ON4BAM

Archive for the ‘Geocaching’ Category

Friday I released my first real travelbug into the wild. At the same time I put a mobile TB label on the back window of our car. I wonder how long it will take for someone to discover it. When we leave on holiday I’ll take the label with me and put it on the rental car.

Another TB is ready to be released , I’ll put it in a cache during our vacation and hope it will be able to make it’s way back home visiting all continents.

Last year in Key West we had the opportunity  to score a First To Find on a few caches but it seems the was something terribly wrong with them as no-one found these new caches before they were archived. This time I checked the nearby caches after visiting Byodo-in Temple in Kyoto and saw that in my 2-day old GPX file that the nearest was placed only 3 days before and had no finds yet. I expected the new cache to be found already in the previous days but to my surprise I found a blank log and a FTF tag in the small container. I signed the log, took the tag and left a travelbug I had with me from another cache. The second cache nearby was not accessible because the bridges leading to the small island were closed. Too bad, because this could have been a  Second To Find.

Caching in Japan is kind of special. We try to pick up a few and move TBs and coins around when possible. Some of the caches state that coordinates are off or inaccurate but I found the ones we did mostly spot on or at least within the expected deviation. Then there is the language barrier. Some descriptions are a bit odd and seems to translated by computer. At least the descriptions are all in English, could that be an idea for caches back home? Caches don’t get found as much as we are used to and some areas are blank. Too bad that virtual caches are no longer accepted as it would be an excellent opportunity for visitors to create some action.
As for our caching, The Japanese maps I got for my Colorado 300 have proved invaluable. In places where signs are only in Japanese we still find our way around by just looking at the GPSmap.

Close to the Sensoji Temple is a small park. Sumida Park houses GC1251V that is cleverly hidden but easy accessible. This was the first cache we found in Japan. I took the opportunity to drop one of the travelbugs I brought with me from the latest caches I “raided” in Belgium and just accross the border in the Netherlands.
A few months ago, when we were planning our vacation, I bought a Japanese map for my Garmin Colorado 300 and it already proved to be invaluable. Having a street map on paper is no big fun when you can’t read half the streetsigns
Later during the day we found 3 caches in and near Ueno Park. Again I dropped a TB and picked up new ones. We don’t go out of our way to go caching as this is not the purpose of our trip but if any are closeby we’ll hunt them…..

The November 1st weekend is the time IVAO participates in the flightsimulator weekend in Lelystad. This is a perfect time for us to go geocaching in a region further away from home. The area Lelystad – Emmeloord still has a lot of open spaces and forest areas and thus hiding spots are plenty. I downloaded a Pocket Query of the area and made a selection of mostly multi caches that we were to try and find. After loading the PQ into GSAK and getting the spoiler photo’s the caches were loaded into the Colorado and a backup of the GPX file and HTML were loaded into the PDA.

This was the big test for the Colorado. First thing I noticed, you need batteries, a lot of them. I had the battery sets of my old GPS2XL with me (1300 and 2300 mA) and they proved to run down faster than we could finish a cache unlike in the GPS12XL where they would keep going all day. Fortunatelly I had a few sets of 2700mA power cells too. Second thing is that when going on a multi, the unit will display the info of the cache when going to the starting coordinates but going to the next stages you have to just put in the WP and use the map or compass without being able to pop up the description, logs or hint. We kept on using the PDA for reading the description and the GPS just for navigating. The old GPS12XL has a resolution of 10m and does not have an high sensitive receiver so under the trees it’s sometimes difficult to keep a lock and to have accurate position readings. The Colorado worked perfect in the forrest and most caches where within 3-4 meters of the published or calculated coordinates. I found the new unit to be excellent and I’m sure that using all the functions will become easier as time goes by. An update of the software to make multi caches easier to manage would be welcome though.

A few weeks ago we already decided on a destination for or 2009 summer vacation. Unlike previous holidays we have now chosen a less obvious destination where getting around will not be as easy as in the USA, Europe or Australia. Japan is still a mysterious place to us and we expect getting around will be a lot harder because of the language barrier and the fact that reading roadsigns will be near impossible.

I decided that GPS navigation would be the way to go but I failed to find maps for Tomtom. Time to look for a replacement for the trusty Garmin GPS12XL that was bought in 1999. A search on Ebay soon yielded a few possible buys. I choose a Garmin Colorado (new in box) that I could pick up from the seller not to far away. After some testing I bought a Japanese map for this unit. I’ve been using this map while preparing for our trip and and it looks promising.

After visiting the Everglades I switched on the GPS and took a look at nearby caches. Almost There is located very close to the edge of the National Park and it was the first choice to try and find it. At the exact coordinates I found nothing but looking at the other side of the fence I soon noticed the ammo box. I had the travelbug I took from the Central Park cache with me and dropped it here. I also took one of the travelbugs from the box so I once again have something to drop in the next cache.

We walked through a part of Central Park and choose our route to pass Down the Rabbit Hole – NYC . This is an easy to get to cache where you have to be very careful not to attract attention. The container was found very quickly and checked for contents. The log was signed at 14:00 and I removed a travelbug before putting the container back in it’s hiding place. The travelbug wil go to Florida with us and I’ll try to find a nice place for it.

During the holidays we don’t have a lot of “free” time so for geocaching we try to find the occasional cache without losing  to much time. On tuesday we were up the Empire State Building, the spot of one of New York’s virtual caches. This was an easy to do cache and we could log it in seconds. Number one in the USA.

For some time now I’ve been geocaching. So far I’ve been searching for caches in Belgium, The Netherlands, Canada and Germany. I hope to add a lot more countries to the list starting soon in the US. We’ll visit New York, Southern Florida and the Florida Keys so plenty of chances to up the found score.

I’ll make some extra comments about caches we find if they are for any reason “special”