[Team Deejay]

I use Delorme Street Atlas for this, but I’m sure S&T can draw a circle equally well. I don’t believe any of the online mapping programs are very good at this, but someone might have found a way.

[Team Deejay]

I suspect that anyone getting the first to find on a cache within a reasonably populated area, i.e. Green Bay/Fox Cities or SE Wisconsin, is actually trying to get the FTF. In those cases, it would be nice of them to log it quickly, not everyone does. You should also understand that the FTF game is strictly unofficial. Presumably, you had just as good of a time finding the cache second as you would have had finding it first, so this is only a “numbers thing”.

I believe that what you are really saying is that you would NOT have gone through the effort to run out in the middle of the night, looking for a film can in the crotch of a tree in a normal city park without the motivation of getting a FTF. From what I have seen, most people eventually quit trying for FTFs and just try to enjoy the game without it. I personally started to question it when I grabbed a FTF in the middle of the night (like 2AM) and the next day received an email from the owner asking if I agreed with his assessment of how beautiful the setting was, less than a mile off of Highway 20. I revisited the site later that day so I didn’t have to admit that all I could see of the setting was what was illuminated by my flashlight. Eventually, you have to ask yourself why you are doing this and, more importantly, why you geocache. If you are like me and realize you geocache to spend time with family, make friends, and enjoy the outdoors while satisfying that inner “need to explore”, FTFs just become unimportant.

[Team Deejay]

I’ll jump in.

Around Burlington, my Burlington Liar’s Club series (GCW95Z) is a unique urban series if you are looking to spend some time in a small town. If you want hiking around Burlington, Ridge Runner (GCJ00W) and General (GCTEZ9) are both on the same ridge trail overlooking a marsh. I also can recommend How Did You Start Geocaching? (GC10FM2) a little farther away.

In Bong, my favorites are Poof! (GCJGFD), Horsing Around (GCNG9V), Wildlife Stalk (GC111A7), and Captain Klutz (GCR6CG). Additionally, you might want to stop by Lumbering Along (GCHM9N) for a fun container hide, and “I’m On Top” (GC14255) for a trendy container hide that you might not have seen yet. Note, however, that if your goal is numbers, these caches are the exact opposite of what you want. These all involve hikes and some terrain. If numbers are your goal, just start at the Visitors center and head for the nearest cache. There is a ton of them out there in most parts of the park, so just cache away.

Have fun! (Oh, and I won’t be physically able to do Bong on that day, but otherwise I would have loved to join you.)

[Team Deejay]

There were some serious issues down in Chicago regarding this, where someone had placed a cache on a mailbox across the street from the Social Security office. This led to BIG problems, as you might expect.

The good thing is that I haven’t seen this done around our area, and you would think that I would, given my concentration on 1 star terrain lately. That said, it is pretty difficult for us to know that a cache is hidden this way from the information we get. If you find a cache hidden in this fashion, please let one of the reviewer know so that we can address the issue. We depend on you guys to let us know if something is not right.

In addition to mailboxes, other things we need help on are:

• buried caches
• caches hidden without a container or a log
• “unmanned” virtuals
• caches not being maintained (give the owner a month or two before complaining)
• caches apparently hidden on private property without permission (usually detectable by the shotgun blasts)
• any other guideline violations which you think we somehow missed (railroads, schools, dams, SNAs, you name it)

I know that some of you do this already, but we can use all the help we can get.

[Team Deejay]

No, but…

I just got off the phone with Garmin. The Metroguide software does not require an unlock code (except for one particular version in Australia, you didn’t buy that did you?). Are you sure you didn’t buy City Navigator?

NOW, assuming you did buy City Navigator, there should be a coupon in the package with ONE unlock code good for ONE GPS. If you need to use the software on more than one, you can buy additional unlock codes (I think they cost about 1/3 the price of the software retail price.)

If you got a defective package without a code, take it back to the retailer and get another copy. I have never heard of this happening, but obviously it is not impossible.

If you bought the software used, grey market, off Ebay, or otherwise from an unreputable source, well, you’re probably out of luck. If you register your GPS, they will sell you an unlock code for it, but you should probably just try to return it and get a working copy. (Missing the unlock code means it is virtually worthless as a GPS map.) Otherwise, you will be out another $50 or so to get the new code.

The reason they were asking you about registration was that they require you to be registered to sell you a new unlock code. However, once they got everything organized, they would have told you that Metroguide has no unlock codes anyway (and is borderline obsolete to boot.)

[Team Deejay]

@K0rpl wrote:

I bet the CPU Usage with the Thread Stealers is not even noticeable!!!

Now Data Storage may be the Problem. I wonder what that is up to size wise???

Ya know, if we added a program to erase the text of all but the last 40 posts in that thread to reduce disk space usage, leaving the blank messages so the count kept increasing, I wonder if anyone would notice? 😆

[Team Deejay]

You have to be careful with this, guys. If you take a look at the cache placement guidelines, you will see that caches that solicit are not allowed. This is to solicit ANYTHING. That said, you can sometimes get permission to do things like this, but you have to get permission from Groundspeak FIRST, before you submit the listing to us for approval. Here is a rough process:

1. Write up a draft of the cache page, but do not check the “this cache is active” box. Be sure to give yourself 4-6 months to get everything in order.
2. Email [email protected] requesting permission for a cache that solicits. Explain why your idea is special, how it will enhance the overall reputation of geocaching.com, and how it fits in with the general idea of geocaching.
3. Wait for a response.
4. Assuming that they approve the idea, paste the email from Groundspeak into a review note and check the active box on the cache listing to have the listing reviewed.
5. Assuming there are no other issues, the cache will be published.

Note that you are, of course, free to have your own charity event and publicize it on this website. It is only the listing on gc.com which is problematic.

[Team Deejay]

Does this cache site look familiar, Jay? I REmemBAR it well. (This is shot toward the south. I left the border on to identify the website, maps.live.com.)

This is just the regular Microsoft Mappoint link from your cache page. The trick is to either use IE or use an IE simulator in Firefox.

[Team Deejay]

At this point, unless you have specific needs (such as needing to identify nearby schools and railroads….), I see GE as more of a toy than a really usable program. The graphics are not as good as are available on many of the free online mapping resources, route determination is below average, and personally I’m not a fan of the interface. It is fun to play with, however.

[Team Deejay]

I’m thinking we need a category for the most serious injury sustained on a cache of terrain 2 or less. And I agree that we should steer clear of any sort of award related to number of finds. Not only would it add fuel to the fire, as stated earlier, but it would also be a real pain to determine.

[Team Deejay]

While I agree that a lot of this stuff is unnecessary, it does make geocaching more fun and less laborious (unless you are Zuma and enjoy plotting caching trips on a par with the Lewis and Clark expedition….Oh wait, he already did that one…) On the other hand, MAPS on your GPS are really not a luxury for a serious geocacher. I remember spending time caching with my little yellow etrex (no maps at all) and a Delorme Atlas, and wandering around lost in Dane County until I finally ran into highway 12. Having a map would have saved me from that.

If Magellan will not make good on the program they have sent you, demand your money back. You can buy Mapsend products from third party vendors which would at least pretend to try to help you with your problem. You might even insist on a refund for your GPS, since you can’t use it the way it is intended due to their security systems. You are now experiencing the pinnacle of Magellan Customer Service. Expect it to get worse from here.

[Team Deejay]

Thats is just the normal Google Maps “directions”, VG. The advantage to this versus other methods is use of the caches along a route feature on gc.com. For example, if I wanted to capture all the cache along a route from Milwaukee to Minneapolis, I would need to run 4 or 5 PQs centered at various points along the route, then filter in GSAK using an arc filter (come on Saturday to learn about arc filters). By using the caches along a route, you can run just one query and get all the caches within a specified distance of your route. The only catch is that you have to make it work, and gc.com keeps finding ways to break it. As far as I know, you could always take the google earth route and just load that, but like Marc says, those routes are not always the way you want to travel.

[Team Deejay]

OK, forget all that. They have managed to break that particular hack with the new upload. Here is the hot ticket.

FIRST, assuming you are using Firefox, click on the following link and follow the instructions to place the gmap2gpx program in your favorites (note: This program appears to be broken in IE 6.0, seems to work well in Firefox):

http://www.elsewhere.org/journal/gmaptogpx

Next, go to maps.google.com. Use the “directions” tab to create the route you want. Note that you create the stops in order, and after you get the basic route in, you can drag the route to whatever roads you want to take if it doesn’t select them by default. (so don’t create a bunch of unnecessary stops, but do create all the REAL stops so your route doesn’t try to bypass them).

Once you get the route the way you want it, click the GMap2GPX button. This will put up a text of the GPX file on the screen. Click the “full” button. Now, right click, select all, copy.

Open a text editor. Paste in the text and save it as a GPX file.

In theory, this should be loadable to the caches along the route function. Unfortunately, this is ALSO currently broken. So….

Open Google Earth. Open the GPX file in Google Earth. Save the file as a KML (NOT KMZ) file. This file can be used (today) in the caches along a route.

Sounds like a lot of steps, but it goes pretty quick and the Google maps routing is really about the best you will find.

[Team Deejay]

Oh, and it only puts you back on the federal highway if its faster to get from point A to point B. To stick with the state highways, you will need even more intermediate points. If this is too annoying, Streets and Trips or Street Atlas, or Mapsource will also work, but you need to do some file manipulation (more than shown above.)

[Team Deejay]

I’m assuming you want to do this for “Caches along a route” on geocaching.com. This is one of those “works somedays, not other days” features, so be patient. The hot ticket is that you need to create a KML file for each stage of the route. I believe it will route you by the “fastest route” algorithm. So, now you will have, say, 13 KML files. Each of them will have a section which looks like this (truncated to save bytes):

-88.22711000000001,42.74445,0 -88.22707,42.7433,0 -88.22707,42.7433,0 -88.22535000000001,42.74333,0 -88.22535000000001,42.74333,0 -88.22536000000001,42.74435,0 -88.22547,42.74604,0 -88.22546,42.74846,0 -88.22546,42.74846,0 -88.22432000000002,42.75096,0 -88.22399000000002,42.7519,0 -88.22305,42.75684,0 -88.22279,42.75721,0 -88.22255000000001,42.75742,0 -88.22211,42.75769,0 -88.21835000000002,42.75937,0 -88.21797000000001,42.75959,0 -88.21773,42.75980000000001,0 -88.21745,42.7602,0 -88.21590000000002,42.76363,0 -88.21590000000002,42.76363,0 -88.21678,42.76385,0 -88.21856,42.76462000000001,0 -88.21889,42.76480000000001,0 -88.21973,42.76558,0 -88.22105999999999,42.7665,0 -88.22448,42.76927,0 -88.2251,42.76961,0 -88.22530999999999,42.7697,0 -88.22638000000001,42.76998,0 -88.22882,42.7704,0 -88.23006,42.77054,0 -88.24565,42.77039,0 -88.27502,42.77023,0 -88.28721,42.77008000000001,0 -88.29975,42.77004,0 -88.30096,42.77009,0 -88.30128000000001,42.7702,0 -88.30158,42.77038,0 -88.30174,42.77058,0 -88.30316999999999,42.77351,0 -88.30410000000001,42.77595,0 -88.3043,42.77627,0 -88.30485,42.77696,0 -88.30517999999999,42.77724,0 -88.30704,42.77799,0 -88.30761,42.77808,0 -88.30794,42.77808,0 -88.31202,42.77775,0 -88.31286,42.77775,0 -88.31415,42.77806,0 -88.31739,42.779,0 -88.32492000000002,42.78109,0 -88.32684999999999,42.78165,0 -88.32729000000001,42.78181,0 

Presumably, the last coordinate of each KML is the first coordinate of the previous KML, so you just cut and paste the coordinates into one big section. Then, try to upload it to geocaching.com. (Be sure to chant and dance around the room for maximum probability of success.) Most of the stuff in the KML can be pitched, but gc.com checks certain fields (like the time/date stamp) so it is best to leave the whole mess in there in case they decided to check it this week.

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