Alpha Centauri Breakdown Multi-cache

This cache has been archived.

Butano: The star drive has been stolen by those not wanting to help the Alphas get back home. It cannot be replaced [:(] due to circumstances. Thanks to everyone who found it!

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Hidden : 10/3/2010
Difficulty:
3 out of 5
Terrain:
3 out of 5

Size: Size: regular (regular)

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Geocache Description:

Alpha Centauri visitors have crashed near Almaden Lake!

Your mission is to rescue the Alpha Centauri star drive. You must do this before the government can confiscate the star drive and disassemble it for research. Help the aliens return home to Alpha Centaur!

The Alphas dropped several beacons pointing the way to the planned ejection point of the star drive. The beacons indicate the location of the information needed to find the star drive, but have been encoded to restrict access to the advanced hardware. Because each beacon was dropped from altitude on a windy night, the exact coordinates could not be determined. Some searching may be needed to find the beacons. Because the final ejection point was done near ground level, its coordinates are much more accurate.

It all started as they went for a look at the birds on Lake Almaden Island. Their ship managed to get a bit too close to the island and clipped an egret. The egret escaped with no harm. The ship, however, suffered multiple system failures. It quickly became apparent that they were going to crash. In order to facilitate a recovery mission of the valuable star drive, they dropped several encoded beacons, though the beacon locations were not encoded.

At N37° 13.334' W121° 51.127' the hydrogen reprocessor failed, causing a plasma fire in the main intake manifold. This caused the first beacon to be dropped.

When the radar ofusticator started to give feedback at N37° 13.300' W121° 50.948', a second beacon was dropped.

They managed to go another 708 feet to N37° 13.244' W121° 50.820' before a third beacon was dropped when the ion shield generator failed.

When the landing jets were shredded by some trees at N37° 13.215' W121° 50.710', it became obvious that things were not going to go well and another beacon was dropped.

A crash was imminent. Before they crashed, they had to get one more beacon out. But the Universal Positioning System receiver (UPSr) had failed. All they know is that it was about 110 feet after the previous drop.

After the crash occurred, a brief mayday message was intercepted. The message was encoded and believed to indicate the final location of the cache.


 To accomplish this mission, you must locate each beacon, decode the information, and then use that data to locate the star drive.

Since the star drive is based on star power, the beacons can only be seen at night with additional luminescence.

While the Alphas were placing the beacons, many other forms of wildlife was seen. These included a group of deer, a spider that had captured something for dinner, possibly a bat, and a skunk! Poison oak was also observed. So be aware of your surroundings.

Since the crash path is covered with a few types of terrain, be prepared with appropriate walking shoes, flashlights for everyone, pencil and paper to write down the information gathered. This will be about a 1.5 mile recovery mission.

If at any time you feel that there may be unsafe conditions or situations, abort the mission immediately.

You can check your answers for this puzzle on Geochecker.com.

Additional Hints (Decrypt)

[puzzle] Pbhag gurz nyy [cache] Haqre gur oehfu

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
-------------------------
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)


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