Do I need to be WAAS enabled?

[+mr.mudd]

I was goofing around in the Setup menu today and saw the WAAS was disabled. Will that affect my accuracy? Do I need to have the WAAS enabled?

 

What the heck is WAAS anyways?

 

EDIT: Okay, so I googled WAAS and found it is a good thing, so maybe I should assume that I need to have WAAS enabled.

Edited August 9, 2009 by mr.mudd

[jholly]

I was goofing around in the Setup menu today and saw the WAAS was disabled. Will that affect my accuracy? Do I need to have the WAAS enabled?

 

What the heck is WAAS anyways?

 

waas

[+mr.mudd]

I was goofing around in the Setup menu today and saw the WAAS was disabled. Will that affect my accuracy? Do I need to have the WAAS enabled?

 

What the heck is WAAS anyways?

 

waas

 

LOL, that was pretty funny

 

Yeh, I googled it on my own as you were posting that.

[Ken in Regina]

EDIT: Okay, so I googled WAAS and found it is a good thing, so maybe I should assume that I need to have WAAS enabled.

Nope, you don't need to have it. If it helps then by all means go for it. But it doesn't always make lots of difference. Sometimes it makes a little difference. Sometimes it makes no difference. Sometimes it can make it take longer to get a fix.

 

...ken...

[+Cardinal Red]

I was goofing around in the Setup menu today and saw the WAAS was disabled. Will that affect my accuracy? Do I need to have the WAAS enabled?

 

What the heck is WAAS anyways?

 

waas

 

Do you take requests to produce those?

[+julianh]

I was goofing around in the Setup menu today and saw the WAAS was disabled. Will that affect my accuracy? Do I need to have the WAAS enabled?

 

What the heck is WAAS anyways?

 

waas

Brilliant! Now THAT'S a link I can see myself using! "LMGTFY" has gone straight into my "Favorites"!

 

[jholly]

I was goofing around in the Setup menu today and saw the WAAS was disabled. Will that affect my accuracy? Do I need to have the WAAS enabled?

 

What the heck is WAAS anyways?

 

waas

 

Do you take requests to produce those?

 

You can produce your own, lmgtfy.com

 

Jim

[+Curioddity]

Nope, you don't need to have it. If it helps then by all means go for it. But it doesn't always make lots of difference. Sometimes it makes a little difference. Sometimes it makes no difference. Sometimes it can make it take longer to get a fix.

A fellow I occasionally go bicycle caching with leaves WAAS turned off and never misses an opportunity to tell someone that it does more harm than good. He's also the same way about enabling the magnetic compass feature... He swears it's not helpful and it uses too much battery. I, on the other hand, always use both of these features and never miss an opportunity to promote their use.

 

More often than not, I'll ride directly to a cache while he typically rides past and has to backtrack. And that tells me a couple of things: WAAS and the magnetic compass certainly don't hurt and probably help, and he's a stubborn youngster who hasn't grasped the art of learning from practical experience yet.

 

I suppose I should add that we both use Garmin Oregons. I also believe that the two features do affect battery life, but the impact is nominal and it's easily offset by improved usability and accuracy. To me it's like using the air conditioning in my car. Yeah it uses more gas, but that's a price I gladly pay.

 

Pete

Edited August 10, 2009 by Curioddity

[hammer1nj]

Newbie here - to the forum, to Geocaching.... and to "GPSing" also !

 

Regarding this WAAS business, one question I had is if the person placing the Geo Cache is using WAAS, could the coordinates of the cache be different then if he wasn't using WAAS? From reading about it, it kind of sounds like they could be different, since WAAS provides "corrections".

 

Reason I ask is I was geocaching without WAAS on, and was doing just fine. Then I turned it on the next day and my luck dried up, so I am wondering if I should turn it back off. I guess I could try both when at ground zero and see if the GPS brings me to a different spot. Do any of you do that?

 

FYI -my GPS unit is a Garmin Legend H.

 

Thanks for any replies in advance and thanks for the great site and forum you have here. Cheers.

Edited August 10, 2009 by hammer1nj

[+mr.mudd]

Newbie here - to the forum, to Geocaching.... and to "GPSing" also !

 

Regarding this WAAS business, one question I had is if the person placing the Geo Cache is using WAAS, could the coordinates of the cache be different then if he wasn't using WAAS? From reading about it, it kind of sounds like they could be different, since WAAS provides "corrections".

 

Reason I ask is I was geocaching without WAAS on, and was doing just fine. Then I turned it on the next day and my luck dried up, so I am wondering if I should turn it back off. I guess I could try both when at ground zero and see if the GPS brings me to a different spot. Do any of you do that?

 

FYI -my GPS unit is a Garmin Legend H.

 

Thanks for any replies in advance and thanks for the great site and forum you have here. Cheers.

 

I'm still pretty new to this, but there could have been any of a number of reasons your luck dried up. I think you answered your own question when you mentioned trying both at GZ

[+mr.mudd]

OK, so I experimented with WAAS in my house. I set my easy chair as a waypoint with WAAS disabled, walked to the other end of the house and when I sat down it said I was 19 ft off.

 

Then I set my easy chair as a waypoint with WAAS enabled and did the same thing with the result being that I was only 5 ft off.

 

That meant that in my house on this particular day, WAAS helped my accuracy by 14 ft!

 

My question is: I have only hidden 1 cache and it was with WAAS disabled. Should I return to the cache with WAAS enabled and re-log the coordinates, ya know, to help out the other geocachers?

Edited August 10, 2009 by mr.mudd

[hammer1nj]

OK, so I experimented with WAAS in my house. I set my easy chair as a waypoint with WAAS disabled, walked to the other end of the house and when I sat down it said I was 19 ft off.

 

Then I set my easy chair as a waypoint with WAAS enabled and did the same thing with the result being that I was only 5 ft off.

 

That meant that in my house on this particular day, WAAS helped my accuracy by 14 ft!

 

My question is: I have only hidden 1 cache and it was with WAAS disabled. Should I return to the cache with WAAS enabled and re-log the coordinates, ya know, to help out the other geocachers?

 

Yeah, that is a good example of what I think is happening. On the second time I went (with WAAS enabled), I had GZ sometimes in the middle of a field. It should of clicked with me then, but better late than never. Morale of the story - try both when looking.

 

When hiding, yeah maybe you want to put a note the coordinates are with WAAS enabled, or put both or put without WAAS. I dunno. I'm sure some vets here will chime in.

 

Thanks for the reply

[Ken in Regina]

Nope, you don't need to have it. If it helps then by all means go for it. But it doesn't always make lots of difference. Sometimes it makes a little difference. Sometimes it makes no difference. Sometimes it can make it take longer to get a fix.

I, on the other hand, always use both of these features and never miss an opportunity to promote their use.

Hi Pete,

 

That's why I said ... well, see above for emphasis. My comments were to ensure that the original poster's expectations were realistic. Lots of people hear from WAAS disciples and expect that all of a sudden they'll be able to walk straight to every cache. Ain't gonna happen.

 

I'm pleased when perceptive folks like hammer1nj ask really good questions like he did. That shows they are thinking about it and their expectations will be realistic. That's all I want to see.

 

Sometimes it works for me, sometimes not. If I haven't used the GPS for awhile it can take quite a bit of time to reload the almanac. If the almanac is out of date your position could be worse if you have a unit that will try to use the old data for corrections until the almanac can be updated.

 

Everyone should make their own decision about its usefulness on their unit in their location for their types of usage.

 

If it works for you, go for it.

 

...ken...

[+ecanderson]

A fellow I occasionally go bicycle caching with leaves WAAS turned off and never misses an opportunity to tell someone that it does more harm than good. He's also the same way about enabling the magnetic compass feature... He swears it's not helpful and it uses too much battery. I, on the other hand, always use both of these features and never miss an opportunity to promote their use.

Ditto on both counts. Understanding what WAAS is designed to accomplish, it seems silly not to take advantage of the extra edge in accuracy when it's available.

 

During the week, I cache with a friend with a 60cx. For some reason, he wound up with WAAS disabled, and it was a surprise to me, even knowing how it works, just how much better I was doing with location. He started to wonder about his 60 until he found the feature disabled and got it re-enabled again.

 

As for the mag compass... it's a matter of technique. It's useless when you're practically standing on the cache. It's also useless when the CO produces less than optimal coordinates. But if the coordinates are good, and you're trying to find a cache in the clutter, backing away 30' or 40' and triangulating on a cache is fantastic.

 

This feature also works particularly well when you're up against a cliff wall, bridge, building, etc.. You can back away from the wall and improve the satellite count / accuracy, then take an eyeball on the direction the compass points to get a better sense of the target. I'll take 8' or 12' accuracy and the compass from 30' away over 60' accuracy against a wall any day! It surprises me that cachers that have that feature on their GPSr often don't use it. It was a MUST HAVE when I purchased my old Summit HCx.

 

I'll grant that both of these features do eat into battery life faster than if they are disabled. I'd rather carry a spare pair of batteries than do without either of them.

[+ecanderson]

My question is: I have only hidden 1 cache and it was with WAAS disabled. Should I return to the cache with WAAS enabled and re-log the coordinates, ya know, to help out the other geocachers?

Now that you've seen for yourself what the results can be, you've answered your own question! When I place a cache, I have WAAS enabled, let the GPSr settle, and use the "averaging" method on the "Mark" feature to assure that I'm getting a stable reading. In a tough environment, I've waited for 50 or more points for averaging before deciding "good enough" and establishing the coordinates for the cache.

 

All of this WAAS discussion is moot of the owner doesn't provide the best coordinates possible. WAAS only helps you get to where the CO says the cache was located, not where it is!

[+mr.mudd]

Thanks for the input everyone, I'll get out there and re-log the coordinates for my hide.

[+GPSlug]

There's no inherent bias between a WAAS-corrected position and an uncorrected position. So you don't need to worry about that.

 

It's important to keep in mind that over the last several years, users become experienced with how their units behave during solar minimum. Now that we are slowly moving into a period of higher solar activity and increased ionospheric errors, people might find that WAAS becomes more important for them. But even that will be sometimes no big improvement, and sometimes a lot.

[+EraSeek]

You want vets on this. GPSlug is one worth listening to. I also have been around quite awhile and used to discuss this alot. WAAS will give you corrections on position and timing errors for each satellite and ionospheric errors for your position determined by your GPS. Corrections are made when you have a lock on a WAAS sat and the almanac downloaded, but the correction's effect on you position will vary depending on how intense a correction is needed. A GPSlug say, sometimes it makes more of a diffence than other times. So don't expect some radical difference every time you use WAAS or not. I keep mine on all the time. One thing I've noticed when testing WAAS and no-WAAS on benchmarks (known positions), besides getting closer to the mark, is stablity of the position. Do you need WAAS for geocaching? No. But why not use the technology. The best why to discribe WAAS's usefulness is this: Bouy Bumping accuracy. You have the position of a bouy marked in your GPS. The fog thick as soup. Without WAAS you'll take a bit of searching and several passes to find that bouy. With a WAAS fix you're pretty well garrenteed of finding it on the first pass.

When you're in the woods it won't help you alot (not being able to lock on to a WAAS sat) but it may help some if you get a good WAAS lock before going into the woods as some of the corrections remain longer than others.