GPS settings WAAS or Normal?

[+flyerpete]

Hi everyone, I am new to GPS and have purchased a Dakota 20 GPS. My Question is should I set the system GPS to WAAS or Normal? What is the difference? Any help would be appreciated

[frozenflyboy]

Hi everyone, I am new to GPS and have purchased a Dakota 20 GPS. My Question is should I set the system GPS to WAAS or Normal? What is the difference? Any help would be appreciated

Set it for WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System) It makes the GPS more accurate. Basically a # of ground stations receive positioning signals from the GPS satellites, figure out the error and transmit it to the WAAS birds (satellites) who send it out to the people with WAAS turned on. You can do a Wiki on it. Lots of info and a thread not long ago was very illuminating.

[+jlw82]

I wonder this to. I have done some testing with waas/egnos and in normal mode. No extensive testing and I must say that in deep forest i get better accuracy in normal mode, while if i have good view of the sky waas/egnos works best. no scientific testing. I have mine off.

[+flyerpete]

Thanks Frozenflyboy, would I ever use the normal setting??

[+dfx]

Thanks Frozenflyboy, would I ever use the normal setting??

disabling waas/egnos makes sense if you're in an area that's not really covered by any of them, but where you may still receive the signal from the sats. or otherwise if you believe that it has negative impact on your accuracy or battery life, which it doesn't.

Edited October 7, 2010 by dfx

[+Gushoneybun]

It can only help as far as I can see, if I am not getting a corrected signal the unit still works fine. If I am then it makes the GPS more accurate, obviously it then depends on the CO getting a decent set of readings when placing the cache.

[+PokerLuck]

I wonder this to. I have done some testing with waas/egnos and in normal mode. No extensive testing and I must say that in deep forest i get better accuracy in normal mode, while if i have good view of the sky waas/egnos works best. no scientific testing. I have mine off.

 

I have to agree with this. I have an Oregon 400, and normally leave WAAS on. However, under heavy leaf cover, the compass and distance to cache go nuts, so I turn WAAS off and it settles down quite a bit. The downside is that you have to remember to turn it back on when you get to a more open area, and it's easy to forget.

[+ecanderson]

However, under heavy leaf cover, the compass and distance to cache go nuts, so I turn WAAS off and it settles down quite a bit. The downside is that you have to remember to turn it back on when you get to a more open area, and it's easy to forget.

An odd set of circumstances. All WAAS is doing is providing some correction data that is added or subtracted from what you're getting from the other satellites. That data doesn't bounce around based upon your coverage. You either get it or you don't (you'd see "D"s or not). It shouldn't ever hurt your EPE. Might not improve it, but should never hurt it.

[Andronicus]

However, under heavy leaf cover, the compass and distance to cache go nuts, so I turn WAAS off and it settles down quite a bit. The downside is that you have to remember to turn it back on when you get to a more open area, and it's easy to forget.

An odd set of circumstances. All WAAS is doing is providing some correction data that is added or subtracted from what you're getting from the other satellites. That data doesn't bounce around based upon your coverage. You either get it or you don't (you'd see "D"s or not). It shouldn't ever hurt your EPE. Might not improve it, but should never hurt it.

Plus, I think you only need to get a WAAS 'fill' every few minutes or hours. I don't think it is a live type of thing.

[+vaetanone]

I too have had two instances under heavy cover where my Garmin 62s guided me over 100 ft in one direction then back with WAAS on. After the second instance I wondered if WAAS was a factor. Next time I will turn it off and see what happens. I have not had this occur before starting to use WAAS recently nor in the clear.

[+dfx]

I too have had two instances under heavy cover where my Garmin 62s guided me over 100 ft in one direction then back with WAAS on. After the second instance I wondered if WAAS was a factor. Next time I will turn it off and see what happens. I have not had this occur before starting to use WAAS recently nor in the clear.

if you just turn it off when you feel that the GPS is acting up, then of course you'll "notice" an improvement once it's turned off, because by the time you finished changing the setting the GPS will have corrected its own mistake.

 

if you really wanna know what difference WAAS makes, turn it off permanently.

[+vaetanone]

In this case the GPS led me on a roughly 200 ft bushwhack lasting several Min, roughly same time back. I have no idea which "excursion" was correct, since I didn't find the cache. The track on the map page showed an egg shaped loop a couple of hundred feet wide even though my path out and back varied less than 10 feet. I am not claiming it was caused by WAAS, only that both times I have seen this I was under cover with WAAS on. In the last instance it started showing the cache roughly 50 feet from where I left the trail, and very slowly decreased (at a much lower rate than my position was changing) until I was over 200 ft from trail. It then changed and pointed back to where I left the trail. If it was repeatable I could walk a trail and use Google Earth to see what is happening, but it has occured twice in roughly 100 cache searches.

[+Crab$t3r]

I have the gpsmap 62s and been using it for caches and hiking i had old software on it and with the waas settings turned on and it jumped me all over the map.

after i updated the software the waas setting turned on made me accurate up to 9 feet or less.

with that said i didn't re-upload my maps so all my roads were off for some reason i updated it today and they seem back to how they were.

i set a way point standing next to object in a open field when i got home i entered it on google earth and it placed me with in a foot of were i was standing thats really good with the setting off it made me up to five feet from were i really was standing that is still pretty good if i say so. try doing that on a phone haha. next thing you know your up to 100 meters from were you really were standing