmin Oregon 600 series, Monterra or GPSMAP 64 series and see what kind of response you get.

 

Garmin POIs give me many caches (at least 80,000) on a 62s

[+fizzymagic]

I delete the GSAK file every fortnight or so and start building it again. That keeps the amount of "dead" caches small and my GGZ is almost up to date considering you can run 70 PQ a week.

 

So much fail. So little time.

 

GSAK is a database. To maintain a database, you do not delete it every couple of weeks. You update the records in it.

 

I still think it would be much easier if I could download a whole country or area, especially if you could adapt the settings like you can do with an ordinary PQ.

 

So in other words you want geocaching.com to provide you big offline databases. Not gonna happen.

 

Learn how to use GSAK properly and I believe you will have no trouble maintaining the number of caches you need.

[+JL_HSTRE]

You're not going to have time to find them all even if you have them all in your GPS.

[+OlaHansson]

Hi!

 

I have been thinking about downloading from FTP.

It should be possible to create a FTP-server with all caches.

 

You log in and could for example click on Germany and then choose what states you want to download.

Picked directley from the server and the number of PQ's would go down and that should be a lot less work for the servers.

 

We have bought an old mobilehome and are going for a roadtrip in europe this summer.

Probably we are going to Germany (GIGA event), France (24h Lemans race), Luxenburg, Belgium, Netherlands and Denmark before returning to Sweden.

Thats the general idea but it might change and the exact routes are unknown so far...

So an FTP-server to coose country o states would make it a lot easier instead of lots of PQ's cover the whole area.

[+baloo&bd]

I delete the GSAK file every fortnight or so and start building it again. That keeps the amount of "dead" caches small and my GGZ is almost up to date considering you can run 70 PQ a week.

 

So much fail. So little time.

 

GSAK is a database. To maintain a database, you do not delete it every couple of weeks. You update the records in it.

 

I still think it would be much easier if I could download a whole country or area, especially if you could adapt the settings like you can do with an ordinary PQ.

 

So in other words you want geocaching.com to provide you big offline databases. Not gonna happen.

 

Learn how to use GSAK properly and I believe you will have no trouble maintaining the number of caches you need.

 

I agree, I maintain a database of about 180 Miles around my home near Chicago. Each query runs once a week. I have a filter set up to show caches that do not have an update from the GPX in the last 7 days, those are the caches that are archived and I delete those and keep the database and log history.

[+fizzymagic]

Hi!

 

I have been thinking about downloading from FTP.

It should be possible to create a FTP-server with all caches.

 

Sorry. Violates the geocaching.com terms of use that you agreed to when you got a username on the site.

[+on4bam]

Hi!

 

I have been thinking about downloading from FTP.

It should be possible to create a FTP-server with all caches.

 

Sorry. Violates the geocaching.com terms of use that you agreed to when you got a username on the site.

 

Not necessarily.

Using GSAK you can export the chosen caches from each country database as GGZ/GPX and upload them to an FTP server for later retrieval.

As long as you don't share the data there's no problem.

Filling a database can be done at a rate of 16000 caches per day (10*1000 caches/PQ + 6000 via API)

The real problem is keeping the data up-to-date.

[+Happy Humphrey]

You're not going to have time to find them all even if you have them all in your GPS.

I think that you're missing the point. You need them all so that you can find any of them on a whim (not all of them).

Edited January 27, 2016 by Happy Humphrey

[+NYPaddleCacher]

You're not going to have time to find them all even if you have them all in your GPS.

I think that you're missing the point. You need them all so that you can find any of them on a whim (not all of them).

 

Sorry, not buying it.

 

Even if someone goes caching somewhere outside their local area on a whim, it's easy to create a PQ that covers the area where they'll be traveling. I suspect that it would be extremely rare for someone living in, for example, California to get up one morning, go to the airport and buy a ticket for a flight to New York to do some geocaching.

 

Personally, I think that having a database with every cache in a country is more of a novelty that something that serves a useful purpose. I can only imagine the load it would put on the GS servers if everyone could create a PQ for an entire country (and there would be nothing to stop them from creating PQs for multiple countries). The system would get clobbered generating huge PQ results and those that just wanted to create a PQ of a few hundred caches in their local area would have their request competing with someone that "needed" to have a PQ of the million plus caches in the U.S.

 

 

 

[+The Jester]

You're not going to have time to find them all even if you have them all in your GPS.

I think that you're missing the point. You need them all so that you can find any of them on a whim (not all of them).

 

Sorry, not buying it.

 

Even if someone goes caching somewhere outside their local area on a whim, it's easy to create a PQ that covers the area where they'll be traveling. I suspect that it would be extremely rare for someone living in, for example, California to get up one morning, go to the airport and buy a ticket for a flight to New York to do some geocaching.

 

Personally, I think that having a database with every cache in a country is more of a novelty that something that serves a useful purpose. I can only imagine the load it would put on the GS servers if everyone could create a PQ for an entire country (and there would be nothing to stop them from creating PQs for multiple countries). The system would get clobbered generating huge PQ results and those that just wanted to create a PQ of a few hundred caches in their local area would have their request competing with someone that "needed" to have a PQ of the million plus caches in the U.S.

It's not so easy as you say when you're traveling for several weeks at a time, with only a general route in mind (two different trips last year: 10 weeks, 15,000 miles and 7 weeks 10-12,000 miles). Our actual route was never known until we took it, or how far we'd get each day, or where we'd stay the night. We had distractions (we called them 'squirrels' after the move "UP") that could change our route instantly - one took us a day and half to do. How do you plan PQ's for that? I didn't keep a complete DB of each state, just the most favored caches - but often we were in places that had none of those. While I could (sometimes depending on if we had cell data) use GDAK to find caches in the area (worked best if we were to be stopped for bit, like rest areas), most of the time we didn't want to take the time to find wifi, define a PQ and wait for to be sent, so we didn't cache then.

 

Personally, I don't think a country wide PQ is a good thing - especially with a country the size of the US - but I can see why someone wants/needs more than what a couple PQ's will give them.

[+MartyBartfast]

 

Even if someone goes caching somewhere outside their local area on a whim, it's easy to create a PQ that covers the area where they'll be traveling. I suspect that it would be extremely rare for someone living in, for example, California to get up one morning, go to the airport and buy a ticket for a flight to New York to do some geocaching.

 

I think that's a very narrow case you're using there. If you were coming to the UK for a 2/3 week holiday and might be travelling round then you would have a job to create PQs to cover anywhere you might go - a 1000 PQ centred on my house has a radius of 8 miles, so you'd need to know pretty precisely where you're going to be based and how far you might be travelling on a daily basis

 

Personally, I think that having a database with every cache in a country is more of a novelty that something that serves a useful purpose. I can only imagine the load it would put on the GS servers if everyone could create a PQ for an entire country (and there would be nothing to stop them from creating PQs for multiple countries).

 

One suggestion which has been made in the past is that the country PQs could be system generated on a weekly basis and we would be able to pull down the ready made PQs rather than generating them ourselves.

 

Having said all that it's not something I really need, and I'd rather see the coding effort put into other aspects of PQs, and I can't see GS going for it anyway.

[+NYPaddleCacher]

You're not going to have time to find them all even if you have them all in your GPS.

I think that you're missing the point. You need them all so that you can find any of them on a whim (not all of them).

 

Sorry, not buying it.

 

Even if someone goes caching somewhere outside their local area on a whim, it's easy to create a PQ that covers the area where they'll be traveling. I suspect that it would be extremely rare for someone living in, for example, California to get up one morning, go to the airport and buy a ticket for a flight to New York to do some geocaching.

 

Personally, I think that having a database with every cache in a country is more of a novelty that something that serves a useful purpose. I can only imagine the load it would put on the GS servers if everyone could create a PQ for an entire country (and there would be nothing to stop them from creating PQs for multiple countries). The system would get clobbered generating huge PQ results and those that just wanted to create a PQ of a few hundred caches in their local area would have their request competing with someone that "needed" to have a PQ of the million plus caches in the U.S.

It's not so easy as you say when you're traveling for several weeks at a time, with only a general route in mind (two different trips last year: 10 weeks, 15,000 miles and 7 weeks 10-12,000 miles). Our actual route was never known until we took it, or how far we'd get each day, or where we'd stay the night. We had distractions (we called them 'squirrels' after the move "UP") that could change our route instantly - one took us a day and half to do. How do you plan PQ's for that? I didn't keep a complete DB of each state, just the most favored caches - but often we were in places that had none of those. While I could (sometimes depending on if we had cell data) use GDAK to find caches in the area (worked best if we were to be stopped for bit, like rest areas), most of the time we didn't want to take the time to find wifi, define a PQ and wait for to be sent, so we didn't cache then.

 

How many people travel like you did for several weeks at a time? I suspect that it's such a small number that the benefit of having an entire country as a PQ isn't worth the cost in performance.

 

As I see it, Groundspeaks bread and butter is the large database of cache data. If people could just download extremely large portions of that data (more caches than they could find in a lifetime) they would never visit the site.

 

Instead of building some sort of feature which allows periodic country wide data dumps I would much rather they spent development efforts on fixing the search mechanism. The "New Search Tool" was released almost a year ago and we still don't have the ability to download results of the search in bulk either via a PQ or sending the results to a list. Meanwhile, we still have the old search page, which only allows to search by cache name with characters at the beginning of the cache title.

 

 

[+on4bam]

How many people travel like you did for several weeks at a time? I suspect that it's such a small number that the benefit of having an entire country as a PQ isn't worth the cost in performance.

 

We drove to Denmark in 2012 (3 week tour) and I had all Danish caches in my GSAK database with me. Since we plan well ahead I had PQ's by date to cover the 27000+ caches. I started to solve mysteries months in advance and updated the database on a regular basis. Since we covered the whole country we also "needed" all of the caches.

Last October/November we were in Tasmania and part of Victoria (4 week tour), again, we "needed" all Tasmanian caches as we stayed in 10 different places all over the state and another 6 in Victoria.

 

Whenever we had free WiFi we updated as many caches as possible for the areas we still had to visit.

 

As I see it, Groundspeaks bread and butter is the large database of cache data. If people could just download extremely large portions of that data (more caches than they could find in a lifetime) they would never visit the site.

 

Huh? Have you seen the amount of new caches every week and how many get archived. I wouldn't go out with an old database, ever.

At this time I have 25000+ unfound Belgian caches in my database and 21000+ unfound archived Belgian caches. Imagine downloading and not visiting the site afterwards .. what do you think the amount of DNFs would be after a while not knowing if a caches if temporary unavailable/archived had it's coordinates updated?

[+MartyBartfast]

How many people travel like you did for several weeks at a time? I suspect that it's such a small number that the benefit of having an entire country as a PQ isn't worth the cost in performance.

I didn't, I was just postulating an example.

 

As I see it, Groundspeaks bread and butter is the large database of cache data. If people could just download extremely large portions of that data (more caches than they could find in a lifetime) they would never visit the site.

 

Instead of building some sort of feature which allows periodic country wide data dumps I would much rather they spent development efforts on fixing the search mechanism. The "New Search Tool" was released almost a year ago and we still don't have the ability to download results of the search in bulk either via a PQ or sending the results to a list. Meanwhile, we still have the old search page, which only allows to search by cache name with characters at the beginning of the cache title.

 

I pretty much agree with this bit, and I personally have no desire for country wide PQs.

[+on4bam]

and I personally have no desire for country wide PQs.

 

Depends on the country

All Belgian caches are within a 2 hour drive / maximum 200 Km.

[+The A-Team]

How many people travel like you did for several weeks at a time? I suspect that it's such a small number that the benefit of having an entire country as a PQ isn't worth the cost in performance.

We drove to Denmark in 2012 (3 week tour) and I had all Danish caches in my GSAK database with me. Since we plan well ahead I had PQ's by date to cover the 27000+ caches. I started to solve mysteries months in advance and updated the database on a regular basis. Since we covered the whole country we also "needed" all of the caches.

Last October/November we were in Tasmania and part of Victoria (4 week tour), again, we "needed" all Tasmanian caches as we stayed in 10 different places all over the state and another 6 in Victoria.

Were these unstructured trips where the route and locations weren't known ahead of time and you were changing things on-the-go, or were these more structured trips where you knew where you'd be going? If it was the latter, then you didn't "need" all of the caches. You only needed the caches in the areas/along the routes you'd be visiting.

 

What NYPaddleCacher is getting at is that the number of people who have absolutely no idea where they'll be going is much smaller than the number of people who know in advance where they'll be going. If you know in advance, you don't need caches outside of the areas you'll be visiting, so a country-wide PQ would be unnecessary and wasteful. For the relatively small number of people who are aimlessly wandering, they need to put in a bit of extra effort to cover any potential area they might visit.

[+on4bam]

Were these unstructured trips where the route and locations weren't known ahead of time and you were changing things on-the-go, or were these more structured trips where you knew where you'd be going? If it was the latter, then you didn't "need" all of the caches. You only needed the caches in the areas/along the routes you'd be visiting.

 

Take a look at the map and you'll see that in a country like Denmark (the same goes for Tasmania, btw) you"re never far away from anything if you stay in many places. So eventhough our holidays are always well planned there are times we take a different route, drop places we planned on seeing to do something else. It would be a lot more work to leave the not visited areas out than just load them all. Looking at our Danish founds they are well spread out on the map and even were we have no founds we did drive but lacked time. Caches along a route would not have cut it.

[+The Jester]

How many people travel like you did for several weeks at a time? I suspect that it's such a small number that the benefit of having an entire country as a PQ isn't worth the cost in performance.

 

As I see it, Groundspeaks bread and butter is the large database of cache data. If people could just download extremely large portions of that data (more caches than they could find in a lifetime) they would never visit the site.

 

Instead of building some sort of feature which allows periodic country wide data dumps I would much rather they spent development efforts on fixing the search mechanism. The "New Search Tool" was released almost a year ago and we still don't have the ability to download results of the search in bulk either via a PQ or sending the results to a list. Meanwhile, we still have the old search page, which only allows to search by cache name with characters at the beginning of the cache title.

As the years pass I think you'll see more and more US cachers who will retire and travel. I know of a number of local cachers who travel long ways across the country for vacations. The number of travelling cachers may not be a hugh segment, but it's growing.

 

I've talked to many visitors to the Seattle area who are here in the States for several weeks (a lot of coutries give workers more than the classic 2 weeks vacation here). Even if they only hit a couple of states, that's a lot of caches to sift thru - more than a couple of quick PQ will cover.

 

So I don't buy your "easy" way to cover the area of travel. As an example, when I update my home area (just south of Seattle) it takes 6 PQs to cover 25 miles - about a half hour drive - and that's with a few thousand finds within that araa. How is a visitor supossed to "create a PQ for the area they are traveling" just before they leave when it takes a lot of planning to get this area covered? And with GC HQ here, a lot of visitors stop by here.

 

This summer we'll be in the UK (our 40th anniversary is close to the Wales Mega) for about 5 weeks and while we have some stops planned, a lot of the visit will be seeing what we find along unknown routes while travelling to the next area of interest. Again, lots of work to get caches there.

 

But like I said, I'm not a fan of country wide PQ's, but more tools to make the job easier would be nice. The API with third party programs is a help (I use GSAK) but it's still limited when you look at the nubmer of caches that are out there when travelling.