More Precise?

[+Slainte]

This afternoon, I set a small closed course of caches for my daughters and their friends. I averaged the location of each cache, but when I ran the course to check for accuracy, it wasn't very close. I was lucky to get within thirty feet of each site. Are there tricks of the trade that might help me get as close as I do to those set by others out in the wide world? I hope to set some real caches before the summer is out, but my coordinates will need to be more precise than this before I go public. Incidentally, I'm using an eTrex Legend Cx.

[+Team JSAM]

I first stand in the spot for 1 min. and mark then I walk at least 150ft away and walk back to the spot and mark my loc just as I arrive, I do this from the N, S, E, W then I take numbers that came up the most and those are my coords.

[+briansnat]

Actually 30 feet isn't bad. In fact anything from 20-50 feet off is quite normal. You are already averaging, but make sure you're averaging good data. Look at the sat alignment on your sat screen. If you have a strong lock and the sats are spread widely over the screen, you are good. Just let your unit average for a few minutes and your coordinates should be fine. If the sats generally line up in something close to a straight line your accuracy will be affected and you might just be averaging bad data.

 

The only way to really get a good average is to return to the spot several times each day over a period of several days. But that's a lot of work to gain a few feet in accuracy. 30 feet is plenty good enough for most geocachers to find the cache.

[+IV_Warrior]

Try just setting your GPS on the spot, making sure it has as good a skyview as possible and walking away from it for 10-15 minutes. Come back and quickly mark a waypoint. Most likely that'll be as good or better a waypoint than taking a bunch and averaging them.