Another alternative that may be more consistant with the objective would be to have more satelites; would ten batons taking cachers to each of ten satelites resolved the problems?

Loved the satellite idea! My suggestions would be:

More satellites in the mother cache, but not necessarily multiple batons per cache.

Instead of having the mother cache be a real findable cache, just base it in the pavilion area where there are picnic tables for people to sit.

If the mother caches stay as hidden caches, how about multiple mother caches in different “zones” of the park?

Not sure about preventing people from passing the batons in the field, though. Perhaps put the coordinates on the batons in some sort of code that can only be deciphered at the mother cache? Make sure the code key is different for each baton so in case someone cracks the code, they wouldn’t be able to use it with a different baton.

The idea has merit in its attempt to solve the reported problem of running into other teams at caches. I’m glad we tried it, and appreciate Ken’s work in putting it together. Hopefuly this thread will help refine the idea. My thoughts:

This concept suffers from the law of diminishing returns. When you start, you had a very good chance that at least one baton was in the mothership. Once you returned though, you now had one less chance of a baton you needed being there. By the time you had hunted 4 of the 5, you could end up with a long wait. No matter how many satelite caches are involved, you will always start with a good chance of getting a baton, but it will keep getting harder to get the right baton as you progress.

I noticed on the tally board that only slightly more than half of the teams hunted the mothership/satellites.

Aside from attempting to eliminate collisions at caches, one of the ideas behind the mother cache was that this was a social event… while waiting for batons to return, people would socialize at the mother. I stayed at the mother for several hours, and saw this happening quite well.

I am toying with the idea of having a summer mini-event in the Janesville area, and using the mother-cache concept. I saw a few of the mentioned problems, and have thought of a few ways to deal with them:

– To stop people from writing down co-ordinates, I would simply lock all the caches, and attach the appropriate key to each baton. If someone visits a cache with written co-ordinates, they simply will not be able to open it.

– Passing batons without returning them to Mother: I don’t see this as a HUGE problem. The idea of having only one team hunting a cache at a time is still intact. I did this myself at the campout. I radioed the team who had the baton for the last cache I needed, and said I would meet them half-way when after they found it so I could save a bit of time. I didn’t feel bad about this at all because the spirit was intact, and as many of you know, I had passed many opportunities to grab batons earlier so others could complete the Mother.

– Wait time at Mother: Once again, this is not a big problem from my point of view. If I hold a mother-cache mini-event, I would try to have a good number of satelites to correspond to the expected number of people, but socializing at the mother is part of the design. Alan brought up a good point about diminishing returns, and I think that works great for a mini-event… early in the day, there will be heavy hunting, and as the day goes on, there will be more time spent at Mother chatting, eating, etc. Obviously, anyone who does not WANT to socialize has about 800 other caches in the state to hunt Mother Cache concept is intended for social events.

– Someone mentioned trampled grass around Mother. Good point. At the campout, placing the Mother at a pavillion would not have worked very well. The mother and satelites were intentionally placed away from the rest of the action, and there was, from what I could tell, no groomed grass or shelter in the general area to place it. This might be something to keep in mind for future events if we do more Mothers. If I do a Janesville event, my plan is to Put Mother withing 20 feet of some charcoal grills and picnic tables

We really liked the Mothership idea, and enjoyed the little time to socialize at the mothership that we had. We hunted it late in the day and had almost no waiting. We also met another team halfway to save on time as it was 4:30 and we did not want to miss the picture. I see no problem with this as long as you dont jump ahead of someone who started before you.
I feel a few more satelites would help, or maybe limiting the number of groups to the mothership at any one time, like 6 satelites and 8 groups to hunt them, possibly with a time limit, so all get a chance to attempt them.
All in all I feel this idea solved more problems than it created, for an event of this type. keep up the good work.

I thought I would reactivate this thread to get everyone’s input on the mothercache/planets concept that was used at the 2003 picnic.

We tried to improve the mother cache for the picnic. Some of the items that we addressed were:

• More caches placed (7 planets)
• Durable surface for the actual container. If you noticed it was in a pine plantation with pine needle’s covering the ground. There was no vegitative impact to the area that I noticed.
• More water available. We placed a well stocked cooler with 48 full size bottles of drinking water. (even the that amount of water was consumed by the 4PM)
• Bug spray, sunblock, and bandaids were placed in the mother cache.
• Location for mother was shaded with a bench to sit on.

I only opted to fine one of the planets. I found it too time consuming to run back and forth to the mother cache.

I’d love to hear any other comments/suggestions regarding the mother cache concept at the picnic.

By the time we got to the Mothership at the campout, we were beat. We chose to find just one of the satellites — mostly because we couldn’t WALK any more! Perhaps another alternative solution might be to promote a couple teams teaming up to find a satellite that they both need. CacheCows is exactly right in the law of diminishing returns. If I am down to needing just ONE LAST satellite, the chances of that ONE baton being available get pretty slim. If I am encouraged to team up with another team, my chances increase. This, too, promotes socializing. Working together with another team right from the point of entering coords even lets us see another cacher’s style of hunting. How do they use their GPSr? Do they use a compass? etc. I realize this goes against the premise of reducing the number of people at each satellite at one time, but it does help the overall issue of finding all of the caches.