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Guest metro

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Guest metro

Please try not to be offended, but in my area letter boxers sometimes seem to not understand geocaching , at least they way I do. We have letter boxers that hide their caches in a library, bookstore, church parking lot, etc.. These are not true caches, as you can not leave something, take something, and you have to stop and tell or ask someone what you are doing and ask permission. I prefer woodsy locations and scenic views. Does anyone else have opinions on this or experience that is similar to mine?

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Guest Scout

For those who not overly partial to woodsy locations and scenic views, it does seem that geocaching does suffer from one handicap that letterboxing doesn't. That is, geocaching does seem to be dependent on picking a spot at which you can get a good GPS read. That pretty much rules out inside buildings. Or does it? Does anyone have any advice on how to get a lon/lat determination good enough for geocaching in a spot without a clear view of the sky?

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Guest Mike_Teague

Yes it does suffer from that, it was originally designed with that drawback. Geocaching was originally created as, and still is a _GPS_ based activity...

 

If you cant get a good GPS fix, then it aint a good Geocaching location... period! It might be a good letterbox site, or a degree confluence, a viewpoint, a cool spot, etc... But it aint necessarily a good Geocaching spot!

 

Buildings? no!

Caves? no!

Tunnels? no!

Underwater? no!

Thick Forests? no!

Anywhere you cant get a good (<2DOP) fix? no!

 

Geocaching was originally created to exploit the features of the Global Positioning System... In particular, the ability to locate a specific (perhaps 10 meter square) location with repeatable accuracy. That location was supposed to actually _locate something_....

 

Letterboxing has been around for one or two hundred years... If you want to play a Letterboxing type game, play Letterboxing... www.letterboxing.org

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Guest Mike_Teague

I know it _can_ work that way, but then I was somewhat disturbed by the Offset cache idea when it was first used by Mr. Ulmer back in may or june of last year.....

 

I always figured the coordinates were the most important feature of a geocache.. if you cant get reliable coordinates, then you need to create a puzzle for someone to solve... that is more like letterboxing...

 

the advantage we have, is we have more geocaches in this country than letterboxes.

 

we've been doing _something_ right..

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Guest Scout

From the www.geocaching.com FAQ, "Where are caches found? ... An underwater cache may only be accessed by scuba. ... Caches may be located in cities both above and below ground, inside and outside buildings."

 

So, it sounds like Mike is right when he says, "I always figured the coordinates were the most important feature of a geocache" but he's not quite so right when he says, "If you cant get a good GPS fix, then it aint a good Geocaching location... period!"

 

So, back to my original question, how do you get good coordinates inside a building, or in a cave, or underwater?

 

That raises the question of what role elevation plays in geocaching? Even if we leave buildings and caves out of it, what if I hide a cache up in a tall tree? Or halfway up the Eiffel Tower? Lat/Lon will pin it down to a small patch of ground, but possibly a huge volume of space.

 

I'm new to this, guys, so bear with me as I work through these questions that I'm sure have been all thrashed out before.

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Guest jeremy

You can get coordinates inside buildings (sometimes), but there really isn't a good strategy for doing this, unless you're really good at math and maps. I'd definitely suggest going the route of say, having the person locate a street sign (or other sign), then be creative - take some visible cues you know won't go away, and use them to "puzzle out" the next location (or somewhere "inside")

 

I won't go into letterboxing too much. Suffice it to say that the original intent of Letterboxing is for it to be a "high brow" sport, not for the unwashed masses. We encourage sharing experiences, Letterboxing enjoys the secretive nature of the sport. Tomato, tomato.

 

Jeremy

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Guest peter

quote:
Originally posted by jeremy:

You can get coordinates inside buildings (sometimes), but there really isn't a good strategy for doing this


 

Many (most?) GPSRs will let you locate a new waypoint by specifying a distance and direction (bearing) from an existing waypoint. So mark a waypoint just outside the building and measure the straightline distance from that point to the cache as accurately as possible and take a compass bearing, then create a new waypoint at that distance and bearing.

Or you could just give the coordinates of the point outside the building and also give the bearing and distance from there to the cache.

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Guest wtmrn

On the letter boxing issue, I have been to most of the St Louis area letter box/geocache locations. Virtually none of these sites adhere to the suggested standards of cache placement, one was buried. almost all are in glad sandwich containers, so there is no room for anything but a logbook and a stamp. Several were on private property with no way to tell who the owner is. I am sure this may be fun for the letter boxers, I as a geocacher do not find them fun. They also clutter up my not found section if I don't go get them.

 

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