The Rimatus Beacon (Auckland) Auckland, North Island, New Zealand
By stretch.kerr on 11-Nov-11. Waypoint GC2XN1G

Puzzle no longer works. I no longer geocache. Cache removed. Thanks to all those who found it. Ammo tins are great - contents were bone dry after 7 years in the bush.

Had a cheeky Auckland Mission on the cards this weekend - just had to drop the family off in Pukekohe first and then meet up with Davidsonclan. We had a few caches on the list today but mainly this was just a numbers mission. A late start meant we'd be late to finish but 3am isn't too bad. There were some great finds and some grotty finds but cheers to the CO's and those that help maintain their caches. This cache was on the must find list and ended up being quite the highlight for us. Torches and phone probably weren't the best TOTT here but surely we'll be fine - we're experienced geocachers after all... It all started going downhill once we left the track though, literally. Torches were fading, visibility only went as far as the tree in front of us. Crazy but I was determined to trust my phone. I followed - walking backwards and forwards and praying the hint would soon come into effect. Just when I thought I'd found the one - there was a bigger one right next to it. Then 'HOLY MUMMA!' this is it... it has to be. Sure enough, my favourite type of cache container was discovered - full of swag. But now how am I going to get back to the car? I decided to follow the faintest track in hopes it would be an easier way back... it wasn't.... but that's another story. Cheers stretch.kerr, this was a tough puzzle but a rewarding find - TNLNSL, TFTC +1FP

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Wow that was a crazy mission in Auckland for 24 hrs caching with Philip.Perry and three of my kids I mentioned to Philip that I wanted this one as its been on my list for way to long . We arrived at our parking position at 0109am it was just starting to drizzle we were only a few hundred meters from cache in a straight line lol it turns out you cant walk in a straight line to this cache . So we followed the path until we were 50m from cache then the fun begins we should have fired up the GPS for this one as our phones were all over the place under the thick bush cover . We proceeded of track the terrian is not good either in the pitch black of the night could see about 5m ahead of us with our dim headtorches that had been going all night. With stream following below us we got down to 20m to GZ Philip decided we may in fact be on the wrong side of the stream so slip slided his way down the steep gully and up the other side while the kids and I looked on other side after about 20mins Philip.Perry shouted out he had found the Cache OMG thank goodness. Once names were in log we needed to fond our way back to the Van that was another mission in its self which took another 30 mins also . A highlight of my trip to Auckland FP from me.

Finally get to knock this one off which has been a long time coming after working on it now years ago.

Not sure we picked the best approach to GZ but we made a good adventure of it and all was well and good when we got to the cache. Another very nicely done puzzle, glad to finally get my name in the book. TFTC

Have looked at this one a few times as it is nearby, but without a working tool it is very difficult to pin down. We contacted the CO a while ago who suggested an alternative method which we used and had several walks in the area to see if we could track it down. After being unsuccessful we had a chat to some previous finders who were very helpful and cache was located today.
Must say that this tree and a neighbour are 2 of the more impressive ones in the park and it was great to see a little more of it that is not usually visited. The can and contents are in very good condition. TFTC.

Its Been a while and now its time to catch up on all the logging that I've put off to a rainy day (while it may not be raining, where we were heading the roads are still closed hence sitting here doing this).

Back out on the road with HKCB and RWIMF to grab a few caches along the way or at least as much as a morning would allow as we needed to be back in Hamilton for mid afternoon (I know cutting the cahing day rather short). So todays target were those caches along and about the Auckland Botanic Gardens and a few others to boot.
It was just a case of working our way though the place while we had the time and before it got too hot. It was good to be on the trails and as it was not too late I think many Aucklanders were still in the process of waking up.

Thanks for the Cache, thanks for the Placement

Teamed up with Cats&Dragons and RWIMF today to tackle some GROTTY caches plus a few finds in the Botanic Gardens, with the focus on a few solved puzzles that have been in the solved pile for a little to long. In the end it turned out to be a hugely successful day with all but 1 cache found, a big thanks to all the CO's for the hides.

I've struggled to get the green tick on this cache for a long long time. Figuring out what to do was the easy part but refining the numbers was the problem. Eventually after being fairly confident I knew where the rough location of the cache was I admitted defeat and asked a previous finder to check me coords. It turned out that I was only 1 number off from getting the green tick.

As we headed to GZ we missed the easy route in and just got to the closest point on the tracks on the GPS and took the straight line option, as it's always shortest but not necessarily the quickest option, which proved to be just that in this case. However once we had got to GZ the cache was quickly spotted and not being to keen to retrace our steps we looked for another way out and found the easy route. Thanks for the adventure and the puzzle.

Cats & Dragons, HKCB and I followed the main track, moving out of the way of the groups doing orienteering in the park, and making the decision to head directly from the closest point on the track to the cache. I'm sure the CO understands what this means. Best to say I slipped up, and now have a badly swollen knuckle, finger, hand, side of my arm... (that's what happens when wearing old sneakers with no grip). So it took me a while to catch up with the boys as they made it to the Cache site before me (until I slid, I was in the middle of the race to GZ). Needless to say we found the easy way back to the main path

I looked at the related web page many time and did calculations in an Excel spreadsheet until my CPU glowed red. I only got a general vicinity of where the cache might be.
I went out to this part of the park and started looking around using the hint provided. On the second time out, I got really lucky and spotted the right place. XNSL. TFTC.

Originally logged and found whilst out with mum (keylev) but now have own account so logging all finds I was present at and helped with.

Thanks for the cache.

Fourth time lucky (though we found it third time and didn't realise) with the help of the keylev clan. Hurrah! Nice cache.

On the way to botanic gardens for a bike ride and to walk the dog. Quick text to see if the brown hornet wanted to join us but nope they were heading out for this elusive cache we had been working on and would we prefer to join them? Silly question of course we would. Bit of a walk and a bit of bush bashing had cache in hand shortly after. Thankfully the find was much quicker than the puzzle!! Thanks for organizing this one!

Originally logged and found whilst out with mum (keylev) but now have own account so logging all finds I was present at and helped with.

Thanks for the cache.

Couldn't find this one believe it may have been moved. 11 jan 2014.

14000... Narrowed down the beacon to a 50m x 50m square, a few months ago... We needed a cool cache to mark our mini milestone today, and this one fitted the bill nicely. Soon spotted some debris from the wreckage after performing a detailed grid search, found approximately 15m from our guesstimated coordinates... Many thanks for the nicely constructed puzzle and large cache, gets a fave.

Started to look for the solution before the event at the Gardens. At the morning of the event I still had no area small enough to get an idea of GZ. Arrived in the evening at home and no 5 min later the damaged ELT revealed the so long anticipated broadcast of a smaller area. Now I had the coordinates in my hand but no time to get to the cache . Today I slept in which meant for me no big plan of caching possible before the rain started...

Parked my geocaching car at the parking lot and started walking to the area of GZ, which turned out to be the wrong tree and wrong side of the water. As it was raining during the night the river was not an easy crossing but I managed it safely and at GZ the given hint was easy located. Long time since I saw this kind of big container and it even had some pretty sweet intergalactic cache swag. TFTC. Gets a Fav!

Update added to the description: The signal had been transmitting for 18 months now, and its batteries are running low. The map no longer appears to refresh, but if you use the kml file provided on the 'Related Web Page' as a 'Network Link' within Google Earth, all will be revealed. The Beacon transmissions can still be received every 5 minutes using this method.

Had an idea of what do for this one but took ages to work out how. Haven't been to this area before and wasn't sure how to best approach GZ: not sure that a straight line thro' the bush & supple jack was the best choice but it worked!! Mind you, very glad water levels are low Another great hide, thanks for the cool puzzle & TFTC

Finally earned a smiley for this cache . The puzzle was in the rainy day pile for so long and then eventually decided to knuckle down and solve the puzzle after discussing various solving methods with TF at a recent event. Delighted to get a green tick at the end of last year. Ventured to GZ in January but as usual with us, the overhead tree canopy gave a poor GPS signal so we spent an hour searching with no luck. Left feeling frustrated that the beacon was so close, yet so far away.

Teamed up with TF and TW today, and took a "which side" tip off LC last night. Ventured back to GZ today with 3 pairs of eyes. TF approached from one direction while TW and AV came in from the other. Virtually arrived at GZ at the same time to make a quick find! And as per usual, took the easier way out.

TFTPC and the chance to explore a new area of the park.

Had arranged to met avoyager and Trout-fly to tackle this cache. As avoyager has mentioned the ladies approached from one way and Trout-fly went another and we arrived at GZ at the same time. Should think this cache will remain safe for a while as it is nicely hidden away from the usual paths used in this area. Many thanks for another smiley on our map.
Editing for incorrect date

Much too-ing and fro-ing between Tw and avoyager and myself to try to figure out this one. Must say BIG thanks to avoyager for coming up with the key. Meet up today and went for a walk to GZ. As usual I decided that my way was the right way and left the girls to try the other route. After a scramble (why is supple-jack so badly named) we meet up at GZ and made a very quick find. Love the fact that the cache is a good size!! Thanks.

Spend a couple of days receiving and analysing the signal and came up with a narrow search area.
In the area today for some other caches so search the area for likely hiding spots.
Didn't take too long to find a possible candidate and there it was.
Thanks for a great adventure.
TFTC

I have lots of exciting adventures to tell, but unfortunately, most of them would give clues as to where the cache is.

Thanks for an awesome adventure.

Shortly after the cache was published we had managed to triangulate onto the Rimatus Beacon until we had narrowed the search down to quite a small area. We stopped by in mid-November to do the Rimatus Rescue, but ran out of daylight before we could attempt to find the beacon.
We were down this way today for an early morning FTF hunt, so took the opportunity to finally seek out the Rimatus Beacon. After one false start (same mistake as FazerDude) we quickly homed in on the beacon. Got to our calculated GZ and found the cache in the first place we looked.
Thanks for an interesting puzzle - we enjoyed solving it, even if it was by the alternative method. We enjoyed the walk to the Final too - nice bush area.

# 5615

Finally found this cache after quite an ordeal. After several ordeals actually. Started with some very late nights back in Jan collecting and analysing signals from the beacon before realising that I'd been making it too hard for myself and the solution was somewhat simpler to come by. Dohhh! Set out one mid Jan afternoon with all the kids to find it. GPS was really struggling under the vegetation so we weren't really in the right location as it turned out. Crashing around the bush fighting the supplejack with toddlers in tow is somewhat of a challenge. Found an extremely likely looking site, but not of the type in the hint. Made absolutely sure the cache wasn't there before giving up. Back home to check the Auckland Council website for high res aerial and contours. Clearly we had been on the wrong side of the stream! It's taken a few weeks to get back, but an easy find when you know where to look. And certainly easier without the toddlers! T4TC&T challenge.

Solved a while back but the first rescue expedition was a failure. After refining the search area, expedition number 2 was launched. If there are wrong ways to get to the cache then I’ve done them all; in fact, forget the aliens, I think there are places where I may be the first human to ever have set foot!

Excellent puzzle and cache – thanks.

Out in Auckland South today to do some bush-walks/caching. A great idea for a puzzle Stretch! I quickly worked out a method to solve this one. It just meant commiting a lot of time to the mission. Multiple iterations had to be endured and became frustrating at times. Gettng locked out of evince after three wrong attempts (for 5 hours) just about killed any joy I had left. Still a fresh look at things the next morning resulted in evince agreement. Finished my exercise with this cache and got a decent workout. GPSr thought I was still 30m away when I spied a likely spot. The cache! Signed log and dropped a TB. Cheers for the great puzzle and cache!

Had solved the nearby Rimatus Rescue and decided this looked interesting. Devised a (long-winded) way of capturing the data from the dying beacon. Even though I'd narrowed down the area to places GZ wasn't going to be, after quite a few iterations, started to realise that this was going to take a long time. Stared at what data I'd obtained and had the first a-ha! moment. Tried to find a better way to recover the data and got Rickrolled, so I know I must be getting close. Watched Mr Astley strut his stuff and after a few more iterations I had it down to half a football field size (it better be a big cache!). I had a think about how the numbers were coming up and had the 2nd a-ha! got it within a few meters. Close enough for the evince checker (that is after I got my IP adress banned for 5hrs for consecutive guesses - harsh!!!)

Final is in a great spot and I lucked on the easy way there.

All in all a great cache deserving a favourite point both for the puzzle and the final. T4TC

Well what a mission, spent way too much time studing the beacon, after a DNF on Monday I was keen to go back and make another search, this time after searching a slightly different spot I knew we were on the right track, I think the aliens have died, as we approched GZ the smell of death was in the air, a likely spot was seen from a distance, and shortly thereafter the cache was discovered.

A excellent puzzle

T4TC

TB drop

New info added to linked page to allow puzzle to be solved in the intended fashion. First two finders solved using a different, but equally valid method. https://sites.google.com/site/gc2xn1g/

Shortly after publication i received the faint signal from the Rimatus emergency locator beacon. All that was needed was to pinpoint the location of the pod. Not long after, i was well on my way to narrowing down the search area. Using a slightly different technique, i was able to pinpoint the location on the day of impact. Unfortunately for us, i wasnt able to make the find until after work this evening. A wee bit of a hunt entailed, but the pod was soon located and still in surprisingly good condition. I was able to sign the log and drop off a few trackables for moving along. Thanks for an awesome puzzle Stretch! Enjoyed solving this one!

We were alerted to the plight of the Rimatus shortly after confirmation that indeed some debris was nearby. We quickly agreed to join in the search for the survivors and their pod. Daz attempted to crack the code before using a more industrious method. After quite some time Daz set out with solution in hand to attempt to find the beacon. Some 20mins passed by before something looked slightly odd and the piece of debris was found! Inside, the visitors left plenty behind in their haste to be rescued. Interestingly some distincly Kiwi items were found which suggests that perhaps this was not their first visit to our shores.

FTF #9! Thanks yet again stretch for an brilliant puzzle and cache. Totally worth a favourite point. Perhaps we can look forward to locating some of the other pieces of debris in the future? TFTC!

Geocheck replaced by Evince to deter brute-forcing a solution. Geocheck allows 10 wrong answers every 10 minutes, whereas Evince allows only one.

Maybe they came to seek out ours...

I have solved the puzzle it was very easy and am about to leave for GZ and I will be the only one to find while everyone else is at 11.11.11. Ha Ha no I havnt. All the best for the function tonight maybe you can all solve it together.

Yahoo! First green tick! Bugger about the event tonight... Will have to wait till tomorrow to find..!

Published

No Intergalatic Trackables