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angiem357

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Posts posted by angiem357

  1. On 6/28/2019 at 7:54 PM, foxtrot_xray said:

    I'm currently working on a fix, and hope to have an update posted soon!

    Thank you so much! I'm up in Grand Teton NP visiting my boyfriend and we went up to Yellowstone for the last 2 days but it was more of a sightseeing thing than anything else. Found some BMs by accident along the way and was hoping to verify. App wasn't working consistently even with strong signal, but I'm just thankful there IS and app for this. Hopefully I'll be able to find some verifiable ones before I leave the 16th. I haven't been giving it much of a try in my hometown of College Station, TX, but I think I'm going to integrate it more along with my caching. Thanks again!

  2. Well, I tried the link and it shows 4 BMs on the main park road, but none anywhere near I found my two, or the few my dad found on his last trip. Very interesting. The link looks to be incredibly helpful for planning where to look when I'm out traveling. I really appreciate the information for a new tool.

  3. Thank you for the replies! These were set in 1903, but I just don't know that much about the reporting of BM locations. Thanks, Z15 for the link. I'll try that and see if they come up there. 

     

    My dad stumbled upon some in other parts of the park a few months back, but we couldn't go there because of the torrential downpours that happened during our visit and washed out some roads. I'm interested to see if they're in the database, but that'll have to wait until our next trip!

     

    Again, thank you for your help. This community is always so responsive and knowledgeable - I love y'all!

  4. I was in Big Bend National Park this last week and stumbled upon two BMs on Old Ore Road. We took GPS coordinates and had to wait until we got back home to look for them (no signal out there, of course!). When we entered the GPS data on them, they did not come up in the search. It showed some over 3 miles away (in a location we had visited but had no idea there was a BM there, unfortunately), but the actual ones we located were not coming up in the results anywhere.

    Anybody have any ideas on whether we did something wrong, if the results are not exhaustive, or some other advice? We were pretty pumped about finding them and are a little disheartened that we can't log them.

    Any help would be much appreciated!

  5. A few random thoughts:

     

    When the apps are reporting you're co-ordinate position they're just telling you what the GPS in the phone is reporting, so the numbers you see aren't dependent on the app.

     

    When you say "the co-ords are way off" "pointing into the middle of the street two doors down" do you mean that the co-ords reported by your GPS/phone, when displayed on a map don't show up in your yard? Bear in mind that maps are often way out, google maps can be up to 100m off in some locations, while being spot on in others. I would trust my GPS (Etrex30) over an online map any time.

     

    Do you know how many satellites you have in your "constellation"? The more satellites you have the better the accuracy should be. You should be able to get a satellite display on your GPS to show you how many it is locked on to. On your android phone install "GPS tools" it will also allow you to see how many satellites it is locked onto.

     

    I would expect my original, first gen Etrex to be correct to within about 30 feet, I expect my Etrex30 and Android phone to be correct to within about 10-15 feet.

     

    I would say if you take your phone and GPS and place them together, leave them to settle for a couple of minutes, then check the co-ords they're reporting, if those co-ords are within 20feet of each other then they're probably working fine and can be relied on. Bear in mind that atmospheric conditions etc. can cause variations on different days.

    None of the coordinates on any device, app, or map are being reported as correct. If I cross-reference any of them, my location - and I mean, within 20 feet at least - is not close to correct. I have used GPS Tools as well as two other GPS apps for the phone part. I've had the best luck with GPS Essentials in the past, but I try them all just to see what coincides. There have been some small clouds here and there but the number of available vs used satellites has been variable all day.

     

    As I said, I have never before had this issue until I got to this location. Five miles away, no problem. Back in Houston, no problem. It doesn't seem scientifically sound to say that there's something weird going on right in this area, but that's what my wild imagination is thinking!

  6. I've used both methods with a phone, a GPS unit that is probably 15 years old which may or may not be working correctly, and satellite off of three different sites using my desktop and dropping a pin.

     

    By "satellite", it sounds like you mean satellite images, not GPS. As I said, do not trust the accuracy of satellite images. GPS only. And that's GPS via satellites, not a cellphone using just cell-tower triangulation. (Your brand of phone operating system will determine the terminology.)

    I meant both.

  7. Oh, I'd also like to mention that I have tried using the Geocaching and cgeo apps to see what THEY say my coordinates are while I'm standing there. I figure most people use those apps to locate caches, so I might as well try to see where they think I'm standing. Again, coords were totally off and they didn't agree as to where I was, either. Regardless of what some systems say, people really do seem to go off the apps so it makes sense to take that into consideration as well. Oddly enough, I haven't had problems with this in other places; just here at my new house.

  8. Sounds like you're using a phone. Is it set to use the built-in GPS chip, or just the cellular network? The latter would certainly explain your problems. (This is why phones have been tarred-and-feathered in the forums for years as a means for placing caches. They've gotten better, but still...)

     

    Do you have access to a dedicated GPS unit? Using that, combined with the waypoint averaging feature, would be ideal.

     

    PS, satellite imagery can sometimes be out to lunch for accuracy. Never use it to fine-tune a cache's coords.

     

    I've used both methods with a phone, a GPS unit that is probably 15 years old which may or may not be working correctly, and satellite off of three different sites using my desktop and dropping a pin. Even my regular street address in maps is coming up wrong. What I was saying before is that I have tried to see if any of the coords are matching up with each other, and while several are, those are still pointing to the middle of the street, two houses down.

  9. Hi, cachers. I know this subject has been touched on before, but I haven't found any threads with my specific issue.

     

    I recently moved to a new city, so I'm placing my front yard cache at my new place. Problem is, every app, online map, or GPS coordinate identifier is coming up with different coords and locations; some of them are very clearly too far off to even attempt to publish. I mean, like, backyard, two houses down, house behind mine on a different street. I've tried 5 so far, and none of them come close to where it belongs. I've dropped the device and left it alone for a few minutes to see if it would even out; no dice. I've cross-referenced some; I drop a waypoint and then use those coords in cgeo or the Geocaching app and none of them match up with any acceptable distance.

     

    Truthfully, this is a pretty easy cache so if it's even 20 feet off, I'm sure most people would walk right up to it, but still. What do I do if this continues? What do y'all feel is an acceptable level of inaccuracy? My tolerance is a lot higher than most, I think, because I want the challenge of actually *looking,* but I've read some really rude logs from others when the coords are off on others' caches. I don't want to make people mad.

     

    All my caching buddies are back home, otherwise I'd work on it with them. :(

     

    Thanks in advance and, if you've gotten this far, I applaud you.

     

    - AngieM357

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