Aerial Intelligence: Agent Extraction Mystery Cache
Aerial Intelligence: Agent Extraction
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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There are enough puzzle caches around the lake to keep SIGINT
(signals intelligence) analysts from NSA busy for quite a while.
Our nation's intelligence community has both EYES and EARS
in space, so to balance out the SIGINT puzzle caches, here's an
IMINT (imagery intelligence) puzzle.
Your New Employer:
After waiting 18 months for the Defense Security Service to
investigate your background, audit your banking and investment
records, check your criminal record, and interview all of your
friends, relatives, neighbors, teachers, classmates, lab partners,
librarians, coworkers, bosses, ex-girlfriends, ex-boyfriends,
roommates, landlords, bank tellers, garbage collectors, grocers,
cable guy, bus drivers, 7-Eleven clerks, shopping mall security
guards, Blockbuster video store employees, gas station attendants,
dry cleaners, the zoo keeper, local police, hospital emergency room
staff, and anyone else who might have seen or even thought
you did something slightly suspicious seventeen years ago
(you were five years old then), you took and passed your polygraph
examination, and you have been hired as a fledgling
Imagery Analyst (IA) for the
National
Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) (click the link for
NGA history).
Your Task:
Your boss has assigned you an urgent task to help rescue an
American agent, code-named Trotter Rhino. The Defense Attache
in-country desperately needs your help to determine Agent Rhino's
hiding spot and conduct the extraction. Local nationals friendly to
American interests have smuggled out this aerial photo to help you
locate his hideout:
The Defense Attache written report that accompanied the photo says
the photo has not been altered and "north is up." The report draws
your attention to the fork in the road near the center of the
image, and says there is a stop sign for traffic coming from the
east into this intersection. The local friendlies report that Agent
Rhino's hideout is 0.51 miles from that stop sign on a
bearing of 301 degrees True.
Sitting at your desk in front of your NGA computer, you are just a
point-and-click away from NGA's database of global overhead
imagery. You must use these database resources at your disposal to
find where this image was taken. Our foreign informants are usually
poor street peddlers with no access to GPS, but we're pretty sure
the image provided is located somewhere within a 5 mile radius of
the posted coordinates at the top of this cache listing.
As a first try, you click on Google Earth, but then scold yourself,
"Self, the imagery in Google Earth for this region is not of good
enough resolution to accomplish this task." So where else can you
get overhead imagery? Please note that you
do NOT have to PAY for any subscriptions or imagery to
find this cache. The imagery is available at good resolution and
free of charge... you just have to know where to look. Let your
fingers (and computer mouse) do the walking.
A few notes about the cache:
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Parking: There are no convenient parking spaces
near Agent Rhino's hiding spot. (I got there by bicycle and by
jogging). Please find a legal parking spot on a side street
or up the road at the general store and walk, jog, or bike down to
the hideout.
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STEALTH is a MUST! The cache
is hidden in a moderate to high muggle traffic area depending on
the time of day and the weather, so be on the lookout for
approaching muggles when searching for the cache. It might
be a good idea to bring someone with you as a spotter to watch for
muggles while you search for the cache.
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FTF Prize: Besides the extremely-high job satisfaction in
knowing that you helped rescue a veteran American spy from torture
and death, FTF PRIZE was an NGA coin.
Congrats to Cache'n Jacksons on the FTF! (Note, the cache was
actually initially stocked with the Trotter Rhino TB, so the FTF
got to rescue Trotter Rhino and move him on to another mission
elsewhere, in addition to keeping the FTF Prize.)
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The cache is fairly small, and it was a tight fit squeezing the
Trotter Rhino into the cache container, but there is room for small
trade items or coins.
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This will be challenging to find in the spring, summer, or fall,
but it will be next to impossible in the snow.
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Please do not post pictures that
would give away the location and please refrain from giving out
measurements or discription of the site! Thanks.
Confirming you answer: (Because
I don't want you to drive all the way out here and then have to log
a DNF! 
)
Thanks to mscrep for his valuable feedback in
revising the listing. The way the listing was initially
written, it was difficult to come up with very precise coordinates
for the final hide location. You see, the main problem was that the
position error at the stop sign plus any
calculation errors plus the position error at
the final cache location ended up with a pretty inaccurate solution
and a very wide search area . Having the exact coordinates
for the stop sign from which to project the final cache
location will alleviate a significant portion of this
inaccuracy. 
So here's what I've come up with to
help maintain the intent of the puzzle but provide the cache
seeker with more accurate final cache coordinates:
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When you think you have found where this image was taken, look
it up on a map. The name of the main road that proceeds west off
the left edge of the image is:
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
0 9 7 1 5 9 8 0 9 3 9 8 6 1 2 3 9 4
8
The "exact" stop sign coordinates that I used for projecting the
waypoint to the final cache were:
N 43 AB.CDE
W071 KL.MNO
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You can check your answer for the
final cache coordinates by clicking on this link:
Geochecker.com. It will tell you your coordinates are
"correct" if they are within 25 feet. (This is intended as a
means of verifying you did the waypoint projection correctly after
you have found the exact location of the stop sign.
About the cache idea: I can't take credit for the idea, so I
need to give credit where credit is due. If you do a key word
search for "Aerial Intelligence" on www.geocaching.com, you will
see this cache follows in the footsteps of other caches in at least
three other states. The first
Aerial Intelligence (GCGPYX) was placed in Nevada in February
2006. The next two sections are borrowed from the original Aerial
Intelligence cache listing for the benefit of seekers of this
cache:
Interpreting Aerial Photographs
Interpreting an aerial photograph requires a little skill. People
spend years becoming proficient photo-interpreters, and the amateur
or casual user of these images is wise to spend a few minutes
learning to distinguish a small cloud shadow from a small lake, an
air force base from a civilian airport, or a stand of young timber
from a grassy hillside.
What to Look For
Aerial photographs contain a lot of information, anomalies in
drainage patterns, landforms to make deductions about the
subsurface and structures will identify the area. The interpreters
are likely to examine the photographs and USGS topographic maps
together, perhaps alternating between the two to connect place
names and road numbers with unidentified features in the
photographs.
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NGA Kids website: If you or your kids would like to work on
their Imagery Analyst apprenticeship, you can visit the NGA Kids
Page (click on this link, then click on "NGA Kids" in the upper
right hand corner).
Hint added 8/14/06. The first hint
is to help you find the imagery without paying for a subscription
to Terraserver.
Hints added 12/15/06. I really
hate going out of my way to find a cool cache and come up with a
DNF. I don't want anyone else driving
an hour or more around the lake to get to this spot and then
have to log a DNF. The point is to
have fun solving the puzzle and FIND
the cache. With that in mind, I added two more
hints to help at GZ. The second and third hints are "spoilers"
that describe the cache hiding spot and the cache
container.
If I add any more hints, it will be announced via log-entry, so if
you are watching this listing, then you will receive an email
notifying you a hint has been added.
Special thanks to Tigquilt for agreeing to maintain this cache
for me when I'm not in NH.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
[Hint #1 for finding the imagery for free on the internet:] Qba'g gnxr gur cvpgher sbe Tenavg.
[Hint #2 for the cache hiding spot:] Nobhg svir srrg bss gur genvy, haqre gur bireunat bs n ynetr ebpx, ba gur fvqr bs gur ebpx snpvat njnl sebz gur genvy.
[Hint #3 for cache container description:] Pbagnvare vf n zrqvhz ghccrejner pbagnvare jenccrq va oynpx qhpg gncr.