Meridian Gold Help..

[+Geo Techie]

I just got my Meridain Gold and so far love it. I am a noob to the GPS world and trying to understand fast. I set a waypoint just outside my house and saved it. Then moved about 30 feet from that spot and hit the goto and picked that way point. Then started back to that point to see how close I could get to it. I went to the screen for Bearing, heading, speed and distance. First it told me I was about 100 feet from the spot and when I got to the spot it said I was about 50feet from it. Did I set something wrong? I did upgrade the firmware and I don't have any map software load yet. That is coming this weekend.

 

Just thining about going to find a cache and will be off about 50 feet from the search might take sometime searching.

[+briansnat]

50 feet is on the high end of normal. 15-30ft off is to be expected, but 50 feet is not unheard of. You're probably fine.

 

And yes, finding a cache can be a challenge. If the GPS brought us right there every time, where would be the fun in that?

[+jacques0]

If you were just outside your house, the house itself may have prevented getting a good fix on your location. Try a more open spot to see if that's the case. Also, once you step outside, give the gps a couple minutes to find all the satellites it's able to.

[+Geo Techie]

True.. I figured it was 100% on the dot but did not know the range. Well maybe I will work with it some more and get closer. I only gave it one try. Might have been user error ( or most likely). Yeah, this weekend I plan on doing one or more.. I can't wait to search and find it.

 

Thanks

[+briansnat]

First it told me I was about 100 feet from the spot and when I got to the spot it said I was about 50feet from it.

 

This appears to be the "slingshot effect" that some Magellan users find frustrating. The Meridians and SporTraks are notorious for this. You just have to be patient and slow down when you are nearing your destination and allow the GPS to catch up with your location.

[vagabond]

When you go for your first few caches, you might want to pick some 1/1s.

That might keep you from getting discouraged, possibly even go out with someone with experience Enjoy the madness

[tossedsalad]

IIRC, the rated accuracy goes from about 25 feet with no WAAS to about 10 feet with WAAS (or about those numbers). Of course this is optimal with a clear view of at least 4 satellites and plenty of time to zero in the calculations.

 

My experience with my Merigold is that you can get within 10 feet or so of a coordinate even under tree cover which is much better than my friend's eTrex which gets pretty bad under trees or even heavy clouds.

 

Also, rather than expecting it to walk you right up to the spot, walk around a bit and get a feel for where it is hovering. The center of that area is often closer than the 10 foot number.

 

Oh, and one other note, keep in mind that the coordinates you have entered are also subject to the same errors when measured. So depending on how accurate the cache maker was in taking readings, it may not be pointing you right to the cache. I missed a FTF the other day because the coordinates were about 100 feet off. But then the guy who was there ahead of us had the same problem and likely would have gotten the FTF if the coords had been right! In spite of the bad coordinates, he got FTF on his first try on the sister cache about 500 feet away.

[joe_shmoe]

When we get close to a cache with our Merigold, we switch to viewing the coordinates instead - that has been MUCH MORE accurate, most of the time putting us right on top of the cache. The estimated distance will often be off, even when the coordinates are identical to those of the cache location. Another strange thing [iMHO] on my unit, is one nav screen will have a different estimate of the distance to the cache. Does anyone else experience this?

[tossedsalad]

I was out this weekend and noticed that the coordinates could be a better guide as you get very close to the location. But I don't think I ever saw the compass lie to me. Remember that a single digit of a mili-minute is about 6 feet. So you can expect to see an error of up to 4 feet when your coords are right on!

 

Also, there is the "last place I looked" effect. If the GPSr wanders inside a 10 foot radius circle and at some point it is saying you are on target, you look down and see the cache, is that because the GPSr took you right to the point? Or is it because once the random jitter in the reading got you close enough to see the cache, you stopped looking???

 

When the maker says the unit has up to 10 feet of error 95% of the time, I believe it. Do a test sometime where you just let the unit sit and see how much it wanders. Then walk away with the unit and come back to the same exact location 10 times and give it a minute to settle each time. I bet the error is about the same, although I have not tried it. Maybe I'll do that this afternoon before the storm hits.

[+Marcie/Eric]

I have a Merigold.

 

Is WASS availible in your area? I've heard you should let it sit outside for awhile to let it get a good look of the sky. Like 30 minutes. People refer to this as an almanac.

I let the thing sit on the ground or on a fencepost or something for three minutes and then make a waypoint. Then let it sit somemore and set another one. Do this a few times, away from trees and small buildings, and you'll see an average of where your GPS thinks it is, and it's accuracy.

 

I do this to mine every weekend just to see, from the same spot, in usually the same weather conditions. I have a long list of coordinates, and they all vary a little bit.