New Aviation activity...

[Ultralights]

A little History, a few years back, about 7, i discovered a little hobby called Geocaching! basically it involvedhiding a weather proof container somewhere on this great earth, filling it with collectable little goodies, and listing the GPS co-ordinates on a website (http://www.geocaching.com) anyway, in times past, i made one of these little cache thingoes, and placed it at warnervale aerodrome! and its still going! latest visitor flew in! exchanged some things, and went on their way! the notification of this visit led me to write this post...

 

Geocaching has evolved to incorporate metal tags called travelbugs, and some have journeyed around the globe via people hunting down these caches and taking the bugs and placing them in another and so on and so forth, the prinicipal is simple, when you find a cache, you take a momento, and leave one to replace it.. some caches are in Very remote areas, and some are in the hearts of cities, usually in hidden film canisters in parks etc etc...

 

seeing as my one is hidden at a aerodrome, i think you can see where im going with this idea!

 

to hide a cache, all you need is a good hiding location, and a GPS co-ordinate.

 

What ya think?

 

 

[Guest Crash Lander]

Similar to the "Come and Get it" Trophy, only harder to find?

 

Sounds like fun....if you have a GPS unit.

 

 

[dlps73]

Hi Ultralights,

 

Been geocaching for a couple of years now using a Garmin GPSMAP 60CS.

 

Fantastic family pursuit given the requirements of the cache location (basically it should be historical in nature or an interesting/beautiful place the idea being that if you don't find it at least you get something out of the hunt).

 

So - I'm with you mate! Don't think we could hide one in the Oaks Airfield though unless it was on outside of the acces fence ......hmmm.

 

Cheers.....Doug

 

 

[Yenn]

So how are the co-ordinates given, do they also give the map datum?

 

Yesterday while bushwalking with a friend I was using AGD66 and my friend was using AGD88 I think and we had about 200m difference at one point. Both points put us on the incorrect side of a ridge line on the map. Sad maps Australian 1:100,000.

 

 

[Ultralights]

My GPS is set to WGS84. i believe its the Australian Aero standard

 

 

[dlps73]

Mine's the same.

 

Ian - the geocachingsite mentioned by Ultralights (http://www.geocaching.com) gives a wealth of information and it's free!

 

Just put your postcode in and it will give you all the caches in your area in an expanding radial form. You can also download the cache waypoints straight to your GPS if you can't be bothered inputting them manually.

 

Cheers......Doug

 

 

[Guest Fred Bear]

Excellent stuff Ultalights! I have joined up too.Sounds like a load of fun.Thanks for the site.