+eranou Posted October 1, 2005 Posted October 1, 2005 Apart from using your GPSr's for the obvious benefits they provide for geocaching and walking, does anyone have any really unusual uses for their units? Also, does anyone have an inordinate number of GPSr's (like a collector)? Quote
+Master Mariner Posted October 1, 2005 Posted October 1, 2005 If I am working onboard one of our cable ships, route clearance, pre-lay grapnel run or post lay inspection and burial ships I put my GPS in the cabin window. My laptop, with charting software, shows where we are. This saves me going to the bridge to check when we are arriving on site or off a port as I just set up a range ring and an alarm goes off when we cross it. Not accurate enough for operations, we use DGPS for that. Quote
+The Blorenges Posted October 1, 2005 Posted October 1, 2005 (edited) Not an unusual use for it, but on a recent business trip to Tripoli (Libya) I walked from my hotel into the centre of the town. Decided to get a taxi back as it was too warm to walk. Despite having a card from the hotel with a map and directions in arabic I must have got the only Libyan taxi driver who didn't know his way round his own city. Fortunately I had put the coordinates of the hotel in and I was able to guide him back! And of course on the flight back to the UK I did have it running on the plane (with permission) and was able to prove that the cockpit instruments which displayed on the cabin 'moving map' were in fact accurate (phew.. that was a relief!). Oh, and recently at Greenwich Observatory as I stood on the 'line' I was disappointed to find my GPS was about 5 feet off - didn't display 0 degrees E/W! Perhaps that brass strip set in the paving stones is not actually in the right place after all! Chris Edited October 1, 2005 by The Blorenges Quote
+Team Hydro Posted October 1, 2005 Posted October 1, 2005 Similar to Master Mariner, I use mine at work whilst surveying offshore - as MM says, its not accurate enough for the work i do, but its good enough for gross error checking. Master Mariner, are you with the Alcatel vessels ? (living where you are?) Quote
+mongoose39uk Posted October 1, 2005 Posted October 1, 2005 Finding my car in supermarket car parks Quote
+purple_pineapple Posted October 1, 2005 Posted October 1, 2005 Oh, and recently at Greenwich Observatory as I stood on the 'line' I was disappointed to find my GPS was about 5 feet off - didn't display 0 degrees E/W! Perhaps that brass strip set in the paving stones is not actually in the right place after all!Chris Only 5 feet?? Our GPS, and I thought this was the norm, showed the actual meridian to be about 100 metres away from the brass line and the 'ticket area'. Something to do with earth curvature and various map datums. We use the WGS84 datum which is an average, whereas the British Grid is obviously more acurate in Britain. Something like that anyway!! Anyone else found this as well? or explain it any better!! Dave Quote
+Archer4 Posted October 1, 2005 Posted October 1, 2005 One of my friends had a tourist motorboat out on Windermere with the kids recently + couldn't find the jetty when trying to drop it back off - but had had MM running so was able to check the origin of his track + aim that way... We played with attaching the GPSr to our eldest with an alarm radius so that when he wandered more than 10m away form a beach base/picnic a sound file went off with me saying "Back to Mummy and Daddy please" in a stern voice. He thought it was great and kept running off to make it trigger Quote
+-Phoenix- Posted October 1, 2005 Posted October 1, 2005 GPSr are commonly used as speedometers on kite buggys and land boards, ther are quite a few geocachers who started after getting a GPS for this reason. Quote
+Archer4 Posted October 2, 2005 Posted October 2, 2005 Oh, and recently at Greenwich Observatory as I stood on the 'line' I was disappointed to find my GPS was about 5 feet off - didn't display 0 degrees E/W! Perhaps that brass strip set in the paving stones is not actually in the right place after all!Chris Only 5 feet?? Our GPS, and I thought this was the norm, showed the actual meridian to be about 100 metres away from the brass line and the 'ticket area'. Something to do with earth curvature and various map datums. We use the WGS84 datum which is an average, whereas the British Grid is obviously more acurate in Britain. Something like that anyway!! Anyone else found this as well? or explain it any better!! Dave In the words of the Royal Observatory Greenwich The answer (The Ordnance Survey use a different meridian again BTW (5.79m West) which was centred on one of the earlier meridians than the current Airy Transit "zero." GPS meridian is 102.51m East) Quote
+Moote Posted October 2, 2005 Posted October 2, 2005 I use my 60CS to give me a headache as I bang it hard against my forehead whilst on hold on the phone to Garmin UK, and all I want is to buy EU City Select 7 without the car kit! Milton (aka moote) Quote
Dave from Glanton Posted October 2, 2005 Posted October 2, 2005 I do a lot of non-cache-hunting walking and the reason that I initially bought a GPS was not do much for locating things but to work out exactly how far I'd covered in a day. Of course, I hadn't had it very long before I discovered caching. For the day job I sometimes get involved in installing GPS/mapping equipment in vehicles. Once or twice I've had units that had trouble getting a fix, and I found the skymap feature on my Etrex useful for assessing whether the problem was likely to lie with the equipment or simply because satellites were likely to be out of view/obscured by buildings. Quote
+HazelS Posted October 3, 2005 Posted October 3, 2005 GPSr are commonly used as speedometers on kite buggys and land boards, ther are quite a few geocachers who started after getting a GPS for this reason. Oh yes... Kitebuggy boy and Ninkle originally used their GPS for this!! Quote
Sheards Posted October 3, 2005 Posted October 3, 2005 I use mine as a digital speedo (Reading in Km) when we are driving through France to my In-Laws place. Iain Quote
+Kitty Hawk Posted October 3, 2005 Posted October 3, 2005 I originally got mine to measure speed and distanc on a skiing holiday. I considered buying two Garmin Rino units - walkie talkies with GPS capability, so that if we got separated I could see my wifes location as well as listen to her tell me where she was (I'm in a snowy valley!). I could also see if she was far enough away to sneak in another gluwein Quote
markandlynn Posted October 3, 2005 Posted October 3, 2005 gps speedsurfing Waypointing the car in large carparks if only we remebered to do this when geocaching. Quote
NickPick Posted October 3, 2005 Posted October 3, 2005 (edited) I've seen a GPS receiver used to keep the computer network time server constantly updated. This was at a top secret MOD establishment somewhere near Newbury. I also use mine to check the accuracy of my car speedo, which over reads by about 10%. Edited October 3, 2005 by NickPick Quote
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