Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
1: GPSMap 60 CSX and Etrex 30
2: 7/10 & 7/10
3: I have the Topo GB on both which is excellent for geocaching. On the Etrex I have some OS 1:25000 sections, but the screen is quite small / pixeldensity too high for it to be very useful
4: I used some openstreetmap & some garmin maps abroad .. similar as the UK ones
5: No, I only use Linux, it means you can’t use the Garmin programs, but there are alternatives & connectivity is 10/10
I really only use the GPS for its accuracy & ruggedness. I don’t need all the bells & whistles as my Android with c:geo & web browser will do all that & more.
Sorry to see your logs deleted Dave. You did drive & walk all those miles and you were first to finish that series. That is just spiteful.
I’ve tried the whereigo app but couldn’t be bothered with it. I found it really user unfriendly. You need a signal to load the cartridge, but after that you don’t.
I tried the houndtor one, once you are nearish the start coordinates the app will tell you what to do next. I kept losing the instructions without a way to go back a step in the program to re-read them.
Waste of time.
I am quite envious. Those are the ones I originally wanted, but no-one stocks them, let alone in my size, so I settled for the combat GTX.
Apparently they are the boots of choice amongst gamekeepers when deerstalking up in Scotland 😉
Hmm, I had a pair of Scarpa’s last year and I threw them in the bin swearing I’d never buy that italian sh**e again. They lasted me only a year, mostly daily use walking the dogs or around town – nothing serious. They simply fell apart.
My current Hi-Tecs are not much better, the sole is completely gone after just over a year, I don’t think the cheaper brands suit me very well.
I just saw the current Lowa prices .. ouch .. I am sure I ‘only’ paid about £130. I was in GoOutdoors a while ago – they are having a discount on the Meindl Burma Lady Pro .. £129, but that gets you a top notch shoe.
I bought mine specifically for walking on Dartmoor which is a lot wetter & very tussocky compared to almost anywhere else you walk.
I decided on a pair of Lowa combat GTX. I can wade through inches of water for hours and my feet will still be dry and because they are high, I never twist any ankles either (and I don’t need to faff around with gaiters!). I am almost in the same weight category as Dartymoor 😉 and being 6ft6 I am also very hard on shoes but these are hardly showing any wear after 3 years and a lot of miles.
They are however heavier and less flexible then walking shoes so you will need to get used to them.
Have a look at RVops in Estover as they have quite a range of outdoor stuff that you won’t see in places like GoOutdoors.
I remember that Ermington Woods series. The individual finds only have the bonus numbers written on the lid, but you have to read the cache description itself to find out what letter in the formula they represent (and it is not a, b, c, d but some random order).
We met the Modbury Plodders once a few years ago – I seem to remember Mr MP was not very well at the time.
Dave,
Usually if you URL-encode the html sensitive characters (like chevrons) you should be ok typing it .. for instance typing ‘>’ gives a ‘>’
now there is no preview button so I won’t actually know if it works on this forum or not until I hit post 😉
Our Garmin Gpsmap 60CSx died recently. We really couldn’t justify spending hundreds of pounds on a Montana or (my preferred choice) a Monterra for those few hours a month that I’d use it. I usually have my Android phone with me anyway so the GPS really is only there because it is more accurate and far more rugged.
So we opted for an cheap Etrex 30 .. I think it only differs with the 10 in that it has a colour screen and a compass.
It has a good, fast GPS lock and the batteries last forever. As with all Garmins the UI (please explain why Garmin’s cannot scroll diagonally!!) and the PC support (Mapsource) is horrid (but that may be a personal thing).
The main thing that really annoys me however is the little joystick at the top, it always gets pushed when you carry it in a pocket, creating waypoints all over the place and I haven’t found the one-button screen/keyboard standby that my CSx had.
The good thing is that you can load colour OS maps for free with a little trickery. You go to Bing and select OS maps. Take a screenshot of the area you like and then load that screenshot in google-earth as an overlay. From there you can export it as a kmz file file that garmin understands as a map – there is a howto somewhere if you search on the internet.
In all – it will do the job well, but it isn’t anything to get excited about.
Well done Dave. And 29 walks … I am lucky to find the time for one (a decent several hour one) every 2 or 3 months!
You ‘log’ munzees with your smartphone running the munzee app. It records both the QR code & your location and checks with the munzee server (american I think) that you are in the exact location for that munzee. A recent addition is that this check can be ‘queued’ so you can scan & record the munzee and then ‘log’ it when you get back in reception.
Each munzee is worth points, sometimes you get double points, some munzees give varied amount of points etc. Also the person that owns the munzee gets points each time it is scanned by someone.
You can print a munzee and stick it where ever you want. No reviewers, no minimum distance, nothing.
I tried it for a while as in theory it seems like a good game, but I got bored with it quickly.
I personally find challenge caches pretty crap. Groundspeak tried to get people interested by having challenges (or whatever they were called) as a separate item on your profile. No-one could be bothered with them so they pulled that after a year and now they allow “unknown” and “traditional” (?) caches to have stipulations on them. The whole idea of the game is to find a box and sign your name. I can now for instance find a box, sign the log, and then find that it doesn’t count because you haven’t got X number of DNF’s (or whatever the challenge is). Makes no sense.
Well done .. I wish I had the time to get out again. Did you know you can (could?) get a (souvenir) badge for your walk? You should talk to Ochico if you haven’t done so already.
In theory it would be quite easy to make a proxy site. I don’t think legally there is much GS can do if someone prints a set of coordinates on a different website. They have tried to stop the likes of c:geo many times and failed. It doesn’t use the API (which is what GS wants developers to use – it is horrid, esp the authentication)- but instead it parses the HTML page for a cache and prints the details in the phone app.
I think logging for caches can still be done without authentication (and hence non-members can log member caches) but this is something they could easily fix if it was to be abused.
I did see a note somewhere that this price hike was only for new customers. The existing ones would remain in the old priceband – but I am not sure if that is true.
Dave, there are more than enough remote caches .. there are in fact so many that it is hard to find a cache on Dartmoor that is further then a few hundred yards away from another cache. Would you like to see a powerloop around Cranmere pool or something?
I guess the charity walks are being taken in for several reasons; I would think that after 6 months the revenue income would be near zero and the few walks that I have done suggest that they simply don’t last any longer. They seem to be either stolen/missing and a lot of the stamps are beyond repair (probably because of the number of people using them in such a short timespan).
I quite like BB’s idea of removing the geocache walk after a certain time – at least if you choose not to do the walk you rid the map of unfound caches 😉
Just noticed the discussion about JOC 24. I only posted that log to show that the cache isn’t broken (and the previous ‘finders’ were clearly using the wrong tool and should try harder)
Couldn’t really care less whether or not people sign the log – as FE says – their loss. Have on occasion not signed it myself when the log more resembles paper-mache or I can’t get the nano’s open by hand. Most of those aren’t worth visiting twice anyway.
“there’s so much space for new ones” – if you take the .1 mile distance then yes, there is a lot of space left on Dartmoor .. I would rather have a lot less which makes them more special .. as the 10 tors caches once were ..
I logged a few caches as a find and not signed the log. Several times the log is just paper mache and I didn’t have any spare paper. Twice I couldn’t open one of them nano containers as it was just screwed too tight. And 2 weeks ago up on new waste I decided not to open a box as the rain was so bad – I would have never been able to keep the paper dry. If the relevant CO’s have a problem with that I am quite happy to remove the logs.
Do I now need to revisit the ones that didn’t have the bonus info when I visited?
This is confusing as I now need to amend my DartmoorDave=CO -> ignorelist filter … 🙂
Difficulty ratings are pointless. What one person finds easy another finds hard and vice versa. I solved most scientist caches (Robert Hooke is in my opinion by far the most difficult one of the lot) in a few minutes and struggle to make anything of far lower rated ones – especially cryptic ones. And with these new challenge style caches the difficulty rating makes even less sense.
Terrain ratings are a bit more straightforward although I think I disagree with Einstein being a 5 as we didn’t really need any special equipment for it (actually that goes for the Code breaker V: Cryptology as well) .
As for Dave’s comments that the last few yards don’t matter. Something hidden 40 ft up a tree next to the road should be a terrain 1.5?
U is hidden in a fantastic location that I had never visited before even though I walked in the general area many times.
By the time Matt has finished with the Dartmoor Mega challenge I don’t think there’ll be a lot of space left for any additional caches 😉
Not really anything to do with geocaching – but adblock plus is another great addition to firefox. I removes virtually all advertisements & banners.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/
Oh and it doesn’t just add maps .. it also for instance adds an OS grid reference search facility on the “search fr a cache” page. But read the documentaton on the last page for more info.
It is quite easy. Go here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/greasemonkey/
Click add to firefox
You probably need to restart the browser once that is installed. Then go to:
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/109145
Click on the green button in the top right corner.
Thats it .. go to the geocaching maps and the layers will now have an additional set of maps to choose from.
There has been a recent update to the script. If you (re)install it, it now includes google maps, satellite & terrain maps.
Hmm .. I can’t amend a post. I think I misinterpreted DM comment about the DNF’s slightly .. anyway ..
DD/Dartymoor – I am quite happy for you to mention my name in this topic.
I see you both take offense to someone logging a DNF on your caches (or at least attempt to ridicule them on a forum).
I am not sure why it is hard for you to accept that not everyone likes the same sort of caches (or indeed may have a different reason for doing geocaching then yourselves). In my case I simply cannot be bothered nor want to spend more then a few minutes searching for a cache. I also don’t think I have ever “blamed” a CO in this case either (Dartymoor explicitly states himself that the GPS reception is “fuzzy” – those are his words and not mine).
But fair enough I shall abstain from leaving any logs other then a TFTC should I come across a box of yours again 🙂
Funny you mention that one .. I had a DNF on it last saturday 🙂 .. I have to admit I didn’t spend a lot of time on it as I was also doing some letterboxes and was running out of time. It also did look like a lot of that area was old buildings & walls etc .. I wasn’t really expecting a cache to be hidden in those.
And you mention adders – one of my Chocolates got bitten by one in that area last year (it was the other side of great Gnats hill in the Langcombe valley). We were lucky she happened to be on medicines to boost her joints as she is getting slightly arthritic and this somehow countered the venom a bit the vet said. She managed to walk back all the way to the scout hut before going into shock.
Non-paying subscribers of groundspeak are only allowed to place 1 cache I believe. So even with the stipulation that one can hide a cache if it doesn’t exist, for a fair amount of cachers this cache is/was impossible to complete.
Not sure I was looking forward to having an extra 70 new caches anyway – a few years ago El-Dittons caches near the peat passes for instance were unique – now it feels more like it is simply one of many and I even find myself not giving favourites to these more remote caches – they simply don’t stand out anymore. Shame they didn’t set a 1 mile intercache distance instead of the current 0.1 – but I am sure that sentiment is probably not shared by many.
I am not a great fan of these challenge caches – especially ones that cannot be completed by everyone. But I don’t understand why one would complain to groundspeak – or why the reviewer would change his opinion tho – surely there is just a limited set of requirements that the cache adhered to when he initially published it.
We solved GCPWKZ but not found it yet (which seems a task in itself). We were going to use it until I realised previously found re-awakened caches counted. It is still unfound for about 1 1/2 years now.
I am the opposite Dave. The fun of geocaching is that it brings me/us to places I had not been to before. I have very little interest in spending half an hour looking at an acre of boulders trying to find a cache that someone hid with an iPhone. Or similarly I don’t enjoy these powerloops very much where all one seems to do is look at a gadged as there is a new cache every 0.1 mile.
