This topic has been discussed many times before and it is well covered in the wiki and “Helpful Hints for Newcomers” in the General Chit-Chat forum, but still for some cachers there seems to be a basic problem in obtaining accurate co-ordinates for a location.
We have come across a few new cachers who have had “bad” co-ords and some are very appreciative when you point out how they can improve their accuracy; while others don’t even bother to respond or worse still respond with “look harder” or “google maps rule”
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When we place a cache, apart from letting the GPS settle in the one spot for a few minutes (and the spot is the actual hiding spot BTW, not 15 metres away as we are heading back to the car as an after thought
) we then test the marked co-ords by “finding our own cache”. That means that we walk away about 20 – 30 metres from GZ and then use the marked co-ords to find the cache we just placed. We do this about 3 or 4 times until we are satisfied that we have accurate co-ords. There are of coarse a lot of factors that interfere with this process – tree cover, proximity to a cliff, bad satellite day etc, but that is when we put in a hint to help the cacher. And that’s another thing – if you have good co-ords you don’t have to put in a hint as well. We only put in a hint if the cache is really tough, or if we know that there is an issue with getting a clear signal. It seems to us that cachers are lately ignoring how "bad" some co-ords are because they have read the hint before even leaving home and go straight to the hiding spot without even checking the distance on their GPS - yes we all play differently, but isn't using your GPS the basic principle of this game?So what do others do? How do you make sure that you have the best possible co-ords that you can get?
Regarding accuracy, this is the general rule that we follow:
0 – 5 metres = Spot on co-ords and essential when searching for a nano in the bush or in a high muggle area in the city.
5 – 10 metres = Acceptable tolerance giving the cacher a bit of a hunt and making them think of possible hiding spots.
10 – 15 metres = On the verge of unacceptable and definitely not acceptable for micro’s or nano’s. We have heard that some cachers place caches that are 10 to 15 metres out on purpose to make the hunt more difficult – not in the spirit of the game we say.
15 - …. = Unacceptable distance. Makes it a very difficult hunt and usually results in a DNF.
Hope to hear from others and especially newbies.
(waving!) 
) 
) and the cache should be reasonably easy to find (not forgetting that tree cover will always make it a bit out methinks) but with the traditional we placed last month we purposely took the reading about 2-3 metres away to provide just a wee bit more of a challenge 
. As far as we know everyone has eventually found it - well lets put it this way - there havent been any DNF registered ..... 
