A Disturbing Trend

[Cache_boppin_BunnyFuFu]

@greyhounder wrote:

Just for future placement, you may want to get a few more averages. I do between 150 and 200 way point averages, and check the coordinates by “finding” the cache several times (often on different day). Works for me.

Bec

Bec… you gotta invite me out to place caches with you sometime. I’d enjoy watching your technique in action!

I usually do several averages, com and go to the cache from different angles, review how many feet off I am etc., even come back on less cloudy days. Also come in and out of heavy foliage to TRY to get good coords. I’m weird (no comments Marc_54140), but I feel guilty if I my caches are off more than 15 ft. LOL If I get a DNF I feel the urge to go back and RE-average and check on the cache…..I gotta get over that one too LOL

Anyway.. agreeing with MB….people do need to realize that it may be a GPSr issue. I know some GPSrs can be calibrated but can they all? Now I gotta go check mine. On one of my caches, a cacher called me at home and said the coords took him far up on a road, which was actually quite a distance away. I gave him an idea where the WPT was and asked him to get a new set of coords for me. In the mean time, others found it and said the coords were dead on.

So, it can come down to GPSrs issues, the type/brand/quality/age of GPS and if they average at all. The deliberate ones, no way. I have only done one of the NEMESIS caches so far, but the way that #9 is posted it sounds like fair game to me 😀 Need a good challenge once in a while!!

Remember: We can’t please all the people all the time!! 😉

[greyhounder]

@Cache_boppin_BunnyFuFu wrote:

@greyhounder wrote:

Bec… you gotta invite me out to place caches with you sometime. I’d enjoy watching your technique in action!

It’s nothing too impressive actually. My GPSr has the ability to take averages (I’m sure most do), so I just let it sit for 10-15 minutes while I wander around and take pictures. And then I do the walk away and recheck thing that you do.

I’m a very detail-oriented person (again, probably like most geocachers) and probably OCD as well, so I get obsessive about being as accurate as possible when I place caches. Probably explains why I don’t place too many caches 😆

But….if you come to the picnic cache hiding day, you can maybe see my placement “skillz” in action!

Bec

[CacherClan]

@Trudy & the beast wrote:

@Cheese-Wis wrote:

It was determined that no guidelines were violated.

Where do we draw the line. If 100 feet is ok, how about 200 feet? Is within a mile acceptable for not exact? I believe that the guideline was violated when the cache owner did not make an effort to provide coordinates within the limits of acceptable error.

Foul! 😡

wondering..have you gone to look for this one?

if not how can you cry foul?

we havent gone to look for this one yet..but we have done several of the Nemesis Series..and all the coordinates are spot on..
but the hides are very good

we have been back to try and find Nemesis 7 for example…3 times now..and still have not found it

all I’m saying is maybe you should go try and look for this one your complaining about Nemesis 9

before you raise your blood pressure too much

if you see for your own eyes there is a problem with it..then you have a solid base on which to lodge a complaint

Have you gone to look for this cache or not?

[EnergySaver]

Last week we did some caching in PA … in one park we went after 2 caches … both of them led me to locations where I could find the caches. We went and checked out the water falls and played on the rope bridge … then we tried both caches again, we found both of them, well over 150′ from where we tried 30 minutes earlier.

Did the owner give us bad coordinates? … no … the GPS satellites were playing tricks on us (not our GPS receivers, we had two of them, both showing good accuracy).

Sometimes you just have to wait and bit and try again. I’ve been noticing this more lately than in the past. Could it be that the government is scrambling signals more often lately for security reasons?

[Team Deejay]

Ack! I step away from the boards for a few days and find I started a flame war. Sorry about that.

Since my intent was not to embarass any particular cache owner, including the one who accidentally got dragged into this one, I am not going to mention specific waypoints, but here is a list of these caches we have run into. Some of these are currently archived, some are not.

• A cache in Wisconsin located in a park “garden” area with a latticework structure. Coordinates take you right to the middle of the structure, cache description says it is somewhere in there. Maybe within 100 feet, maybe not, since we never found it.
• Numerous park shelter caches where the coordinates are not even in the shelter, but the description tells you the cache is there. I believe I have run into these in at least 3 states.
• In Indiana, we ran into a cache on an old locomotive. The coordinates take you to the parking. The cache description tells you it is somewhere on the locomotive.
• Again in Indiana, a cache on a footbridge. Coordinates take you to a parking lot. Cache description tells you look on the bridge.
• In Tennessee, another footbridge cache, this one, the coordinates take you to the center of the bridge. Cache description states it is “somewhere on the bridge”. This one might have been within 100 feet of the coordinates (we didn’t check it after we found it), but the hiders intent was to take you to the middle of the bridge. (This one was actually under the wooden bridge, with the lid of the container nailed to the underside of the bridge, but not in the center).

The thing is, that most of these caches were sort of fun to hunt. But is it geocaching? I don’t really know. Is this a trend? I guess thats a matter of opinion. But my question was not about difficult hides, nanos, coordinates posted in error, GPS inaccuracy, finders moving the cache around, or even badly set coordinates. All that is part of the game. It was merely about these “It’s in there somewhere” caches. From Jeff’s comment, it sounds like these are indeed not kosher, and that was all that I asked. I suppose you can avoid these by reading the cache descriptions BEFORE going to the caches, but I do enjoy the surprise of finding the cache without the help of the description. Fortunately, it becomes obvious rather quickly when you find yourself in the middle of a parking lot that “something is fishy here”.

Now, get off the computer and into the woods!

[TyeDyeSkyGuy]

Since you mentioed finding yourself in the middle of a parking lot, I thought I would mention NEMESIS #2 Not this park again! 😀

I think there is a “trend” here to be honest. Including myself, there are a lot of new cachers recently. Thanks you Vince Condella! New cachers means new ideas, means new problems, means FUN!!!!! )in my humble opinion!

[brkster]

You could be referring to offset caches, where the coords take you to a general locale or structure, and instructions of one sort or another tell you how to search from there. Shelter hides can be approximate, with typical variations of GPSrs from one unit to another, or they can bring you to the shelter and state that it’s on there somewhere, and Good luck.

As for the Nemesis series, Norwegianbird and I have found 7 so far, and look forward to taking on the others. Some are pretty difficult, and may require multiple visits in order to find them. Degrees of difficulty reflect that. We have found the coordinates to be good within a reasonable radius of 20 ft or less, which considering that some are hidden in wooded areas, is quite adequate. What makes them tough is the type of hides themselves. As for the cache in question….don’t expect a quick find, but rather, look forward to a good challenge.

[MajorBrat]

@Team Deejay wrote:

I have noticed more and more caches in the area where the coordinates are INTENTIONALLY set badly.

Key words: “in the area”

@Team Deejay wrote:

Ack! I step away from the boards for a few days and find I started a flame war. Sorry about that…

…A cache in Wisconsin…

…Numerous park shelter caches…

…In Indiana…

…Again in Indiana…

…In Tennessee…

Key words:
“A cache in WI”
“Numerous park shelter caches” (no “area” mentioned)
“In Indiana”
“Again in Indiana”
“In Tennessee”

Sounds like the problems are elsewhere…not too many mentioned in WI. Also, if the caches are listed on GC.com, why not just tell everyone what the GC numbers are? It’s not like they’re private, or like people can’t just look at your GC profile to see which ones you’ve been to and are talking about.

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