+Webelos Leader Posted July 6, 2008 Share Posted July 6, 2008 I recently downloaded a PQ for a camping trip to West Virginia. I'm not paperless so I also printed all of the cache information. When we got to our destination I was looking at the printed information and noticed the coordinates weren't the same as the ones on my GPS. Not knowing any better I changed the coordinates on the GPS to match the printed ones. Then when we went to find the caches we were no where near where the directions indicated we should be. I was off by about 14 miles. Today I downloaded some coordinates for a cache so I could drop some travel bugs which I 've been holding onto for way to long (my apologies to their owners). They were supposed to be moved to WV but that didn't work out. Before we left this morning I found another cache in the same park and printed off the page of information. When we arrived at the park I entered in the second coordinates and once again the GPS indicated I was 14 miles away. The two caches should have been about 1/4 mile apart. We quickly found the first cache with the downloaded coordinates. About two weeks ago after reading one of the websites from the "Getting Started" forum I changed my position format to hddd.ddddd. My problem seemed to pop up after that change. Is that my problem and should I change the position format to something else or is there a way to change the default coordinates on the web pages to display in the hddd.ddddd format? I clicked on the other conversions link and saw the other information but I'm not sure which ones to use. Quote Link to comment
+StarBrand Posted July 6, 2008 Share Posted July 6, 2008 The default display of coordinates on the site are in decimal minutes hDDD MM.mmm Quote Link to comment
+trainlove Posted July 7, 2008 Share Posted July 7, 2008 A printout of a PQ's GPX file will show coordinates in decimal degrees (a single real number) instead of the 'converted' human usable format of decrees and decimal minutes (an integer and a real number). PQ's are not for human consumption. But if one needs to do so then convert the fraction part of a decimal degree to minutes by multiplying by 60. I.E. 45.10000D is the same as 45D 06.000M. 45D 01.000M is the same as 45.01666D. Quote Link to comment
+Rattlebars Posted July 7, 2008 Share Posted July 7, 2008 Change ALL of your equipment & software if possible to use the DDD° mm.mmm' format to avoid any confusion. If you go paperless someday, same deal.... Map datum is WGS24. Quote Link to comment
Keystone Posted July 8, 2008 Share Posted July 8, 2008 The correct map datum setting for your GPS is not WGS 24 but rather WGS 84. Quote Link to comment
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