Help with coords

[+littlegoldwoman]

I saw a post the other day that some uses Perfect Mark to hide. I got it on my iphone (the only thing I use for geocaching).

 

I hid my first cache today near my house and used perfect mark to get the center coords, listed as

 

30.131771 n

-95.489525 w

 

but ALAS i have no idea what that means or how to put it in the form you submit for a hide.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[+Markwell]

I saw a post the other day that some uses Perfect Mark to hide. I got it on my iphone (the only thing I use for geocaching).

 

I hid my first cache today near my house and used perfect mark to get the center coords, listed as

 

30.131771 n

-95.489525 w

 

but ALAS i have no idea what that means or how to put it in the form you submit for a hide.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

WELCOME!

 

One of two things - either change your GPS's display, or change the cache page submission form. You can change the display on your GPS to be H DD MM.MMM which are hemisphere, degrees and decimal minutes), which is the standard for geocaching.com. Also, just above the coordinates for the cache, on the submission form, you can use the drop down to change the interface to "Decimal Degrees". Forget about the negative (that just means "West of 0 degrees and east of 180 degrees").

 

Also - just to be sure - have you read the cache submission guidelines?

 

http://geocaching.com/about/guidelines.aspx

[jholly]

I saw a post the other day that some uses Perfect Mark to hide. I got it on my iphone (the only thing I use for geocaching).

 

I hid my first cache today near my house and used perfect mark to get the center coords, listed as

 

30.131771 n

-95.489525 w

 

but ALAS i have no idea what that means or how to put it in the form you submit for a hide.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

The co-ordinates are in decimal degrees. The site uses decimal minutes. Negative degrees are western hemisphere or the southern hemisphere. If you can not change the readings to the HDD MM.mmm format used by GC.com then your going to need something to convert, like fizzycalc, to convert the readings.

[+Markwell]

You also might want to check the coordinates again. Those look like someone's back porch

[+fishgeek]

Not sure about Perfect Mark, but the coords can be converted manually. Multiply everything to the right of the decimal point by 60. That will give you the minutes.

 

.131771 X 60 = 09.906. That coord will be N30d 09.906'.

 

.489525 X 60 = 29.372. That coord will be W95d 29.372'.

 

There are several converters that will do this conversion (and a whole lot more). It would be easiest to set your output to DDD MM.mmm.

 

I saw a post the other day that some uses Perfect Mark to hide. I got it on my iphone (the only thing I use for geocaching).

 

I hid my first cache today near my house and used perfect mark to get the center coords, listed as

 

30.131771 n

-95.489525 w

 

but ALAS i have no idea what that means or how to put it in the form you submit for a hide.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[+littlegoldwoman]

I saw a post the other day that some uses Perfect Mark to hide. I got it on my iphone (the only thing I use for geocaching).

 

I hid my first cache today near my house and used perfect mark to get the center coords, listed as

 

30.131771 n

-95.489525 w

 

but ALAS i have no idea what that means or how to put it in the form you submit for a hide.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

WELCOME!

 

One of two things - either change your GPS's display, or change the cache page submission form. You can change the display on your GPS to be H DD MM.MMM which are hemisphere, degrees and decimal minutes), which is the standard for geocaching.com. Also, just above the coordinates for the cache, on the submission form, you can use the drop down to change the interface to "Decimal Degrees". Forget about the negative (that just means "West of 0 degrees and east of 180 degrees").

 

Also - just to be sure - have you read the cache submission guidelines?

 

http://geocaching.com/about/guidelines.aspx

 

I have read them and am on my way back through them a second time.

Its actually a small tree right out near the road in front of my house. IDK why it put in the back yard of the house across the street.

 

I use the Iphone app and it wont let me change the way the coords are entered.

[+littlegoldwoman]

Im thinking I should have posted this over at the iphone board. :-/ Sworry.

 

I like the multiply idea, that might work.

 

But now im worried that perfect mark is not going to work.....(which is where im getting my coords from)

 

I wonder why I put it in my neighbors back yard.

I pulled it up on google maps too and it put it in MY front yard closer to the door.

Its actually on a tree right out by the road. Kinda like this one....

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...47-dec2923d0e75

which is also in someones front yard and what gave me the idea.

 

Theirs is hidden in art in their yard and mine is too. My tree is not your normal looking tree.

[+littlegoldwoman]

I saw a post the other day that some uses Perfect Mark to hide. I got it on my iphone (the only thing I use for geocaching).

 

I hid my first cache today near my house and used perfect mark to get the center coords, listed as

 

30.131771 n

-95.489525 w

 

but ALAS i have no idea what that means or how to put it in the form you submit for a hide.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

The co-ordinates are in decimal degrees. The site uses decimal minutes. Negative degrees are western hemisphere or the southern hemisphere. If you can not change the readings to the HDD MM.mmm format used by GC.com then your going to need something to convert, like fizzycalc, to convert the readings.

 

I put those coods in my iphone and it set a waymark that was way on the other side of Lake Woodlands from me. WAH!

[+SSO JOAT]

Be warned that iPhones have terrible accuracy. They might be OK to hunt caches, but never use them to obtain coords for a hide. It will always be wrong. You need a real GPS to hide caches.

 

Oh, and one more thing... Google maps are usually off by a bit. Never use a Google map to figure out if the waypoint is in the right place. It will give you the right neighborhood, but that's about it.

Edited March 26, 2010 by SSO JOAT

[tiiiim]

I saw a post the other day that some uses Perfect Mark to hide. I got it on my iphone (the only thing I use for geocaching).

 

I hid my first cache today near my house and used perfect mark to get the center coords, listed as

 

30.131771 n

-95.489525 w

 

but ALAS i have no idea what that means or how to put it in the form you submit for a hide.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

You may want to try the app MotionX-GPS - this can display your coordinates in a variety of formats and may be easier to use than Perfect Mark. Quite frankly, -95.48925 w should strictly mean 95.48925 degrees east so I'm not sure Perfect Mark sounds all that good!

 

Be warned that iPhones have terrible accuracy. They might be OK to hunt caches, but never use them to obtain coords for a hide. It will always be wrong. You need a real GPS to hide caches.

 

This is wrong. An iPhone does have a real GPS chip. It does suffer from slower startup times and wandering positions, but no more than a standard GPSr in my personal experience. So to say it will always be wrong is incorrect, although I guess all GPS devices are 'wrong' to some degree of accuracy!

 

Oh, and one more thing... Google maps are usually off by a bit. Never use a Google map to figure out if the waypoint is in the right place. It will give you the right neighborhood, but that's about it.

 

And this is also misleading. ALL coordinates I've ever put into Google Maps (GM) and Google Earth (GE) which I've taken off my GPSr have given me the correct location to a within a few feet - i.e. nothing less accurate than a GPSr. However, IT IS recommended not to hide caches using only GM or GE, as it is known that some satellite tiles are not correctly located - use it as a second check.

Edited March 26, 2010 by tiiiim

[+littlegoldwoman]

Be warned that iPhones have terrible accuracy. They might be OK to hunt caches, but never use them to obtain coords for a hide. It will always be wrong. You need a real GPS to hide caches.

 

Oh, and one more thing... Google maps are usually off by a bit. Never use a Google map to figure out if the waypoint is in the right place. It will give you the right neighborhood, but that's about it.

 

Ive had a couple of people say they hide with iphone. And today when I dropped a pin on it in google maps and zoomed in it was only off by 10-20 feet.

 

I dont have a regular gps and I dont plan on getting one. :-( So I need to figure out a way to make my iphone work. I have the NEW one so maybe thats better than the old ones as far as accuracy.

[+littlegoldwoman]

Tiiim thank you for the motionx recommendation. Im going to try that one and add it to my list of gps apps.

[+SSO JOAT]

To qualify Google Maps... the accuracy depends on your location. If you are in a big city, the accuracy of the map will be better because they spend more time verifying cities so that their directions features are better. So maybe you'll get 20' accuracy in the city. That's still 4 times more error factor than you'd get with real GPS. I've found many remote areas where the Google basemap is off by over a mile. Then as you get back to a big city, it will be pretty darn close again. Then back into the country and there is the map drift again.

 

The iPhone has a GPS chip. That will get you close, but is not as accurate as a dedicated GPS unit. People who hide using a phone irritate people who seek using a real GPS because the coordinates are almost always off by 20 feet or more. A GPS will give your coordinates <6' accuracy if you know how to use it. Getting that close with a phone is a shot in the dark. If you hide using a phone, at least pay attention to the attached coordinates logs that people are going to post on the cache. And then enter an adjust coordinates log once you see that those attached coords are correct (e.g. the next couple guys say they are).

 

Oh yeah, as for the coordinates conversion, if the multiply by 60 thing is too confusing, there is a coordinate converter right there on geocaching.com for you to use between most popular coordinate systems. There's a link to it from every single cache page.

[+niraD]

To qualify Google Maps... the accuracy depends on your location.

Absolutely. Around here, Google Maps offers a high-resolution satellite view that is calibrated very well. I've found it to be at least as accurate as a basic hand-held GPSr. But I've also seen other places where the satellite view is much lower resolution, poorly calibrated, or both.

 

People who hide using a phone irritate people who seek using a real GPS because the coordinates are almost always off by 20 feet or more. A GPS will give your coordinates <6' accuracy if you know how to use it.

A consumer-grade GPSr gets 10' (3m) accuracy under ideal situations. Since that applies both to the cache owner and to the seeker, you should expect 20' error under ideal situations. In less than ideal situations, your search radius can be significantly more than that.

 

And FWIW, I don't have experience with iPhones, but my experience with Android phones (G1, Nexus One) is that they are at least as accurate as my old yellow eTrex.

[+SSO JOAT]

... experience with Android phones is that they are at least as accurate as my old yellow eTrex.

 

That I believe, since the old yellow eTrex is a very low-grade GPSr that probably uses the same technology as a cell phone. Compare an old eTrex to a modern "x" series GPSr and it is like night and day difference in accuracy. I use a 76CSx and I can record a clear zone waypoint and then navigate back to that spot with arm's length accuracy every time afterward (and not just on the same day). I also have an old eTrex Vista (non-x) and holding the two units side-by-side during such return navigation shows that the eTrex is always wandering around and you're lucky to get within 10-15 feet. Not all GPSr's are equal.

 

If people use low-grade equipment to hide caches, at least mention it in your description and then accept coordinate updates from the seekers who manage to find the cache.