Kalang at Last - Day 1

Friday 6 July 2012

Quite a few months ago Barad Bunch suggested trying to find some of his Kalang series, so Peter had a look and realised that it was going to require a bit of brain power to solve. At first it looked like A|C|G|T (KK 04) may be the easiest, but several attempts to work it out failed. The only thing to do was email Barad Bunch for some help; the reply was “well that is probably the hardest, try some others first”. Well we did but it became clear that this was seriously tough work and Barad had to put up with several more requests for hints of what to do. The only one of the five solved that didn’t need his help was Noughts and Crosses (KK 02). So a really big thanks to Barad for his forbearance.

We worked out the route to take with a bit of Google Earth plotting and set out on what was a superbly beautiful day; in fact it reached 17 degrees. Not long after ticking off the first one a woman walked past with her dog and, on seeing us with a GPS and a looking at a sheet of paper, asked if we knew where we were. Perhaps we looked a bit lost.

After collecting our third we struggled up a steep, weed ravaged, hill then down the fire trail to Kalang Road and back up the track there to collect the other two for the day. This leaves two to tackle some other time, if we can solve the puzzles.

Noughts and Crosses (KK 02)

The hint for this one finally dawned on Peter and a bit of find and replace with Word and a web site offering string conversions proved successful.

Silver Caesar (KK01)

Peter ventured into Excel to try to convert the puzzle after guessing from the hint and knowing of Barad’s profession. All looked good until the result was put into a web based convert to a string where the outcome had a lot of hieroglyphics (for example “coordinates are� S ���”). Help Barad; and he came up with what Peter did wrong and what converter would do the job.

Binasky Binasky (KK 03)

A bit of Google search went on with Binasky and again a hint from Barad, but was almost stumped by the fact that the data in looked the same as the data out when using the web converter. From frustration more than design a second press of the convert button brought up the English. Perhaps that’s the reason for the double Binasky in the title.

My Incomplete Mishandled Email (KK 06)

Peter thought he was on to this one, but searching the web did not get him any closer to the solution, but Barad mentioned a web converter site and it was soon solved.

Our Dog (KK 05)

Pondering the clues seemed to draw a blank, until Barad gave a hint that made a big difference; however trying to convert was taking a lot of time and not getting anywhere. In frustration Peter wrote some visual basic code and out came the correct answer. On telling Barad about it he mentioned a particular web converter that would have saved Peter all that time; never mind.

The view from the Kalang Sites

IMG_6879 View from Kalang Geocache Sites

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Myrtle Forest

Image
20 June 2012 A bushwalk to the top of Collins Cap was in the plan for the day, with a couple of caches to hopefully be the bonus. On the way up we had a quick search for Myrtle Park, but didn’t latch on to it and left finding it until the return leg. As we got high frozen snow on bushes was met and as planned we went down part of the old Glen Dhu track before seeing if an ascent of Collins Capo could be made from that side of the mountain. However the snow on the bushes was going to make us a bit too wet, so it was back to the track and the normal way up. It did not take us long to discover that it was quite overgrown with very wet chest high scrub which caused us to give up on the attempt. There were four of us on the walk and on returning to the “ Myrtle Park ” cache site all began the search based on the hint. Greg managed to find it fairly quickly. The log was interesting in that two entries were made by people who wrote they knew nothing about geocaching, but spotted the cache c
Read more

Freycinet Bushwalk

Image
3 – 5 October 2012 As we were going on a bushwalk to Freycinet Peninsula the potential geocache finds in the area were checked and several were close to our route. We went for three days, camping at Cooks Beach for both nights and heading down to a rocky peak beyond Passage Beach. Graham (Graham51) was with us although he took the longer return option over Mount Graham where he also managed to locate a cache on his journey. On the way back in the car we picked up a couple in the region. Top of the Pass Our first for the day, located by Graham, and although a few muggles were about none took much notice of us,   Half empty or half full ? We dropped our packs and with two people holding GPS’s and three heading to GZ it was surprising how little attention the muggles paid to our activity. One looked up for a while but soon turned back to look at the scenery elsewhere.   Blue Champagne Our objective for the days bushwalk was the southern peak on the Freycinet Peninsula above point Geo
Read more

Off to the Thumbs

Image
Wednesday 27 June 2012 Well the weather was just ideal for a bushwalk to the Three Thumbs and to collect a few geocaches during the trip. However, the geocaching part looked a bit shaky as Peter’s GPS did not display any in the area. A later check at home showed the records were on the GPS and when overwritten with a new copy they displayed OK; puzzling! All was not lost because Barad Bunch had notes on the caches and the grid on his GPS. This enabled us to locate the one near the cars. After morning tea at the lookout over Maria Island we commenced the walk to the Three Thumbs. Shady spots had plenty of frost but a fair bit of the way was along the tops of the main ridge and in the sun. Eventually we w ere on the highest peak, presumably the third Thumb and also what we presumed would be the hiding placed of the “ Three Thumbs Up ” geocache. But when Barad checked his GPS it indicated it was over 400 metres away on the peak previous climbed and descended from. Oh well that would have
Read more