1st Geo Outing

[DanP]

Was out a week ago with 10 boys scouts for our first Geo Cache outing.
Camped out at bald mountain in the cabins and set up our own course on the hiking trail. Found the H2O put us 8 - 12 feet with in target. Dont have enough exp to say if this is good or bad.

Boys had a great time - still a learning curve but with better weather I'll be out more. Boys liked being able to watch the trail develope and look back at where they had been. Looking forward to another outing with them.

Still have to teach map and compass but the GPS units got their attention.

Dan

[NEMichsportsman]

Nice to hear, sounds like a lot of fun.

One of my favorite memories of Boy Scouts was working on my orienteering merit badge. I enjoyed competing on orienteering courses at various outings.

[cbearw]

DanP: I am guessing you must have been getting WASS to get that sort of EPE (Estimated Position Error) of 8 to 12 feet. I have The I Finder HuntC and the best I can get has been about 19 feet with WASS enabled. Without WASS the bet I can get is about 35 feet to 40 feet EPE. So I would say you did really well. We dont get the best WASS coverage here in the OKanagan Valley in BC Canada. Actually Unless I am in a wider valley I dont get it at all. :sad: What sort of EPE do you get without WASS on your H2O? .............Tom

[hitechman]

you had a lot of fun DanP. Sounds like you are coming right along with that unit. My grandson and I grocached in the local area on Sunday for a few hours and came up with 13 caches and 2 benchmarks.

Remember that accuracy/EPE are probabilities in a sense. I have had my GPSr show 25' accuracy abd I was 2' from where I was supposed to be. I have also had 8-10' accuracy and been 25' from where I was supposed to be. There was also an accuracy probability when that point was determined (whether from a map or from a GPSr reading). The final outcome is determined by a combination of both accuracies.

I was wonderin' if you took coordinates off from a map and entered them into a GPSr (like a surface feature off from a paper topo map) or marked that spot with a GPSr ahead of time and then went back to it?

Steve

[DanP]

Our outing was simple but four locations were marked with my unit on a hike earlier in the day. After lunch we headed out with the boys and the GPS in their hands. Two of us knew the locations. Because my unit was the one used in marking I am sure it improved accuracy when going back to a location. I know we had good sat lock but I did not think it was WAAS.

Work got busy so I set the unit down and did not play much with it. With
weather getting better I plan to spend more time with it. We are also headed over by Claire to a scout camp in two weeks making maple syrup. I know there are some caches hidden there we will try to find on our off time.

I do not know what these unit are suppose to do but I thought we did extreamlly well. We wrote the locations down and then keyed them in and asked to show in the map and the boys hiked to them. When found keyed
the next and so on. There was about 1/2 mile between caches.

Work Calls!

Dan