Missing Trackables-Part 05, Last-Log Locations vs Trackable Activity

[+shellbadger]

There are probably many ways to express trackable activity, but I will use a combination of drops achieved, miles traveled, trackable age, and rate of travel calculated as drops per year. When possible, the averages for each of these variables for each location were calculated and displayed in the Location vs Activity table below.

 

At the bottom of the table are the minimum and maximum values observed. The minimums are all zeros because trackables went missing from the cache into which they were released. Trackable TB2REBJ achieved 67 drops. It was released in Amsterdam, Netherlands in April, 2010 and went missing in December, 2019, in Wales, UK. It was also the oldest trackable at 9.66 years. The most miles traveled by one of my missing bugs (99,450) was by TB6QNHK. It was released near Flomot, Texas in July of 2015 and went missing in Tallinn, Estonia, in August of 2019, after 10 drops. None of these maximums are records as I have other active trackables, as well as have handled trackables belonging to others, that exceed all the values.

 

Refer back to the body of the table. Obviously, no averages can be calculated for those locations having only a single value.  Furthermore, I would not draw serious conclusions from locations having only a few last-logs. Thus, I prepared another table excluding all locations have fewer than five last logs. Then, I ranked the locations by the number of drops achieved (see the Ranked Activity table below).

 

As is stated in earlier posts, the reader should not assume the location where the trackable went missing is where all the travel occurred. For example, at the top of the list, there are five trackables that went missing in Sweden, TB3EZPC, TB4085X, TB4Y401, TB6C9TN and TB6CGWZ. All were released in Texas and all spent time in Germany at some point. Belgium and the Netherlands were other prominent drop locations. Still other drop locations were variously Austria, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, Portugal and Switzerland. None had their non-US travel confined to one country.

 

The blue cells are the locations and numbers (in parentheses) of released trackables. In every instance except in Belgium and the US, there were net gains in trackable numbers over those released there. A large portion of the trackables released in Belgium were at a Mega attended by traveling cachers and those trackables quickly dispersed beyond that country's borders. 

 

The chief takeaway from scanning the rankings is that the missing trackables in the United States scored last in all four of the activity measurables (the orange cells). All locations but adjacent Canada averaged twice to five times the number of drops and miles achieved. It is nearly the same for the rate of movement (drops per year). As for the average trackable age when they went missing, in the US they lasted 1.31 years, whereas there are no locations elsewhere with average longevity at less than two years…there are six locations with averages over three years.

 

I always notice where my trackables are, but where they end up is less important to me than their activity. That said, I have learned that where trackables go missing can reveal a quite a lot about their activity. These data suggest that, on average, trackables that remain in the US (or perhaps even get to the US) will be far less active, by any measure, than those that travel almost anywhere else.

 

In the next post I will try to identify some of my best-performing trackables.