Courteous Cacher

[Sunshine Toledo]

Thanks pprass for bringing this to MY attention. I have never bothered to notice the Log Options section as I have been doing this for quite a while now and have just put a correction in my log report if I find that the co-ords are out by a bit. But 795m out to find the cache; that is amazing. I need you on my team.

[Laighside Legends]

That is one mighty big cache hunt spiral ... let’s see area of a circle = Pi * r squared.......1984558.5 square meters to search! or 1984.5 square kilometers, that sounds like a lot !

Arr... 1984558.5 square meters doesn't equal 1984.5 square kilometers its actually 1.98 square kilometers...

[Yurt]

That is one mighty big cache hunt spiral ... let’s see area of a circle = Pi * r squared.......1984558.5 square meters to search! or 1984.5 square kilometers, that sounds like a lot !

Arr... 1984558.5 square meters doesn't equal 1984.5 square kilometers its actually 1.98 square kilometers...

Yeah our home radius of cleared caches is 10km which is 314 sq km or so. Always thought that couldn't be correct but you can't argue with pi r squared.

Still 2 square km to search is a decent area!

[Alansee]

With my GPS, I can have practically unlimited logs loaded into the GPS.

What for?

and,

[Alansee]

Thanks pprass for bringing this to MY attention. that is amazing. I need you on my team.

Trouble is, it was one of his own caches! lol How else did he find it?

[pprass]

With my GPS, I can have practically unlimited logs loaded into the GPS.

What for?

and,

Yes indeed - that would be a GAFF2 wouldn't it However the point is that it is there if anyone wants to utilise the facility.

[pprass]

OK without giving away your methods, how did you locate the cache that was almost a Kilometer from the GZ was listed?...

Well our assumption was that the cache was going to be in a high spot, so we used the co-efficient of the gradient at 25 metre intervals between the turn-off described on the cache page to the given co-ords. We then applied a linear regression formula on the dependent variables to approximate the most likely area to begin our search. As Cat was entering the data into the Excel spreadsheet that we hurriedly built, I looked up as I was driving and "holy @#$%!! - is that the tree with the 2 reflectors and the number 9393 on it right there in front of us????? Can't be - our preliminary calculations said it should by 539 metres from GZ, not 795!"

We subsequently found the small error in the formula in the Excel spreadsheet and got 764 metres - which wouldn't have been too bad a search area (21 metres). Silly me in my rush to get going - I didn't perform the "goodness of fit" test using the R-squared method. Had I done so I would have found my error straight away.

Not sure whether I should give this cache one of our "Favourites" or not - it was certainly memorable.

btw - what criteria are other cachers using to allocate their "Favourities" We were going to go over the caches we found over the past 7 years by name only and if we could remember them fondly, we would give them a "Favourite"

[pprass]

No Rabbitto, that's his hair!

Well if that is so, then there is more hair on that picture than on my head

[caughtatwork]

What are these favourite ripoffs you mention?

[pprass]

Ha! Yes Mr GeoAus, hope you received some royalties from the big kahuna

[Big Matt and Shell]

...Are you sure that's a native function when being sent to a GPS?

This is how the Magellan shows the log:



Not in bold, there is something going on with the HTML format with Groundspeak, but it shows in the first line.

I'm sure that the Oregon 300 does a similar thing, at least for me anyway. I'll have a look at home tonight and see what I can see.

[Big Matt and Shell]

I thought so, here is what happens when you dump the GPX file into the Oregon from GSAK. No fancy GSAK macros needed.

[Cached]

I believe a Courteous Cacher should carry basic caching gear and provide minor maintenance on non-metro caches. Notebooks, pencils, even containers.

[pprass]

That was the message from Groundspeak in their 25 March newsletter:

Within the geocaching community, the responsibilities of a courteous geocacher include respecting fellow geocachers, taking care of the environment and maintaining your caches, among other things. And you can be an extra courteous geocacher by helping to maintain others' caches! The next time you go geocaching, bring additional supplies such as an extra geocache container, SWAG, logbooks and pencils. This way, you will be prepared to help out another geocacher by fixing a cache that needs maintenance on the spot.

If you go geocaching on the spur of the moment and don't have supplies to fix up a cache that needs maintenance, please make sure to visit Geocaching.com and report a 'Needs Maintenance' log on the cache page.

If you are a geocache owner, we recommend following these simple steps for cache maintenance:

1. Place a cache that is durable and requires little or no upkeep

2. Periodically check on your cache both in person and via the cache page to see if there are any issues

3. If you see a 'Needs Maintenance' log on the cache page, fix the cache and post an 'Owner Maintenance' log