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Benchmarks in Ontario, Canada


rlaughton

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I would like to find some Canadian Benchmarks so I can find out how close my GPS unit is to the "real thing" I looked on the PARENT SITE and found only one listed for Canada here:

 

N 48° 00.100 W 089° 35.100

 

I assume that is because the parent is American?

 

There must be a number of Canadian benchmarks in most municipalities. We can't search by our POSTAL CODES only by US ZIP CODES. I searched for CANADA and found only that one CANADA US benchmark.

 

I am located at 43.5005139N 79.873961W which is west of the Greater Toronto Area. As a minimum I would expect there would be benchmarks down around Niagara Falls. I would have thought they would have been at the major airports and many other locations. Is it just that this is not a Canadian site that they are not listed?

 

I am trying to create a "corrections table or formula" for my handheld GPS relative to what is on Google Earth. My hobby is research on World War One and so I am plotting Canadian War Memorials and the grave sites of Great War soldiers (Canada and elsewhere). It is relatively simple to get the cemetery placed but much more difficult for a memorial or a grave.

 

My latest test was a remote memorial in Brookville (the Haltonville Memorial) which is in the Town of Milton, Regional Municipality of Halton. The test showed some degree of accuracy with a GPS handheld as compared to the Google Earth coordinates (only a few feet difference)

 

GOOGLE EARTH: 43°31'28.77"N 80° 2'10.92"W

 

HANDHELD GPS: 43°31'28.68"N 80° 2'11.08"W

 

I would like now to be able to compare a known benchmark to the readings on Google Earth and the readings on my GPS.

 

See also these articles if you are interested in this topic:

 

http://ohioline.osu.edu/aex-fact/0560.html

 

http://geospatial.osu.edu/resources/handheldgps.html

 

Regards to all from Milton, Ontario.

 

Richard

 

(Moto Q9H with CoPilot7 and a HOLUX GPSlim 240 Bluetooth)

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Thanks for the information. I will go through all the information and see what I can find here close to Milton. I did note the "rail spike" at the Ontario Science Centre, that looks interesting.

 

Thanks for the PM with the information on the COSINE database for Ontario. I spent considerable time there yesterday and found great information. I was able to get more than a dozen reference sites, with sketches, coordinates and other information all within a 2 km radius of my house. I don't know if these are as accurate as the "Canadian Benchmarks" but I assume for my initial purpose they are a good start.

 

I was impressed at the ease of the COSINE data retrieval process, the detail they provide and the fact that it is now ALL FREE. With that large number of data points it is going to make it much easier to triangulate on the specific WWI Milton Soldiers gravestones I am trying to mark, there are many data points surrounding the cemetery. We hope to learn here and then apply this in France and Belgium on thousands of sites.

 

Next time I decide to go and look for them, as I did in the -12 degC weather yesterday afternoon, I will take a pencil - as the ink in my pen froze!

 

I also changed my conversion spreadsheet so it will change from the different formats. It is handy to have loaded on your phone when you are out at the site:

 

EXCEL Data Point Conversion

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there were attempts to get ground$peak to actually accept canadian benchmarks at one point, but rejected the idea unless we could give them a properly formatted database of benchmarks.

 

There are plenty around, you can also try Waymarking.com (shudder..) which has a few canadian benchmarks listed

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Because the Canadian site that hosts benchmark information requires registration it does not meet the listing guidelines.

 

Elias was working on it at one time related discussion but after reading the whole thread it seems that will not be explored now that an alternative option is available. Since benchmarks still exist on geocaching.com for the United States maybe it is still possible. All you can do is ask.

Edited by CacheDrone
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Because the Canadian site that hosts benchmark information requires registration it does not meet the listing guidelines.

This is an example of the things that are starting to cause some bad feelings in the geocaching community recently, certainly heard at get togethers and offline. The law is laid down but no rationale is given. So, the question, why would that be against the guidelines? The Canadian site requires registration but does not have any cost involved. So what is the rationale of the guideline that makes it such a bad thing?

 

Also, I wast part of the thread you mentioned and the issue of this being against the listing guidelines was never mentioned even thought Elias and Jeremy were part of that discussion and Jeremy had agreement with some of my points. This raises the questions of is this really against the guidelines and why wasn't that pointed out before?

 

I think most of us are very understanding when given the rationale to guidelines and decisions resulting from them but also expect some consistency in their application.

 

JD

Edited by JDandDD
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