[Team Deejay]

Bump! I’ll be there!

[Team Deejay]

@tyedyeskyguy wrote:

My Magellan Meridian did pretty well. I got a good lock and kept inside the house, which is two story and brick. Although I can’t get any further than maybe 20 feet from a window.

Hmm. I wonder if it’ll work in the basement…

… Nope.

I’d love to see another of the GPS flag game (or whatever it was called) from the WGA Picnic, repeated at the campout. It was interesting to see how GPS’rs differed. This time it would be cool to see not only the team name on the flag, but what type of GPS’r was used too.

Yes, the older Magellans seems to be between the etrexes and the newer Garmins. From what I’ve heard, the Explorists are about like the Etrexes, more or less a step down from the Meridians. Kind of a shame really, as those older Magellans were known for working well in tree cover.

[Team Deejay]

Welcome home. Now get out and find some stuff!

[Team Deejay]

The easiest way to check on the power of your GPSs antenna is to test it inside a building. Get a good satellite lock outside, then go stand under a water tower. Still good? OK, go stand in the center of a park shelter? Still good? OK, go inside a house or other wood frame structure and stand near the center. Still good? Try inside a block building with a steel roof. If this works, you have a GREAT antenna. From what I’ve seen, the old style Etrex units will fail the second test fairly repeatably. The new H Etrexes and the X series 60s and 76s will pass the third test, but usually fail the fourth. I haven’t seen any GPSs that will reliably pass the fourth test without an external antenna, but I haven’t tried them all either. The 76Cx that I use will work in a block building if I stay within 20 feet of a window. Further than that and I lose signal.

So, how do you know before you buy? Ask to try one out and run it through the paces.

[Team Deejay]

As someone else said, it is not really a question of accuracy. The issue is signal strength and how well your unit will work under tree cover. My little yellow etrex was great until we got into heavy tree cover, but then it would lose signal. My 76Cx, on the other hand, can get a good signal inside buildings and never loses signal outside.

[Team Deejay]

@PassingWind wrote:

A very interesting discussion. I was involved in a bit of a archive/adoption fiasco in SoCal were I placed a new cache in place of and near the location of an older cache that was burned, missing, and all but gone. Blah, Blah, Blad… to make it a short story here’s some info I received after the decsion was made by a reviewer to unarchive/adopt out caches that have been missing etc. from an unactive cacher.

…I thought I would pass on a new(existing) policy posted to one of the Reviewer forums on adoption requests:

If the owner is around they should process the adoption them self at http://www.geocaching.com/adopt/ .

If the owner is not active on the site and the cache is not archived the Reviewer will post a note on the cache page telling the owner that he has 4 weeks to respond or the cache will be either archived or adopted. (Please give both options). After the four weeks have passed if the owner has not responded send me the Information and I will process the adoption. I need the New owners account name and the GC# of the cache.

If the Old owner is still active on the site but ignoring the cache you cannot adopt the cache to someone else without permission of the owner. If they refuse to respond to a 4 week note, archive the cache. This will almost always cause them to respond to you. This assumes that there is a problem with the cache. If there is no problem then someone shouldn’t be asking to adopt the cache of an active user anyway.

With VERY few exceptions we do not adopt archived caches. If someone wants to adopt an archived cache let them place a new cache is the same place instead. Many times the logs and containers are gone on archived caches and there is nothing to adopt. To make it clear, if there is no container or log there is nothing to adopt and the adoption will not be allowed. The person requesting the adoption can place a new cache and cache page.

Grandfathered caches are not adopted. This includes Virtual caches, Moving caches and Web cams.

For purposes of this policy “active on the site” means they have logged on to the site in the last 6 months or respond to your log on their cache page.

This is nothing new. Its the way we have been doing adoptions since Jan 06. I just thought it would be nice to have it written out for all the new reviewers. Let me know if you have any questions.

Yes, this is the old policy. You will notice that the “no unarchiving to adopt” rule was part of this as well. On the other hand, the changes to forced adoptions are new. The motivation behind the change is that Groundspeak is not technically the owner of the geocache, and therefore cannot “give” it to someone else through adoption. Personally, I’m not sure this is legally correct, but it doesn’t matter what I think. Addtionally, there have been a few cases where low numbered caches were “forcibly adopted” only to have the new owner move the cache to a totally different location, just to get the low GC number.

From my perspective, it is usually better to create a new cache anyway, assuming the location is special. This gives us old timers an excuse to revisit the area and get another find, plus the history of the original cache remains intact.

[Team Deejay]

Please, please, please, when you encounter what appear to be bugs in the gc.com website, direct your issues to [email protected]. The hot ticket is to NOT change the cache page after it starts acting weird. You will find that they will get back to you quickly with a response (or help if you are doing something wrong).

[Team Deejay]

@gotta run wrote:

While I understand that not every contingency and scenario can be codified in a rule made available to the geocaching public, this one should be, given the likelihood of people to attempt to place caches based on existing precedent. (Yes, I know precedent isn’t a criteria for publication–that’s not my point here.)

Now, the WGA is not gc.com, so what is the process for suggesting this be outlined under “…prohibited special logging requirements are, but are not limited to…”

That procedure would be to write Groundspeak, the people who actually make the decision.

And yes, you can have a seed cache.

[Team Deejay]

There are a few other alternatives as well. You might like http://www.mytopo.com. This one is pretty similar to how topozone worked.

You also might want to try USA Photomaps, which also has topo maps. You can find this software at jdmcox.com.

And note that Topozone isn’t charging you for the data (which would be illegal, by the way) but for use of their website. I don’t like it either, but there isn’t much we can do about it.

[Team Deejay]

I’m not sure how your event went on Saturday, but the problem with using permanents in general is that they are just too far apart for a “class”. You really want to expose people to several types of hides, and unless you start early, it will be difficult to reach them all.

That said, I wouldn’t think the typical state park visitor is going to muggle your caches. The best is probably to provide guidance for finding the temps and then give them a list of the permanents in the park and let them find them on their own.

[Team Deejay]

@cheezehead wrote:

Build it and they will come…..

Big Bob’s Big Bulletin Board O’ Caches

Hey, this site already has 4 more caches than Terracaching!

[Team Deejay]

@tyedyeskyguy wrote:

@seldom|seen wrote:

It answers all the questions it needs to:

State shape = who, where,
Ammo Can = what, why,
Tree = how.

IMHO it’s missing something important. Like, who/what is it for? Seeing that logo for the first time just now, I’d have no clue it was an ammo can at the bottom, nor would I know who the logo represents. I actually still don’t know. Other than they are from “up north”.

It’s a good logo, but it would be a great one it it said “Minnesota caching club” or whatever.

For all we know, it could be the “We Live in a Box Under a Tree in Minnesota Club”. 😉

I had to smile when I read this. All advertising and logos require either context or explanation to make sense. If you saw the Toyota logo on a page without seeing it on a car (or an ad), you might think it is the “Very Lazy Spirograph Users of America” logo. If you saw the Mercedes logo out of context, you might think it is the Antiwar movement logo. If the logo was on our website, you don’t need additional text, as the website itself provides context, but if you put it on a cache page, there will obviously need to be some sort of text explaining what it is. The point is that you can have a logo without text and add a line of text to it when required.

Plus, I heard that King Boreas lives under a tree in a box…

[Team Deejay]

I think you’ll find this happens more often in small, relatively unused areas. Neighbors of these smallish parks tend to consider the park property as their personal back yard.

[Team Deejay]

This is why most people here recommend you buy a GPS without the “electronic compass”. While a few people like them, most people find they are too sensitive to the angle you hold the GPS to be effective. Try turning it off and see if it works better.

[Team Deejay]

To save you the trouble of all those different queries, just center your query at N 45 19.500, W 90 10.000. You’ll get all these areas and more. If there are certain cache types you don’t like (micros, mysteries, high terrain, high difficulty, or whatever), be sure to filter these out with your query to get more results that you would like. Note that most of the terrain 5 caches in this area are canoe/boating caches, so if you don’t want to canoe, filter down to terrain 4 or less.

Assuming you are dumping your query into GSAK, you can get this macro to determine what county a particular cache is in. The macro puts the county name in the User Data 2 field. Its a little cumbersome to get it setup the first time, but once it is done, you can use it for any US state to assign the counties. Let me know if you want a walkthrough.

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