Geocaching is one of my main hobbies.  While I am a geek at heart and a country boy, geocaching allows me to mix the two into one sport.

If you don’t know what geocaching is, in short its defined as a high tech treasure hunt.  However, most of the time the treasure is a water-logged notebook to sign saying you were there.  The fun is in the hunt itself and getting out to explore what is around you.  While some will argue, the cut throat basics that you need are a GPS and a pen.  Some do it without either, but the sport was intended to be used with the GPS.

The main site is geocaching.com and the image below show how many I have found and hidden.  There are several varieties of the sport, but Geocaching is the leading concept.  You can read more on Wikipedia.

I tend to be a little artistic when it comes to signing the log books and use one of the two stamps you see here.  The blue stamp is my primary stamp that I try to use if the logbook is large enough.  The small black stamp is used for smaller log books.

How I started

It seems at one point or another someone asks how you learned about geocaching.  I was a communications specialist for the Army and one of jobs I had while in the army was to train the other soldiers in my company how to use the DAGR.  I would conduct a classroom environment presentation with powerpoint and then I would take them out onto the land navigation course and give them a DAGR with a piece of paper that had coordinates on it.  They would then go to the coordinates and find something from a piece of tape with a word on it or a metal road sign with a number on it.  After they visited each coordinate they would return and I would verify that they did it correctly.

I would be out on the course doing the same thing, as there was no point for me to sit down and wait.  I would enjoy making my own trail, trying to find a sign that was run over by 4 wheelers, or debate which sign was the right sign as they were very close to each other.

After I got out of the Army I was talking to a friend about it and with the idea of the old 1980’s movie Midnight Madness I suggested that we do something like this for fun.  With a funny look and a link to a wikipedia site explaining everything, the idea was quickly forgotten and I have been caching ever since.

DAGR

The GPS network was designed by the U.S. military, and during my service in the Army I was able to play with a small part of it whenever I wanted.  I tend to get excited when talking about it as it was a very unique piece of equipment that I enjoyed using.  The Defense Advance GPS Receiver or DAGR (pronounced “Dagger”) was the primary GPS device towards the end of my service in 2007.  It took 4 AA batteries, had a monochrome display, and cost about $6,000 each.  This device could be hooked into larger systems including the Blue Force Tracker (BFT) which is like an interactive waypoint tool where a soldier can mark a landmine and the entire network can see almost instantly where that landmine, hostile entity, or other important position they wish to mark.  I installed this equipment but never had the opportunity to operate it.

Some will tell you that a military GPS is accurate as much as 2 centimeters.  This is crap!  The DAGR was about 20 centimeters long and would have an accuracy as much as 20 feet at times.  The special thing about it was it held COMSEC (Communication Security) or the secret codes used to access the military satellites.  It also had a jamming detection function and would continue to work when jammed.

It had a lot of other functions but the nicest thing about it was it would use both military and civilian satellites giving it twice as many to fix a location.  I still have a video, interactive flash tool, and some powerpoint slides if you want to learn more.

**everything I meantioned about the DAGR can be found on Google.  The only thing secret about the DAGR is it holds COMSEC which changes often.