TBs don't cross the Pacific?

[+Yurt]

I recently moved a few TBs from Australia to Canada and one from Canada to USA to Australia. According to their maps they all travelled from North America across Africa to Australia which is the longest 'direct' route. Of course the TBs went across the Pacific via Los Angeles to Sydney but the map doesn't reflect that and I assume the miles or km on the TBs is somewhat exaggerated. This seems a recent thing as I've moved them before without this happening. Seems like a bug as it should assume the most direct (shortest) route.

 

Anyone see this on other routes?

[+NanCycle]

I recently moved a few TBs from Australia to Canada and one from Canada to USA to Australia. According to their maps they all travelled from North America across Africa to Australia which is the longest 'direct' route. Of course the TBs went across the Pacific via Los Angeles to Sydney but the map doesn't reflect that and I assume the miles or km on the TBs is somewhat exaggerated. This seems a recent thing as I've moved them before without this happening. Seems like a bug as it should assume the most direct (shortest) route.

 

Anyone see this on other routes?

 

That does seem to be the way they travel. This one went from Hawaii to Australia over 5000 miles across south America and Africa.

 

http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?id=4741374&page=2

[+Yurt]

Yes. This is the one I was talking about but it's happened before. I know it didn't happen in the past though.

 

http://www.geocaching.com/track/map_gm.aspx?ID=267700

[+Wet Pancake Touring Club]

I'll bet the problem is the algorithm they are using for distances on trackables does not properly handle crossing the antimeridian (180 degrees from the meridian). You could test this by finding two caches on opposite sides of the antimeridian, and dropping a TB in one, then the other. This problem seems to be limited to trackables, the distance and bearing to a cache on cache pages will cross the antimeridian properly.

 

This looks like a web site bug.

 

Skye.

[+Yurt]

Just found that this old TB of mine is still alive. It also travelled the looooong way from Canada to New Zealand:

http://www.geocaching.com/track/map_gm.aspx?ID=2556428

[SillySailor]

TB3FCZ7 went from Fiji to Tonga in January 2015. The text below the map shows a distance of 475.6mi SE. However, the map shows a route west across australia, the indian ocean, africa, the atlantic ocean, south america and thousands of miles of the pacific ocean.

 

http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?tracker=TB3FCZ7