Why don't the coordinates match?

[pappyb]

I have lot's of experience with orienteering and have had my Magellan Map 330 M for a year and am proficient. I tried my 1st geocaching challenge and found none of the trails signs that were supposed to supply the clues. This cache uses the park near my house and I know my way around very well. Whenever I would arrive at the coordinates, (with only a 20'-30' estimated position error) sometimes I'd be a half mile off the trail. There was a photo of the tower that contains the fourth coordinate clue in the Hawk 9 cache. I went to the spot where the photo was taken at the base of the tower and compared coordinates of my Magellan with the coordinates given for that spot. The given coordinates were: N 36.23.893, W 80.16.977 but my gps read: N 36.23.39 W 80.17.18 Is there something wrong with my gps or what? Is it common to be that far off, even when my epe is only 25'?

[+Jamie Z]

Hmmm... using a simple Pythagorean estimate, your coordinated were off by (very) roughly 1/2 mile. My initial thought was that your GPS is in a different datum than the datum Geocaching.com uses. 1/2 mile is too much error for a datum error, though.

 

Ummm... I dunno.

 

I'd check the datum you are using on your GPS... I'm not too familiar with the Map 330, but other users can help you with this. Make sure your GPS is using WGS84.

 

This may all be really confusing. Hopefully someone can follow up with a more informative response.

 

Jamie

[+Markwell]

quote:

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N 36.23.893, W 80.16.977 but my gps read: N 36.23.39 W 80.17.18

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Whoops.

 

Your GPS is set to degrees/minutes/seconds (HDD° MM SS.S), while the coordinates for Geocaching are degrees/minutes (should look like HDD° MM.MMM). Go into the set up of your unit and change the settings and all should be golden.

 

Markwell

Non omnes vagi perditi sunt

[+Jamie Z]

Maxwell,

 

Thanks for clearing that up. I'm not sure how I missed that.

 

Jamie