Welcome to Dartmoor Geocaching › Forums › General Geocaching Topics › Confused over Challenge Caches!
Tagged: challenge advice help criteria
- This topic has 11 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 11 years, 4 months ago by Vodkashots.
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July 21, 2013 at 10:19 am #2327VodkashotsParticipant
I want to publish a cache, but the only way I think I might be able to do it, is as a Challenge Cache, but I’m not sure it meets requirements, even after reading through them several times, so any advice would be most appreciated. The idea is that the finder would locate historic buildings (within a small area) and take a picture of themselves. No piccies no smiley. However, I want them to fully explore the area so I don’t want to post actual co-ordinates for the buildings, so no way-points at all. I would publish the cache with my own pictures so that finders could check they were in the right place. The actual Challenge being to locate said buildings. To give you an idea of what I’m talking about, it would be at former RAF Mountbatten and would refer to the buildings as their previous names eg The Officers Mess. It may require a little local research before hand, but it’s not going to be difficult and I wouldn’t even anticipate them doing that – the aim of the game being to get there and explore! What do people think?
July 21, 2013 at 10:56 am #2328Dartmoor DaveKeymasterYou are not the only one to be confused over Challenge Caches, they have changed the rules so much that they are fairly useless now. However, the basic principle is that cachers have to find a set of existing caches that meet the Challenge Cache criteria in order to be allowed to find the Challenge Cache itself. From your description this is not what you are trying to do at all. In fact you are almost describing the recent Challenge concept which was quickly dropped last year.
There are other problems with your idea. You MUST specify at least one set of coordinates and a GPS MUST be needed at some stage in finding the cache. Additional logging requirements, like posting a photo before you get your smilie, are also no longer allowed. You haven’t mentioned a hidden cache at all, so what you describe is possibly closer to an Earthcache, which have another set of rules which I’ve never looked at.
I’m not much help really!
July 21, 2013 at 11:04 am #2329VodkashotsParticipantThanks Dave
I actually did want to do an Earth cache because the place is steeped in history and I thought it would be nice for cachers to explore that, however an Earth Cache needs to be specifically about geology not about history. The basis of what I want to do is to share the history of the area with finders, so it looks like I might have to do a multi-cache (of which I am not a fan and wanted to stay away from). Thanks for the tips about the pictures too. I might have found over 1000 now, but I’ve never actually hidden one (I have adopted 3), so am definitely a newbie in this area. I also know how annoying it is when co-ordinates don’t match up with the actual location, so I’m pretty nervous about the whole thing!
July 21, 2013 at 11:29 am #2330Dartmoor DaveKeymasterIt’s not surprising the Americans don’t allow caches about history – as they don’t have any 🙂 The old Virtual cache would have suited you exactly, but no longer allowed 🙁
Yes, there are few fans of multis. It’s all about the numbers I’m afraid, my new series has attracted more geocachers in 2 weeks than some of my caches have done in 2 years 🙁
Good luck, we shall watch with interest 🙂
July 21, 2013 at 11:59 am #2331VodkashotsParticipantI like the idea behind multi-caches – the only reason I don’t like them is that my GPS will not allow me to accurately enter co-ordinates in the field – they are ALWAYS 100m out which is so frustrating. It likes GPX files tho 🙂
Thanks for your advice – don’t watch too closely in case it’s a shambles 😉
July 21, 2013 at 6:57 pm #2332Tamerton ChocolatesParticipantI personally find challenge caches pretty crap. Groundspeak tried to get people interested by having challenges (or whatever they were called) as a separate item on your profile. No-one could be bothered with them so they pulled that after a year and now they allow “unknown” and “traditional” (?) caches to have stipulations on them. The whole idea of the game is to find a box and sign your name. I can now for instance find a box, sign the log, and then find that it doesn’t count because you haven’t got X number of DNF’s (or whatever the challenge is). Makes no sense.
July 21, 2013 at 8:52 pm #2333VodkashotsParticipantHave given up! Just submitted a traditional with some (very brief) history encouraging people to explore the area and included a web link instead. Think I wanted too much from myself on my first ever published cache….. will think up a great one and take my time over it
July 22, 2013 at 5:34 am #2334GoldenHaystackParticipantHi Vodkashots. Is your GPS mapping set to WGS84? This is the latest reference coordinate system used by the Global Positioning System. That could be the reason you are some 100+ meters out when you enter coordinates into your GPSr. GH.
July 22, 2013 at 5:52 am #2335GoldenHaystackParticipantWell I enjoy a challenge. One can go out and find any old box any old day, that just adds to the numbers. It’s great to go out and find a specified set of boxes or other conditions that require varying amounts of effort and travelling which then allows me the privilege of signing a log to indicate that I have made that effort. GH.
July 22, 2013 at 9:01 am #2336VodkashotsParticipantThanks for your replies. Hi Golden Haystack, I’ve just looked at the Garmin and I have Normal, WEES/EGNOS and Demo. I guess I use Normal but I really don’t know. I don’t even know what the other one is! Can I download software for WGS84, or is it a case of my Garmin just doesn’t have it?
I met Windrush the other day and we both entered the same co-ordinates in the same way, and mine was confirmed 100m out, so I might just have a tempremental one! I have a Garmin 400t if anyone else has one…..
July 22, 2013 at 2:04 pm #2337GoldenHaystackParticipantHi Vodkashots. On my Garmin 76CSx (which was doing the same as yours when acquired) go to:- Menu – Main Menu– Setup – Units – Map Datum and then select WGS 84. Not sure if yours has the same menu system as mine. Good luck. GH.
July 26, 2013 at 5:35 pm #2349VodkashotsParticipantHUGE THANKS to GH for the advice and the email. So chuffed to know how kind people are – it’s going to make a massive difference to us 🙂 🙂 🙂
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