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Frequently Asked Forum Questions
Alchemy Quest in a day Yes it is possible and no you would not be the first to do this. Generally considered to be quite inaccurate and of little help in finding a cache. Some more advanced GPS units have a Barometric altimeter built in which is of considerable use when hill walking. Ammo boxes must be amongst the best cache containers. Remember to rub off the original markings and if you are up for it there are several online guides on painting camouflage. Recommended suppliers are surplus and outdoors From time to time some caches go missing or fall into disrepair. These caches are then permanently archived. If you are looking for archived caches you need to either use the geocaching.com maps and tick / un-tick the relevant boxes for the area you are looking at or you can go to GUK and search for archived caches from the cache search options. Use geochecker.com for this When hiding a cache take several way points directly above the cache. Walk away and back in from several directions, let the unit settle and take a way point. Take these readings and find the average to obtain a good set of co ordinates or alternatively buy a GPS with built in averaging. Kit you should consider when out walking is a bite cream, Insect repellent, tick remover and if the itching becomes unbearable a Click It from Boots. A member’s only feature that can be shared with non members. Used for highlighting good caches, high difficulty caches.If they are made public then they can be seen on the relevant cache pages. A common mistake is to tick all the boxes and thus show private or personal use only bookmark lists on the relevant cache pages Just got to the adopt a cache page alternatively this can be done by the approving / moderation team. Just e-mail them with the details and the cache can be transferred. If you are looking for an adopter post a note on the cache page and start a thread in the forums. Failing this archive the cache and take it with you. See the www.geocaching.com guides for more information. Some people like to obtain a full set of cache icons. As you are probably from Europe the hardest one to obtain would be a Project Ape cache Icon. Many people leave a disposable camera in their caches. When they are full the pictures are posted online for all to “enjoy” geocacheuk has an area devoted just for this purpose. It is a general rule of thumb that you probably need to find ten or more caches before placing one of your own. Denotes a place of special geological significance. Logging is similar as for a virtual cache. These are now being archived and transfered to waymarking.com. In Locationless (or Reverse) caching - they're the same - you are told to go find an object and produce some proof that you've found it (usually a photo with a GPS). You then report the co-ordinates at which you found the object matching the criteria. Only 60 ish of these are active. Basically you find something that fits the criteria (church steeple, eternal flame etc.) and log its position on the cache page. See here for a list of location less caches. These are now being archived and transfered to waymarking.com. The smallest container. Can be hidden almost anywhere and often involve magnets. Should be placed only where a normal sized container won’t fit, but don’t be surprised to find them used on high difficulty caches!! A cache where you visit other location to gather information needed to locate the final cache A cache where you solve much more intricate puzzles (usually at home and in the field) to find the final cache location Cache owners should visit their caches to do maintenance. Clear out junk and contraband from the cache. Ensure the hiding place has not been compromised. Remove calling cards. Check the logs in the book match the online loggers and finally do some CITO. Only available in America now. Set up for the world premiers of the Planet of the Apes films. Available from globalpositioning systems. The commonest cache type. The cache is always hidden at the co ordinates listed at the top of the page Used where an actual cache can not be placed or even offset from the chosen location. Usually involves e-mailing the cache owner an answer that can only be found at the co ordinates or a picture with the GPS at the chosen location. These are now being transfered to waymarking.com. A partnership or wireless connection is needed for this. One person stands in front of the web camera while the other person downloads the image as evidence that they were there. These are now being archived and transfered to waymarking.com. Calling cards (signature items) Some cachers have made personal signature items. These can be anything and in some cases have become collector’s items. They most often take the form of home made business cards laminated. We actually collect these when we find them in our caches. Ours is a set of 20 all different can you collect the set ? Cars and people as Travel bugs Yes you can. Don’t forget to retrieve your car or walking stick or even yourself from the cache after dropping it off. Some caches are camoflaged or very well hiden. If theres a high difficulty but no puzzle to solve then suspect a camoflaged cache. In addition its a good idea to camoflage your own caches with either paint or camoflage duct tape (from ebay) please dont use a plastic bag for this purpose as in effect your disguising the cache as litter is NOT a good impression to make and they soon go manky and fill with slugs and stale water YUCK!. Converting between grid systems Geocaching uses the WGS84 datum and HH DD.MMM co ordinate system. If the datum on your GPS is different to this you can be 60 feet away from the correct co ordinates Converting postal codes or an address to latitude/longitude? The following software can help you with this. Waypoint workbench OS grid converter Cacher Of The Month. A friendly comp see the links in the forums. Datum’s and co ordinate systems Geocaching uses the WGS84 datum and HH DD.MMM co ordinate system. If the datum on your GPS is different to this you can be 60 feet away from the correct co ordinates This is what occurs when some people visit caches. Always swap fairly and trade up not down. One common cause of depletion is people swapping stuff for Travel Bugs (TB’s) we always leave something in exchange for a TB but when we put one in a cache we never take anything. Easy In plain sight or can be found in a few minutes of searching. Handicapped accessible Terrain is likely to be paved, is relatively flat, and less than a ½ mile hike is required. Average The average cache hunter would be able to find this in less than 30 minutes of hunting. Suitable for small children Terrain is generally along marked trails, there are no steep elevation changes or heavy overgrowth. Less than a 2 mile hike required. Challenging An experienced cache hunter will find this challenging, and it could take up a good portion of an afternoon. Not suitable for small children The average adult or older child should be OK depending on physical condition. Terrain is likely off-trail. May have one or more of the following: some overgrowth, some steep elevation changes, or more than a 2 mile hike. Difficult A real challenge for the experienced cache hunter - may require special skills or knowledge, or in-depth preparation to find. May require multiple days / trips to complete. Experienced outdoor enthusiasts only Terrain is probably off-trail. Will have one or more of the following: very heavy overgrowth, very steep elevation (requiring use of hands), or more than a 10 mile hike. May require an overnight stay. Extreme A serious mental or physical challenge. Requires specialised knowledge, skills, or equipment to find cache. Requires specialised equipment and knowledge or experience, (boat, 4WD, rock climbing, SCUBA, etc.) or is otherwise extremely difficult. Or hiding what you are doing hunting in the bushes. Hold your GPS like a phone. Wear a HI Vis vest and everyone thinks you’re an official. Don’t try to hide. Pretend you are looking for a lost kid’s toy or the dog’s ball. Obviously the much improved geocaching maps are good as is the GUK interactive map and the now reestablished buxley’s maps. Did Not Find (the cache) used when you have searched for a geocache and been unable to find it. Can alert the owner to potential problems with the geo cache so always post them. You can edit your own logs. Cache owners can only delete logs made on their cache pages editing is not allowed. My technique if I need to do this is to copy the log into an e-mail with the text you want removing highlighted or a comment about any photos and send it to the person who logged the cache before deleting the log First To Find. In some areas this can be quite a rush and beating the resident “experts” can be ever so sweet an experience. This and other information can be found at geocachingpolicy.info Spare batteries. Spare pens. See our guide to starting out geocaching Some good ones are now available. Have a search on the forums for some recent threads on the subject Many countries have developed some special travelling items called geocoins. Many are tracked on the www.geocaching.com web site. Coins currently tracked are too numerous to list but include USA geocoins, moun10bike geocoins, German geocoins and many more. Other coins need some HTML code placing in the cache page to make the coins visible like the canadian geo coins. The aim for all of these is the same To travel and have their journeys logged. We always seem to do this it helps you discover whee your staying and can prove cheaper than visitng and paying for all those local attractions. See our Isle of Man event for details of one of the places we are visiting in 2006 A term used to put down a cacher who uses Google to find the answer to a virtual cache rather than visiting the actual location. Car mounts, bicycle mounts are quite common however if you really get into the sport a data cable for downloading way points to your GPS will become a necessity. In good conditions your GPS will give a predicted accuracy of 14 feet in practice its accuracy is usually much greater. This is due to the difference between accuracy and precision (look it up please!!!!). When WAAS becomes more readily available the accuracy on GPS units will increase. Parked in a large car park? Waypoint the car. Found something people are tracking like rare birds or invading insects report it with the co ordinates. ww.Geograph.co.uk . www.confluence.org trigpointing are all obvious examples. Ask before you fly. Most airlines will allow you to use them (as they are passive devices) you do need to be up against the window for best results. They can help while away a lot of time as you see miles tick down like feet and your top speed exceed expectations. Geo rugby Geocachingarmy GSAK and Cachemate A list of UK approvals can be found here. This site list some more from around the world and forum posts discussing them policyinfo. Also there is some advice on getting permision on this site here Where can you find out who owns what piece of land Unfortunately at the moment its a case of asking arround or paying the land registery. This may not be any help as the land registery does not have a definitive list (inherited land for example is commonly missing) Although some geo caches are set up as letterboxes they do not fit into the true nature of this sport. Letterboxes involves collecting stamps from the boxes and leaving your own stamp in their log book. You get to letterboxes by following bearings and directions rather than way points. Links on a post or a cache page Open up the web page you want to have viewed. start a new post The correct HTML will now be displayed on your post. Take note of what is displayed so you know for typing it in for cache pages ect. A common mistake here is to have http:// http:// at the begining of the link this is down to so called “helpfull software” so if your link dont work check for two http’s at the beginning! Try to write a good online log. This is the cache placers ONLY reward for hiding that elusive ammo box. If you don’t like the cache keep it short. Most hiders do not mind reading long logs describing your whole day. The usual method with these is to write your log as a note and when you get confirmation from the cache owner change the note to a found it. This can vary from importing CSV files into auto route to complex planning on memory map fugawi and now google earth Generally there are only a handful of these on the country and are usually only created for the First to Find or if an area has suffered from caches being trashed. No links available yet. Waiting for a bookmark list please !!. Yes you can if you are the owner or the current cache location is about to be exposed. You can then change the co ordinates. Of course you could just archive the cache and set a brand new listing to encourage more traffic. Stop press there is now a site devoted to moving caches Each stage must be 0.1 miles apart from each other and any other cache. The accepted convention in the UK as we have not had counties implemented by groundspeak is to add the county in brackets at the end of the cache description. There is of course the counties update for GSAK users available from geocacheuk Typing in CAPITALS is considered to be shouting. Spelling and punctuation are generally ignored however people do need to take mental breather when reading so the odd full stop and start again does not go amiss. Another form of traveller which involves tracking bank of England notes. The site can be found at www.whereslizzie.co.uk Someone who caches purely to obtain high numbers of found caches in their profile. When you ditch the cache page print outs and start geo caching with a PDA and GPS alone.For more information see our guide or for pocket pc see this guide Permissions to cache do’s and don’ts Read our advice here or have a look at the GAGB site The GAGB guidelines state no plastic bags. Bags tend to get wet inside and attract bugs and slugs. The water goes off and people end up removing them to get at the cache inside. In addition they break up over time and when small animals have a nibble the plastic enters there body and kills them so please no plastic bags. Also see the camoflage FAQ above Very useful if hunting caches in pairs and want to avoid shouting “’WE FOUND IT” the accepted channel; if you want to locate other cachers is channel 6 we bought ours from maplin for £15 A premium member benefit that when used at home or with a PDA allows you to go paperless caching. You can use them to obtain large lists of the caches you like or would like to do in certain areas. For example planning a holiday in Scotland. Overwhelmed by the number of caches? You can set up a PQ to list all the traditional caches in large containers from a chosen centre point. Really come into their own when used with a program like GSAK. Theres plenty of advice in setting up a PQ for FTF here and the UK database here Take an image on your PC If you examine the words on the post before you submit it the same technique can be used to put pictures on your cache pages. Remember the advice for posting hyperlinks further up the page those two http://’s can be here as well ! A sequence of caches placed exactly 0.1 miles from each other. Specifically designed to boost you caches found statistic. Pocket queries, member’s only caches, the ability to create bookmark lists, instant notification of new caches. Found at the bottom of the forums this denotes those people who have paid for premium membership. See letter boxing. Many cachers have these to make signing logbooks etc. easier. W bought ours from www.rubberstampz.com These are when the cache log gives away too much about the final cache location. Would you like to set a 5*Difficulty cache just for someone to write in their found it log “walked past the largest oak tree on the hill and found the cache under the large monument behind it” A site for locating SSSi sites in the UK is available ive just lost the link a quick google should do the honours though. Until you have made 10 posts on the forums you will be a tadpole. After 10 posts you become a geocacher. Premium members can change this from their user profile to something else. A logging abbreviation used both in caches and online to indicate Took Nothing Left Nothing (Signed Log) (Thanks For The Cache) Many travel bugs go missing. Some owners transfer them to a travel bug graveyard as a final resting place. Alternatively the owner can just mark them as permanantly missing. Some people get together and enter travel bug races. These usually have specific goals to achieve before ending in a final cache. One of our TB’s is currently in a race to get back to the UK. Another type of traveller. These are tracked via the main GC web site. Currently only two types exist Jeep bugs(yellow or white) (all owned by the Jeep corporation and part of a USA competition) and ordinary TB’s owned by individuals. See here Some trig points can be logged via Ye Olde Survey monuments virtual cache. Others can be logged at www.trigpointing.co.uk. Wide Area Augmentation System. A system designed to improve GPS accuracy. Not currently available in the UK. Any person with a gc.com account can watch other caches. This means they receive the same E-mails as the owner. Who is actually watching your cache is only know to the watchers and not the owner. Why WGS-84 and HDD(D)° MM.MMM datum and format? Because that's how most GPS receivers are set coming out of the box. Using this setting will be less likely to confuse new GPSR owners. Several of these now exist in the form of mystery caches. Clues usually take the form of frequesncies or hints about wireless.
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