360 Degree Bearing from Home Base

Question

On the main stat page there is a section that indicates finds by bearing, I assume from home coordinates, but it is not very detailed.  I looked for a checker to identify caches by home coordinate bearing but could only come up with specific state challenge checkers.  Is there a way to create a checker to check for caches within each segment of 360 degrees of our home base, or for that matter any coordinate that we can input?

Comments

Would LOVE to see a map-based version of this, just like the ones displayed in the 360-degree challenge checkers, centered on my home coordinates.  Or any arbitrary coordinates.

Answer 1

I have made a 360 degree challenge from my home coords a geocaching resolution for 2016.   So it is a personal challenge and not one for a specific GC,com cache.   Although, I would love to make it an actual GC,com challenge cache if/when GC allows new challenge caches and I complete the task.   As of the beginning of the year, I have 14 degrees to fill in, so I should be able to complete the task in a reasonable time frame.   How do I know where I stand?  I am using GSAK macros to find these.   I assumed that this site had a home coord 360 degree checker for non-GSAK users until I was discussing my 2016 resolution at a recent event.   The folks there did not have GSAK and I said project-GC should have one they could use and I was told it did not.    So, I thought I would check and found this discussion.    I hope that a checker could be added that uses the user's home coords (or maybe an entered coord value?) and displays a count of the number of the 360 degrees in which a cache had been found and a list of degrees not found (and maybe provide a few of the closest non-puzzle caches to satisfy each).   That is what the various GSAK macros do. It would be good if that info was available to non-GSAK users and this is the most like place that would happen.

Comments

What a cool idea! I'd love to have something like this myself and it would be a nice function to have in project-gc. Until that happens, what GSAK macros do you use for this?

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360DegreeChallenge.gsk to check each 360 degree and see which has a cache found or not.     I then added the GSAK "Degrees" column to my view to  find the caches in the missing degrees (it shows to a tenth of degree).    Optionally, I added a custom "360" integer column and filled it (for caches in the degrees I am missing) with a manually rounded whole degree value for me to filter on with more ease.

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Also, I will filter on the custom "360" column (value "> 0" or specific degrees) to plan a caching trip.   Or, I will export the caches in that filter to a GPX file and then import it to Google's "My Maps" and create a map showing pins of each of  the caches I could find to satisfy my quest.   From that, one can see the missing degrees as lines of pins radiating from my home coords.   It looks cool.    See my post in NWOGEO.org "2016 Geocaching Resolutions" topic thread.  http://www.nwogeo.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3385

Answer 2

It's not possible to create a checker because

1. PGC has no access to any home coordinates

2. Checkers need to have a GC code

Comments

I might have informed you slightly incorrect

Project-GC does know the home coordinates, of the users who has authenticated their accounts with Geocaching.com. By default, these coordinates are never shown public, or data based on them.

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Checker dont need a GC code to be created or used but it is then hard to connect them to a challenge.
A checker with a defined point to check for a find in all 360 dergrees is possible. But som code has to be created because i dont thing any checker calculates the bearing.

Answer 3

Well i think this idea is not Bad. E.g i know some cachers who want to clean up there homezone like 5km around.

So if there would be A 360tool to put in koords or A gccode and A distance, then it should show thecaches like at the 360 checkers.

Comments

I think i would use goolge earth pro (free for all users) to determine if the homezone is clear for a distinct radius by setting my home coordinates as center of a circle drawn with the desired radius.
That would only solve the problem Rumreisender mentioned, though.

Answer 4

Well, there are many 360° checkers out there.

What if i have a GC-code pointing at my home coordinates? (I created a cache for my coin collection, and archived it, before it ever got reviewed. So i have a GC code "without a cache", but it has coordinates on it.

Could i tag one of those checkers to get the result? Or had the cache have been reviewed?

Alernatively I could use a traditional cache (that is archived, does it matter?), that is 50m from my home coordinates. Could i use that one with one of those checkers?

I don't know if any of those checkers works with a wanted distance instead of county borders?

If anyone has an idea, how to tag one of those checkers, let me know.. :-)

Comments

The 360 degree checker is a old special checker that cant be configured by ordinary users like most others. I have to be configure by the admin at pgc and i would guess that only checker for real challenges and not a fake one for users home coordinate.

The problem is relay two problem. Find with degrees you have logged from your home coordinates. and second to find caches with the missing degrees

A checker could be written for the first part but i would require a tag for each home coordinate. That is not a problem the problem is that there is no API function that calculates the bearing to a cache. A function had to be written in LUA to calculate it. Someone have to do it and check that is is correct.

The find missing caches is not possbile with a pgc checker becaus it only know you finds not other cache.


I dont know any way to do both without using a desktop app.

I would suggest to try GSAK
The first part is quite easy
Download and install GSAK. Authenticate on gc.com and "update user information" in the geocachgin.com meny and your home coordinates will be correct
Import a my finds PQ and the download the macro below and run it
http://gsak.net/board/index.php?showtopic=26896&st=0&#entry215348
You will get a nice html page with you finds for each degree and missing degrees.

The second part is harder

You have to import potential caches into GSAK. Create PQ:s or use the API get caches. But if it is to many caches you have to split the PQ:S and download only the appropriate are to run out of API download
If you do that you can filter i GSAK by degree but is it looks like 1 significant digit in the bearing so the values might incorrect.
Displaying caches in not trivial bur use the macro below and dual screen in the view menu to dispisplay them. Notice the limit of displayed caches with that macro but it can be changed
http://gsak.net/board/index.php?showtopic=17505&st=20&#entry226411

So be carefully to check the real bearing. I would use FizzyCalc but there are good website to


It might be easier to use GoogleEarth so you don have to import caches into gsak. There is a "Download Viewer*" link on you profile page and it will show caches in google earth. But max 500 and if there is more the selection is random so you must zoom down to se all caches. The coordinates of the caches are for some reason somewhat randomized and the will jump around abit when you zoom so check for the real coordinates and calculate the true bearing

Draw lines with the missing degree lined from you home with the measurement tool with a line from your home, the degrees of the line are shown. Or project coordinates with appropriate bearing and distance in som program and use the to create the lines.

And you can quite easy see where a appropriate cache is.
But remember that they jump around and you should check the real value near the border. zooming out and in will make the jump


Other cache manager also exit but i have not use them and dont know if they they have the approrpiate functions.
Geoget http://geoget.ararat.cz/doku.php.