oregon 450/550 question

[+phlatlander]

My Oregon is about 2 weeks old and last week I was able to display the lat/longs for both my current position and my destination position on the "trip computer" page, I thought it worked.

But now, whenever I try to display both “Location (lat/lon)” and “Location (selected)”, they show the identical value, even if the Oregon is navigating to a waypoint. Anyone any advice?

Edited January 18, 2012 by phlatlander

[+dfx]

Both of the "location" fields show your current location. The "selected" refers to the selected coordinate format, you could have it set to UTM for example and then you'd see that, while the other one (lat/lon) would still show the location as lat and long.

 

I'm not aware of any data field that shows the coordinates of the currently active destination. The "waypoint at ..." data fields are the closest that I can think of.

Edited January 18, 2012 by dfx

[+phlatlander]

I find that Garmin's "location (selected)" and "location (lat/lon)" mean the same thing to be confusing and not clear. The iPhone app uses basically the same words and shows your current lat/long and the lat/long of the geocache side by side - very handy! I was sure I saw the same thing on a friend's 450 and that's one of the reasons I bought the 550.

[+dfx]

Can I ask what you would need that for? I never found myself in a situation where I wanted to see the destination coordinates (or even my own coordinates).

[+phlatlander]

Well, when I geocache I am comfortable using lat/long and prefer this information to a compass and/or bearing and distance to. Plus when you are close to a geocache both distance and bearing tend to jump around a lot while the lat/long info tends to remain stable.

[+dfx]

Plus when you are close to a geocache both distance and bearing tend to jump around a lot while the lat/long info tends to remain stable.

 

That sounds like a bit of a misconception you have there. Distance and bearing are based 100% on the difference between the coordinates of "here" and "there". They're exactly the difference between the two, just made into a more human-readable form. In other words, if the coordinates for "here" don't change, then the distance and bearing also won't change, and vice versa. That's why I never found a use for seeing the actual coordinates - because the information distance and bearing give you is exactly the same, only easier to understand.

 

Anyway, just some FYI there - if you still prefer to go by raw coordinates, then that's no use to you of course.