Etrex And Iraq

[pridemedic1]

On the off chance that I'm sent to Iraq, would I still use the WGS 84 datum or is there another that I should use for geocaching. Also does the etrex support MGRS? Thanks in advance for all your help..

[+hurley_108]

Let me preface this with a disclaimer that I may be talking out of my you-know-what, but I would think that your maps will be in NAD83, which is, for all intents and purposes, the same as WGS84, so you likely won't have to use any other datum. Also, my 60CSx has MGRS, so likely the eTrex would too.

 

Garmin has an interesting story on etrex units in combat.

 

If you do get sent, good luck man.

Edited July 7, 2006 by hurley_108

[+ejnewman]

If all you are going to do is look at the gps to see where you are then it doesn't really matter which datum you use. For geocaching you will have to stay with whatever datum the cache coords are presented in (WGS84).

 

If you wanted to use the gps to get your current location and plot it on another map then you would need to make sure that the gps is set to use whatever datum the other map is in. Even if the datums don't match though, the error might still be small enough to not matter depending on what scale the other map is.

[pridemedic1]

Thanks for the help. All I really needed was MGRS compatibility, geocaching will just be an added bonus. Thanks again.