Geocaching Aviators

[Orienteer]

Are there any pilots out there who also like to tune their GPS to geocaches? How many Recreational Aviation friendly geocaches are there?

 

 

[farri]

Hi Orienteer,I`m always ready to learn something new so please tell me what the heck Geocaches are.

 

Frank.

 

 

[Orienteer]

Oh, good point, head over to http://www.geocaching.com to find out exactly. Geocaching is celebrating it's 10th year this year, and i have found it quite rewarding especially when on long dull drives. Essentially a cache including a log book and quite often some swappable items are hidden, the coordinates logged by GPS, posted to the internet for others to find. I am hoping it could open up some exciting fly in places just to log a geocache! see also this thread http://www.recreationalflying.com/showthread.php/3023-New-Aviation-activity...

 

 

[rdarby]

Geochaching is a great way to get kids outside and involved in a family activity. It's a treasure hand sort of. You get a set of co-ordinates, and maybe some clues or a puzzle, and have to find a small box and log your find. These things are often hidden in very public places, and you have to extract and replace without anyone seeing you, or some lout will ruin it. It's fairly secret but also mainstream. You go onto the site and look for a list of caches in your area, then go find them. Once you find your first one, and it can take several goes, you can get hooked. You need to consider a dog, as if you are scratching around in the bushes looking for a small box in a public place it helps to have the cover of a dog walk! If you fly somewhere, pick up a small package and then say fly over a border, you may get into trouble! The fun is in not letting the muggles (non geochaching public) know anything about it. Ryan

 

 

[Ultralights]

i know of one at Warnervale airport, well it was there a few yrs ago, not sure if it still is

 

 

[FlyingVizsla]

We (the Springsure Scouts) go geocaching. There is only one in the area so I am working on a project to establish more - then it started to rain ..... I could do some within walking distance of our airstrips to give aviators a reason to land and look at our towns.

 

It is like a treasure hunt. The GPS gets you within 10m of the cache and you then search high and low. Keeps the little fellas entertained for a while. The web sites usually give you an indication of the difficulty involved. I know one that you have to abseil down a cliff to locate and others that you can just walk up to, so obvious that you miss them. They are in rural locations (usually chosen for what else you can see there - view, tourist spot, historic monument etc) and urban (just for the fun of it). Can be quite challenging - Youth group searched in Rocky & were stumped until someone pointed out they had been walking round & round the fountain (it was in there!) so much fun was had getting feet wet. There's two in Fairbairn dam - hire a canoe and paddle out.

 

The boxes (water tight) have a log book where you can record that you found it and often have trinkets that you can exchange. There are tokens that are destined to move to specific types of locations eg the cemetery token (you find it in a box at a cemetery, take it out and keep it until you find another box at a cemetery and leave it there). We could start an Airstrip token. Anybody can start anything really... There are items that request to travel east to get to "town" and their progress is logged on the website. Owners watch their "thing" getting closer to home having circumnavigated the globe. Others have a specific intent - sending a deceased Scout Leader's woggle on a journey back to Gilwell Park UK (home of Scouting). The USA site sells "boxes" that don't look out of place - a large magnetic bolt (so it can sit on a girder or something) hollow - you screw the top off. I am doing a fake old book to sit in an historic school house. The other sites are out bush and I teach the kids navigation skills and map reading. You can just about drive to them, but I start them off where they have to make hiking decisions (there's an obstacle in the way of a straight line.

 

It is really infectious - we get tourists who planned their trip around finding geocaches. Kids love it and it makes the destination and the journey all that much fun. Our Scouts are hooked.

 

Sue (CSL ASL)

 

 

[Guest davidh10]

I GeoCache under the moniker "SkyTrike". Among the photos on my Flickr site, are some of a Travel Bug going for a fly around Yarrawonga.

 

There's quite a few caches around the Yarrawonga area, including one that is walking distance from the aerodrome. I have two caches that are temporarily disabled due to flood water, so hope to get them fixed later in January, water levels permitting.:big_grin:

 

I use my Aera 550 and it usually puts me within 3m of the cache.

 

 

[Bandit12]

FlyingVisla: Great to see another Scout leader on here! We are going to be giving it a try with our Cubs next year, sounds like a heap of fun.

 

Cheers

 

Shane (CSL 1st Bentleigh)

 

 

[Guest Kevin the Penniless]

I joined the geochaching gang after reading this post. There are a few treasures within a few miles of me! What sort of things would one put out to be found (or replace a find). Obviously something that would last a while.

 

 

[rdarby]

Things that go in them range from small toys, promotional company things, coins from other countries, Xmas decorations, all sorts really. Just no food or anything scented that will attract animals. Open one up and have a look, you can enter in the log "TNLN" Took nothing, left nothing. Ryan

 

 

[Guest dad]

Anyone tried this,

 

http://www.auf.asn.au/cagit_trophy/cagi.html

 

 

[Case]

Hi Kevin, go out a find a few and you'll soon see what people use. I do a bit of caching and it's a lot of fun. Someone once described geocaching as 'using high tech US military hardware to find tupperware containers in the bush'. People use all sorts of containers but Sistema containers are popular in Australia because they are fairly waterproof and cheap. They usually have a logbook for people to record their find. Lots of caches are placed to bring you to places that you would not normally think of going.

 

Hi Ultralights, the cache at Warnervale is still there. It's been in place for almost as long at geocaching has been in existance - 10 years.

 

 

[FlyingVizsla]

Hey Dad,

 

The Come And Get It Trophy - hubby & I have talked about snatching it just for the fun of flying. For people who don't know - the AUF now RAA, or more correctly a member, started the CAGIT with the idea that its location is posted on the RAA site and aviators then Come and Get It and move it to a new location, usually their home base and get their name engraved on it. Kind of like a slow moving geocache travel bug.

 

Sue - One day we'll do it.

 

 

[Guest davidh10]

Hey Dad,The Come And Get It Trophy - hubby & I have talked about snatching it just for the fun of flying. For people who don't know - the AUF now RAA, or more correctly a member, started the CAGIT with the idea that its location is posted on the RAA site and aviators then Come and Get It and move it to a new location, usually their home base and get their name engraved on it. Kind of like a slow moving geocache travel bug.

Sue - One day we'll do it.

A couple of us around Yarrawonga had planned to go and get it, but poor weather and fog / low cloud combined with other family commitments defeated us. The one time five aircraft actually got airborne to go for it, the cloud just kept getting lower and by the time we were forced down to about 700 feet, we decided to abort in case the back door closed on us. What was really annoying was that the cloud lifted later in the day, but we had to make a decision on the conditions at the time. We may try again when it settles somewhere that it is likely to stay long enough to plan a trip. :big_grin:

 

 

[Guest davidh10]

found my first one today!!!...now i want a 'geocache' friendlt GPS....any recommendations??

Congratulations CFI. I gather you are hooked

 

It is great fun and particularly if you have young children, but of course big children can enjoy it too

 

I wouldn't say I do a lot of it, but it is just one of many interests and thus I am probably happy with a GPS that works well, rather than searching for one that is ideally suited to GeoCaching. Further, having spent quite a bit on an excellent aviation GPS, it is a definite plus that it fulfills multiple uses so well. I also use it in the car to navigate to unfamiliar places.

 

As mentioned earlier, I use my Aera 550 in Automotive mode. It works very well, usually putting me within 3m of the cache. That is obviously dependent on the accuracy of the cach owner's co-ordinates as well as the accuracy of the finders, GPS. I've tried the builtin GPS in the HTC Desire mobile phone, together with the "GeoBeagle" application. While it works quite well, I have to say my current experience is the Aera 550 is more accurate.

 

One of the differences is that the Aera has all maps internally, whereas the phone relies on network access to obtain map segments from the Internet. An advantage of the phone, is that you can look up new GeoCaches while out and about, whereas the Aera needs to be fed with co-ordinates separately. It should be noted that the Aera does not appear to have a topo map available, whereas the dedicated terrestrial Nuvi models do. For me it isn't a big deal, but if you were really going bush, it would make a difference to have contour and bush track info available.

 

To obtain co-ordinates for the Aera (and probably a number of other dedicated GPS units), you can:-

 

1. Put them in manually after obtaining them from the Internet via either a SmartPhone or a PC.
    
    
   
2. Download a co-ordinates file from "geocahing.com" and drop it in the appropriate folder in the GPS filesystem while it is mounted as an external disk drive on a PC.
    
    
   
3. Use the web based Geocache GPS coordinates transfer Browser Plugin to transfer a specific geocache to the GPS. The Aera must have been shut down while in automotive mode, otherwise the geocache will appear in the aviation mode.
    
    
   

 

 

I created a separate "GeoCaches" category of locations in the GPS to keep them separate from other types of locations. Further, the default icon used is a closed treasure chest, but after I find a cache, I change it to an open one, so the icons on the map then distinguish between found and yet to be found caches.

 

Hope this helps.