Heat-stressed Oregon 700

[+barefootjeff]

Two days ago, on a partly cloudy and warm day (mid 20s Celsius) I was out caching in bushland. The cache was inside a sandstone cave so I put my backpack, hat and Oregon down on the rock outside while I searched the multitude of potential hiding places in there.

 

 

That search took longer than expected, probably close to half an hour, before I finally spotted the cache, but in that time the cloud had mostly dissipated and the GPSr was in full sun. When I emerged from the cave I was shocked to see that across most of the bottom half of the screen was a big black hole surrounded by coloured fringing.

 

As I made my way back out of the bush, the black hole shrank a bit and by the time I reached my car (about another half an hour) it was down to about a quarter of the screen. I held the GPSr in front of the air conditioning vent while driving around to the next cache (thankfully almost a P&G), but the cool air didn't seem to help much. Later in the day I took a photo of it to post on our local FB group as a warning to others and, with the Oregon series discontinued, started contemplating what I might buy as a replacement.

 

Yesterday morning when I looked at it, the black hole had shrunk further and had reached a point where the device would be mostly useable, and during the day it continued to slowly shrink and was down to about 4mm diameter by the time I went to bed. This morning I was hoping it might have continued to shrink but when I looked the black hole had completely gone, with just a slight brown stain remaining.

 

 

 

The unit is functioning normally, with everything visible on the screen and the touch sensitivity working fine across the affected area. I'm amazed, not only that it recovered from what looked at first like a terminal demise, but also that it took so long to do so. I can't help wondering what the physical process was for its slow self-healing.

 

From now on I'll be much more careful where I leave it at GZ when I go crawling around trying to spot the cache.

[+Viajero Perdido]

Glad it worked out!  I'll bet I know where the hat will land next time.

 

Reminds me of a tale, 7 people squeezed into a brand new Jeep, said vehicle in turn squeezing physically through some trees to reach a distant cache, oops, put a wrinkle in the bumper.  Some frowning involved.  But the next morning, the wrinkle was gone!  Self-healing plastic, I guess.  Some smiling involved. 

 

Edited December 18, 2021 by Viajero Perdido