Newbie With A Question!

[+scorpionkill]

Hello Everyone,

 

Never heard of Geocaching until this past week and was intantly hooked.

 

I will be purchasing a GPS unit this weekend and can't wait to get started.

 

Some GPS coordinates that I see are in a format like this:

 

Latitude: 42.627983

Longitude: -71.854417:

 

Some like in google Earth are like this (not the same coordinate as above obviously):

Latitude: 42. 37' 24.44"

Longitude: 71 51' 21.56"

 

How does one convert the 1st example to the second format and vice versa?

[+denali7]

try this site:

 

conversion

[+BoomerFZ1]

There's also a free program that works like a charm called GeoCalc...you can google it easily enough.

[+scorpionkill]

Thank you.

[+Sputnik 57]

Hello Everyone,

 

Never heard of Geocaching until this past week and was intantly hooked.

 

I will be purchasing a GPS unit this weekend and can't wait to get started.

 

Some GPS coordinates that I see are in a format like this:

 

Latitude: 42.627983

Longitude: -71.854417:

 

Some like in google Earth are like this (not the same coordinate as above obviously):

Latitude: 42. 37' 24.44"

Longitude: 71 51' 21.56"

 

How does one convert the 1st example to the second format and vice versa?

The first set are degrees and decimal degrees.

 

Convert to degrees minutes.decimal minutes by multiplying the decimal by 60

 

Latitude: 42.627983= 42° 37.679'

Longitude: -71.854417= W 71° 51.265'

 

Your second pair are degrees, minutes and seconds

 

Convert to dd° mm.mmm by dividing the seconds by 60

 

Latitude: 42. 37' 24.44" = 42° 37.407'

Longitude: 71 51' 21.56" = 71° 52.359'

 

These two locations are not the same place, but they are close (about a third of a mile apart).

 

This site always uses h dd° mm.mmm (hemisphere, degrees, minutes.decimal minutes)

[+Thrak]

Just go here and download the program. It's small and virus free. It will let you put in whatever format you want and convert it to all three formats. Easy.

 

http://www.fizzymagic.net/Geocaching/GeoCalc/GeoCalc.html

[+badlands]

Google Earth will take either one. Now if we could just the the guys at Google to design a GPS