| QUOTE (beejay @ December 24, 2013 08:35 pm) |
| When I have done something similar, I start with PQs at Groundspeak. Dividing by "published date" is the only way to do something like this, I think. I make a PQ starting from published 2000 and then experiment with ending date until I'm close (but under) 1000. And then repeat. Once you get all the caches you can deal with all the logs...but this really had better be a small state if you hope to be able to keep up with it. |
What beejay said.
Easiest way is to start with the date the first Geocache published in your preferred state, and work your way out from that point to get as close to 1000 caches as possible without going over. If you go over, a PQ will truncate at 1000 caches. When you have that delivering 1000 (or close to) caches, start with the day after the end date of the PQ. You can copy the PQ's on gc.com so that it makes it easier to duplicate all the settings. I do the entire state of Alabama (15000+) caches in 5 days, running 3 PQ's each day. I have one that I run every day to collect any new posts too. I'm not an FTF hound, but I like to know where the new stuff is and who's putting it out. Updating those PQ's once a week will typically be sufficient. As caches archive, the number of caches returned will decrease in any given PQ, so on occasion, you'll need to adjust the dates on your PQ's. Not a big problem after you get 'em all loaded, because there's a macro which will give you the split dates on all the caches in your db. In your PQ, you might want to filter a few things, but that's totally up to you. I filter off my finds, and my caches, and events. I normally get notification of events from friends anyway. You can test each PQ before running it too. I find myself updating the Start/End dates about every 3 or 4 months. Watch the LastGPXDate field in the DB. That will let you know when one stops updating. Filter for the ones that aren't any more in GSAK, then force a status check on them to find out if they're disabled or archived. Once archived, I remove them from my main db. When I want to update the ones I've found, I run the special MyFinds PQ on gc.com.