Today I rode around 46 miles on my ebike to search for my missing Tobu disc. I also played nine basket of disc golf with my son and we tied at one over par. We played the last basket over again and I won the tie breaker.
I had lost my Tobu disc earlier in the week when it stopped working. This disc has a tracker in it that can be detected on the smartphone with a flashing light and beeper to help locate it. I like the disc a lot so I was really wanting to get it back.
It was a really nice ride down to the disc golf park and the weather was just right. It started out being a bit cool so I was wearing a jacket.
Here's a view of a river I passed:
Here's a view of a very green looking pond. Maybe there is a little extra fertilizer in it.
Here's a view looking down off a bridge on the bike path to where two rivers come together. I thought it was interesting watching the colors mix and the swirling patterns in the water:
Arriving at the disc golf course where I lost the disc I searched all over the place but could not find it. The locater still was not working, which was not suprising because it has been raining a lot recently. If water gets inside the locator it stops broadcasting a signal.
I wandered around pretty aimlessly near where I thought I lost it and was about to give up and leave when I thought I would think about the process some more.
I went back to the tee pad and thought about where the disc might possibly be. There was a big tree just to the right about where I had thrown it. I new the disc had not hit the tree because of the sound it made on landing.
I had searched all the zones shown in the diagram below pretty carefully. I doubted it was in zone 1 or zone 4 because the throw hadn't been that bad.
Zone 5 and zone 2 were very unlikely because I had not heard and thump sound of disc hitting tree.
Zone 6 was pretty easy to search and not that overgrown plus the ground was not that wet there.
Zone 7 was a distinct possiblity but the disc would have needed to pass throw a lot of brush to make it there. The overgrowth here was so dense it would make it really hard to search completely.
Zone 3 was near where the last reported telemetry was received from the disc before it fizzled out from what I assumed was water getting into its innards. Thus this was the only logical area to spend what was left of my dwindling ability and patience for disc searching.
I reasoned the since the disc has stopped broadcasting it was likely to be found in the muddy ground and zone 3 was very muddy. I concentrated my searching there under the branches.
Lo and behold! I found the Tobu disc down in the muck! It was right where I reasoned it might be. I opened it up and there was just a little water inside right next to the battery. I tried to see if it would work but it didn't at first. By the time I got home it was dried off and I recharged it and it started working again.
Tip for using the Tobu disc in the Pacific Northwest:
My hypothesis is that the small holes in the cap should be plugged so that water does not get into the electronics. I think that the electrical tap modification I've done in the below picture should do the trick:
The nice thing is that the light is still visible from the top and most of the bottom - plus the chirping sound from the speaker is just about the same volume as before.
I'll test out the modification next time I toss the disc into some wet stuff.
Thanks for reading! I always value your support and comments. The pictures were taken by me with my Galaxy S9+. Text and graphics copyright lightsplasher & litesplasher.