It happens to all geocachers no matter how experienced you are. There you are in a fairly heavy wooded area and you are once again playing the "watch the bouncing arrow" game with your GPS unit. That's when you are searching for a geocache and the arrow that shows where you are starts giving really irregular information how far and which direction your geocache actually is. This makes it extremely difficult to find ground zero or the actual true spot where the geocache is supposed to be.
One second it is slightly to the left and 40 feet away then it is slightly to the right and 20 feet away then it is back to the left and 60 feet away.... Aaaaaaahhhhh! Very frustrating.
So how can you possibly narrow down where the geocache actually is? The answer is to use a technique known as Triangulation. The way geocachers use it is by taking two different paths at right angles towards ground zero. The idea is if you attack ground zero from multiple points it will give you a better average to where ground zero resides. Let's go now to the video to help explain it further.
HHH Note: During the video I sometimes refer to a triangularization experiment and others I refer to triangulation. In this I am referring to the same thing. I hope it does not promote any confusion.
If you cannot see the viewer above click here to see the video itself:
So the next time you find yourself playing follow the bouncing arrow and are having
trouble finding that geocache be sure to try out triangulation. You will be glad you did.
http://headhardhat-geocache.blogspot.com/
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Please don't forget to visit our GeoSnippits Geocaching Tutorial Videos Website at http://www.geosnippits.com
1 comment:
We have a tendancy to end up under some heavy tree cover or in canyons that are deep and narrow.
We use the 90 degree method in canyons because they are generally open on the bottoms and it is easier to work.
For tree cover we tend to find open sky and triangulate from these areas. We have a tendency to eyeball GZ from the two different and open areas.
Great hint for the newbie.
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