Geocaching Without Batteries

[Kybra]

I am wondering if anyone has considered Geocaching with a sextant?

Yes it would be a whole lot of work, but if your maths is good it could add a whole different perspective to the experience, especially off star sights...

[+CYBret]

There are plenty of geocachers who don't use GPS's but the majority of them use topo maps and compasses. I've never heard of anyone using a sextant.

 

Maybe I'm wrong, but doesn't a sextant just give you latitude?

 

Bret

[Kybra]

with an accurate time piece and set of tables you can calculate both latitude and longitude. You can also buy cool calculators with all the tables programmed in aparently... but then you need batteries for them.

[+AtoZ]

I don't know how fimular you are with sextant, I have one, but you really can not use one away from a large body of water. Well you can but you need an artifucal harizon and also you can only find you location at specific times un less you doing it at night. It would be far easier to use a topo map and compass and triangulate you position. Sextants only really come into play where there is no physical land marks to find you position by triangulation. Even in the 13+ year I have spent at sea, not in the Navy, you really use a sextant thes days. Our big thing was a LORAN, RADAR Radio directional finders etc.... The only person I knew that really used a ssxtant was a friend that ROWED from Washington state to Hawaii in the late 80s, that is whos sextant I have as he gave it to me, I have played with it but never seriously.

But to try and GEOCACHE with in is nor viable nor possible.

 

cheers

[+YuccaPatrol]

I prefer to use a more old-school approach. I use an astrolabe because I don't trust those new-fangled sextants!

 

[+The Puzzler]

I am wondering if anyone has considered Geocaching with a sextant?

Assuming you had nearly perfect conditions and a clear horrizon, a hight quality sextant can apparently get to within +/- 0.2 knotical miles. But generally, getting within a knotical mile is doing exceptionally well, even for an experienced user.

 

Better stick to the map and compass.

[Smaug1]

Maybe I'm the only one, but half of the fun is in the gadgetry. I can understand your curiosity though, as it is fun to do things the old-fashioned way. I just got a slide rule, and I can't even figure it out. (it is marked in Latin I think...)

[+pathfind2003]

>Assuming you had nearly perfect conditions and a clear horrizon, a >hight quality sextant can apparently get to within +/- 0.2 knotical >miles. But generally, getting within a knotical mile is doing >exceptionally well, even for an experienced user.

 

>Better stick to the map and compass.

 

For those of you who didn't to the calculation .2 nautical miles is about 1215 ft.

 

Me? I use a stick and stones to find direction, look at the moss on the trees, sniff the air, and guess.

[+The Puzzler]

Me?  I use a stick and stones to find direction, look at the moss on the trees, sniff the air, and guess.

If only the coordinates were posted in a more intuitive manner, such as "a stone throw's north of the big maple east of the sewage lagoon".

 

The problem with geocaching is those darn numbers that force us to use gadgets to get our goods.

[+pathfind2003]

Me?  I use a stick and stones to find direction, look at the moss on the trees, sniff the air, and guess.

If only the coordinates were posted in a more intuitive manner, such as "a stone throw's north of the big maple east of the sewage lagoon".

 

The problem with geocaching is those darn numbers that force us to use gadgets to get our goods.

Go a country mile as the crow flies tword the bend in the river. After two moons the spirit will speak as a coyote, you have found the prize.

 

 

That's what I'm talking about.

[+Corp Of Discovery]

Me?  I use a stick and stones to find direction, look at the moss on the trees, sniff the air, and guess.

If only the coordinates were posted in a more intuitive manner, such as "a stone throw's north of the big maple east of the sewage lagoon".

 

The problem with geocaching is those darn numbers that force us to use gadgets to get our goods.

Go a country mile as the crow flies tword the bend in the river. After two moons the spirit will speak as a coyote, you have found the prize.

 

 

That's what I'm talking about.

You both might like this cache.

[+TresOkies]

I prefer to use a more old-school approach. I use an astrolabe because I don't trust those new-fangled sextants!

Slacker. I've found more than 250 caches using nothing but a dowsing rod and a bit of baling wire.

[Kybra]

I don't know how fimular you are with sextant, I have one, but you really can not use one away from a large body of water. Well you can but you need an artifucal harizon and also you can only find you location at specific times un less you doing it at night. It would be far easier to use a topo map and compass and triangulate you position. Sextants only really come into play where there is no physical land marks to find you position by triangulation. Even in the 13+ year I have spent at sea, not in the Navy, you really use a sextant thes days. Our big thing was a LORAN, RADAR Radio directional finders etc.... The only person I knew that really used a ssxtant was a friend that ROWED from Washington state to Hawaii in the late 80s, that is whos sextant I have as he gave it to me, I have played with it but never seriously.

But to try and GEOCACHE with in is nor viable nor possible.

 

cheers

I also have a sextant that I use for navigating under sail, I live on the coast but I also have an artifical horizon on my sextant. In discussion with a surveyor friend on this topic he mentioned that early explorers mapped this region with these instruments, the nautical charts of this area have only just been updated from the original surveys done by CAPT Matthew Flinders in the 1802...he was only 2 feet out with some of his fixes. We decided that by taking a sight and doing the caculations to determine our present location, then do the maths to work out distance and bearing to a cache should put us within the ballpark

[+New England n00b]

Might I suggest you start with a 1/1 cache if you're gonna do that?

[+Sputnik 57]

I prefer to use a more old-school approach. I use an astrolabe because I don't trust those new-fangled sextants!

Slacker. I've found more than 250 caches using nothing but a dowsing rod and a bit of baling wire.

Probably should think about trading that Maggie in for a Garmin

[+Renegade Knight]

I prefer to use a more old-school approach. I use an astrolabe because I don't trust those new-fangled sextants!

Slacker. I've found more than 250 caches using nothing but a dowsing rod and a bit of baling wire.

Probably should think about trading that Maggie in for a Garmin

You gotta admit, dousing rods don't lose their lock under tree cover.

[+The Puzzler]

I also have a sextant that I use for navigating under sail . . .

. . . CAPT Matthew Flinders in the 1802...he was only 2 feet out with some of his fixes.

I suspect that if you really do use a sextant for navigation under sail, we would not be having the conversation, unless you consider 1200+ ft. "in the ballpark".

 

That being said, I am interested in hearing about your experieces if you do try and hunt some geocaches by sextant.

 

As to the accuracy of old serveys, if they did get within +/- 2 ft, they were either using more than just a sextant, or they mapped 10's of 1000's of points of which getting one or two exceptionally close would be expected from nothing more than random dumb luck.

 

Have fun, and keep us up to date on your experiences.

[+The Puzzler]

You gotta admit, dousing rods don't lose their lock under tree cover.

Now you've got me thinking. With dousing rods, you wouldn't have to worry about entering coordinates either.

 

The pros of dousing rods vs. GPS

- no batteries required

- no need to enter waypoints

- work equally well in open spaces and under dense tree cover.

- the price is right

 

I'm sure there are others I haven't thought of.

Have we all been hoodwinked by Garmin, Magellan, et al.?

[+Moose Mob]

Dowsing rods work pretty well. I have found that Oak has been better for finding Altoids tins, and Hickory works pretty good on Ammo cans. Still still having trouble with Tupperware and film canisters though. Since I discovered that Norwegian Black Elm works great for dollar store items regardless of container, it has become my stick of choice.

 

<edit spelling>

Edited January 13, 2005 by Moose Mob

[+cudlecub]

I had some sextant in a car once and was discovered by a muggle. Wait, are we talking about the same thing here?

[+pathfind2003]

In discussion with a surveyor friend on this topic he mentioned that early explorers mapped this region with these instruments, the nautical charts of this area have only just been updated from the original surveys done by CAPT Matthew Flinders in the 1802...he was only 2 feet out with some of his fixes. We decided that by taking a sight and doing the caculations to determine our present location, then do the maths to work out distance and bearing to a cache should put us within the ballpark

Well, maybe you could, but I was under the impression that he would only use one instrument. The surveyor you talk about would have used land and terrain features to make an accurate map.

 

If you use a compass, maybe do some triangulation, then I thought that would be cheating. At least that was my impression of the post.

 

As far as a previous post mentioning a sextant finding only latitude. Not true, but finding latitude is easy enough. The first thing you need to do is measure the angle between the horizon and the sun when the sun is at its highest point, which is right around noontime on your watch. A quick look at your trusty tables tells you which line of latitude the sun should be above on that particular day. For example, let's say it's noon on December 21, and the sun is directly overhead. Well, on that day the sun is above the Tropic of Capricorn, so your latitude would have to be 23.5 degrees S. That said, you have a chart the size of seven King James Bibles to geocache all day.

 

Longitude is a little more complicated

 

The good thing, if you're a navigator, is that the Earth spins around at such an even pace. Every hour it moves 15 degrees. This means that if the sun is above the longitude of 0 degrees at noon, one hour later it will be above 15 degrees West. Now if you have a chronometer (fancy name meaning "extremely accurate clock"), you can find your longitude. Let's say that the sun is directly overhead and your chronometer, which was set to noon when you were at 0 degrees, says it's 3 o'clock. This means that three hours ago the sun was overhead at this latitude at 0 degrees longitude. In those three hours, the sun moved 15 degrees 3 times, or 45 degrees. So you're at 45 degrees West. Of course, the fact that the sun was directly overhead (which very rarely happens) made it especially convenient for finding your longitude, but you could have found your longitude anyway, with the help of your tables.

 

 

Or, you could just follow the little arrow on a little handheld device. EVEN on cloudy days.

 

What fun this stuff is.

 

Pathfinder

[+Colorado Cacher]

Sure u can, it's called letterboxing. www.letterboxing.org

[+bikinibottomfeeders]

Me?  I use a stick and stones to find direction, look at the moss on the trees, sniff the air, and guess.

If only the coordinates were posted in a more intuitive manner, such as "a stone throw's north of the big maple east of the sewage lagoon".

 

The problem with geocaching is those darn numbers that force us to use gadgets to get our goods.

No wonder the benchmarks are so hard to find. LOL

[TCE]

The "stone's throw away" kinda thing is what you can do with letterboxing! That is fun!

 

Question about the dowsing rods...wouldn't underground streams, water lines, phone lines, sewer lines, etc. get in the way sometimes?

 

Also, how can you use dowsing rods to find something square???...like an ammo box...or tupperware...??? I can understand how you can use them to find things like sewer pipes, phone lines, water underground, etc....but geocaches???

 

How does that work? Wouldn't the magnetic field of the cache be harder to pick up at a distance since it is so small...and not in a line? I'd like to know more, those of you who've posted about dowsing.

 

And the sextant thing???....I think it was Thomason who did most of the surveying for a large part of Canada. His work was astounding!...and is still very reliable today. His old maps are off by very little from what I've read about his work.

 

Anyway, what a cool idea! And, yes, let us know how it goes with the sextant to find geocaches