Team TB

The Team
Lee (starman316) Website Admin and Cacher, His Girlfriend Pam, since moving back up north Lee is now in charge of our North Team​
 

Matt (billy06) The Techie, Developer of the software we use below, website development and updates, file and stats generator

Shaun (Shaun01) aka "Mountain Goat" head of motorised transport, and the one who will go places not all Trekbuddies will

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History
We started Geocaching in the summer months of 2007, after a few finds we placed our first cache,
At first we used our Nokia n95s and MGMaps , as technology moved on and we strived for greater gps positional accuracy we invested in bluetooth gps (MKT) chipset,
we continued developing MGMaps with cached road and sat images and custom Kml files, we soon realised that MGMaps was nolonger able todevelope at the rate we wanted.
Trekbuddy came to the rescue the support of geocaching Gpx files was a great help, we soon discovered that TB had many more possibilities and worked to develope it for our needs,
we moved away from sat and road maps in favour of OS maps as they showed the detail we needed, wrote macros to display the GPX how we wanted it and custom Cms screens for ease of use.
As things moved on further we updated to nokia 5800 and n97, version 5 of the s60 platform we know well with larger screens and touchscreen.
2011 we have now moved to android, still using Trekbuddy.
we cached mainly by train and bike in the early days, since shaun was converted and joined our team we have transport big enough for all our tech and bikes,
we now also use laptops running memorymap with offline htm files for cache data, this is great for route planning and a good over view showing our uk cache database,linked to the incar screens and also Tomtom with all uk caches on , types, found, owned etc this completes our mobile command centre
Touring the uk from the most north to the most south points of britain has become part of what we do,  we have cached in what are simply some of the most stunning parts of the uk this combined with the adventure of being on the road and the humour of the team  all make for unforgettable trips.
we have since added to our caches and now have a total of 85 , we try to keep in place a good maintenance plan, with good cache containers displaying our logo, as well as some interesting ones!.
During 2010 geocaching has grown at a fast rate in our local area, with lots of new cachers and of cause caches to find ,we have a bit of a reputation for being mad, caching at all hours and in all weathers especially if a FTF is to be had!
We have a great local community which helps make caching here a bit out of the norm!
We have become good friends with the Bassetts and hope to place some very interesting combined caches in the coming months!.

UPDATE 2019

Locus maps is now are software of choice with well plugged in APIs for our caching data, sent to TomTom and other mapping apps its our one stop app for all things caching used with OS maps via our API key.
we will continue to build on this site and The Trekbuddies brand. and hope to meet many more local Geocachers

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Hardware
Samsung Galaxy S8, Nexus 5X, LG G3, Nexus 5,HTC Desire Z, HTC Sensation, iphone  past devices Nokia N95s ,Nokia 5800s, N97, X6, HTC Desire, HTC Desire S
IBlue 737 and  747+ GPS Receivers,
Dell 910 Netbook, and a raft of other Laptops
Samsung Galaxy Tab
External portable HDD
Magellan GPS 315,
Yaesu VX-7/FT-50R For Radio Comms
Tom Tom (The hardest working member of our team)
TomTom 2 (Sticky Vicky)
TomTom 5200 and 6200 live fully compatible to receive location data from Locus Map

Software
Locus Map Pro with Full Offline Uk Os Maps, Trekbuddy with all UK os maps, road maps and sat images  custom coded GPX  for use with Billy06 CMS (written by Billy06 debug by starman316),
C:Geo, Geocaching app and many more
TomTom with custom ov2 files, Moded Navcores and Latest Maps
MemoryMap with offline htm files
Geoget for database an macros for outputting to our many devices

Communications
Lee is a Licenced Amateur Radio Operator, Callsign 2E1LJL His partner M3NMV Locator Square JO02UL. We also use PMR 446 Channel 5

 

Contact Us:

thetrekbuddies@hotmail.co.uk