Managing Geocaching Pocket Queries
Here’s one of those overdue posts I had mentioned, only you have no idea just how overdue this particular one really is! I’ve been thinking about documenting this for at least a year, probably longer. It’s nothing special, but I hope it’s useful to someone out there.
Keeping your GPS current with geocaches isn’t as easy as it should be. Ideally, this should all be done the way a Palm, iPod, or many other devices synch with your computer. Wireless would be nice, particularly if it was faster than Bluetooth.
Alas, instead it’s a much more manual operation, so most people have to come up with their own system, or suffer through infrequent and/or inefficient updates. So here’s how I do it.
February 14th, 2009 at 9:22 pm
Interesting post to keep in mind when visiting the mainland or a cache dense area in foreign lands. Simple and obvious to use MapSource to easily delete those within a part or other area when the # of waypoints is an issue (but of course I never thought of doing that!).
I like hearing there’s at least one other cacher who would rather decrypt the hint than have it immediately! I did that with my 60csx. I used smartname instead of GC or GCA waypoint code, then put D/T plus undecrypted hint in note; for some trips I’d put owner’s name in as well as that can be a clue too 😉
As I have less than 1000 unfound caches on my island, my current process is 1) use GSAK filter to get rid of found / archived / temp unavailable caches and 2) use macro to export to Oregon. Done.
February 14th, 2009 at 10:06 pmThanks for the great post. I like how you use MapSource to manage your waypoint data. I tend to only use MapSource after a day of caching to see where I’ve been (tracks) and what caches I’ve found. Comes in handy for logging my finds.
I pretty much rely solely on GSAK to manage and filter my PQ’s, and then upload the nearest 1,000 not-found, not-archived caches to my GPSr as needed (typically on a weekly basis, but sometimes more). I also like to export my new, filtered GSAK database to MapSource and/or Google Earth so I can get a better sense of where the caches are before heading out to the field.
February 15th, 2009 at 11:31 am