Geocaching Australia

Thank you for the lovely pathtag that I won. It arrived in the mail on Monday.

Another month has rolled around and it's time to announce the requirements for the September edition of the 2020 Game of Games.

To qualify for the draw you will need to complete the following:

Hide and publish a special geocache.

Geocache must be a Night or Beacon cache.

The hidden date must be in the game month.

The published date must be in the game month.

So get thinking and get those caches ready. It all kicks of on 1 September...

Thank you for my shiny pathtag for the July Challenge.

I had a lot of fun creating the cache, and am looking forward to someone eventually finding it.... maybe when the borders reopen.

<3 Samboo Bear xx

PS I promise not to try and swap my pathtag for chocolate.

Re new beacon type I just read the description for GA7518 part of it pasted here "For this geocache you will need to locate the beacon by turning on WI-Fi on your phone and slowly driving up the street you will find at the posted co-ordinates. You do not need to connect to any WI-Fi signal you find, so this geocache is perfectly safe. All you need to do is look for the SSID (i.e. the name of the network or beacon) and it will provide a set of co-ordinates where you will find the geocache."
I went to the info page on beacon caches and clicked on the link but it appears you have to pay and sign up to something.
I would like to know how they can be set up please (in layman's terms) as looks like another option rather than paying $30.00 for a garmin chirp (which I have just done)?

For me, this was easy.

I have a spare internet router (or 2 or possibly 3) from days gone past on various internet connection types.

I simply plug in the router so it has power. There is no need to connect it to the internet.

Then I connect my laptop to the router. Usually the name and password are on the back of the device itself.

I log into the router and change the SSID (that's the name that is broadcast so you can see it to log on, some routers are set up likeTELSTRAKB46782 or IINET678342) to the co-ordinates of the geocache location. e.g. S37 45.000 E144 45.000 (yes that's a valid SSID name, even with the spaces). You can google the make and model of the router to know what to connect to and how to set the SSID.

That's it.

The router advertises itself via its SSID to anyone near enough, in my case about half the street. You turn on your WIFI and you can see the SSID being broadcast. Once you can see it you note the co-ordinates (hence no reason to connect to it, or have the router connected to the internet). Then you head off to the geocache.

I'm not sure which page you looked at that requires you to sign up and pay. There are a lot of different beacons that you can buy in the market. Some like CHIRP you just buy and use. Others are a subscription service. You can use any beacon you like for a GCA beacon geocache.

Other cheap ideas are for anything that will broadcast a beacon.

Buy a wireless door bell. Set the ringer up in a tree with the geocache at the foot. Set the button in another container a little way away. Give the co-ordinates to the button. The seeker finds the button and "wanders around" pressing the button until they "hear the doorbell" (i.e. the beacon) at which point they head towards the sound and find the geocache. Battery life may be a challenge or you can buy solar powered ones which as long at the chime gets sunlight you should be good to go.

You might also consider a set or cheap solar lights and set them up so that the "light" becomes the beacon, like a lighthouse. Then when they turn on at night you can follow the "beacons" to the final geocache. This could also be used as a night cache.

You probably need to set this up where no-one goes wandering at night as they will spot the lights and follow them to your geocache or nick the lights themselves.

Cool, thanks for all that info. Pehaps it could be added th the beacon info page for future reference. The site I was referring too was "spot" which is shown as a link when you click on "beacon" on GA7518. All these ideas would be great on that link as well.

Is it just me, or is there no list of winners on the August qualifiers tab like there has been each month so far?

No_Tomorrow wrote: ↑

03 September 20 9:51 pm

Is it just me, or is there no list of winners on the August qualifiers tab like there has been each month so far?

Sometimes it just takes a few days to get it done. Stand by...I'm sure it won't be long.

Are you planning a Beacon or Night cache hide to qualify for the September edition of our 2020 Game of Games? If so, you have 2 weeks left to publish your cache, as September 30 is the deadline. With just a few entries so far this month, get your cache hidden and published by the deadline and you will be in with a great chance to win one of our anniversary pathtags.

With October not too far away, it is also time to announce what you need to do to go into the draw for the October Edition of the Game of Games. To see your name on the list of qualifiers you will need to:

Find and log 6 physical* geocaches of specified size.

The geocache size (container) must be nano, micro or small.
The log date must be in the game month.
The log must be made in the game month.

Or

Hide and publish 3 physical* geocaches of specified size.

The geocache size (container) must be nano, micro or small.
The hidden date must be in the game month.
The published date must be in the game month.

*Physical geocaches are:
Moveable, Beacon, Gadget, Burke & Wills, Reverse, Multi, Night, Podcache, Augmented Reality, Traditional or Unknown.

Nothing too hard there...so get in and have a go.

Well that was an interesting game month. I was wondering how it would pan out as the days got closer to the end of the month with so few qualifiers. Thank you c@w - your generosity and sacrifice were noticed.

Yes ditto. Thanks very much

Yes Many thanks for all your efforts and hard work C@W.

Thanks caughtatwork. This was unexpected.