what the Heck? Where am I?

[Saddle Mountain Man]

Went to go check out an unfamiliar area yesterday using coordinates from Google. Know almost nothing about the area (it's 50 miles away), so i plugged in a google earth coordinate set and went on my merry way. 3 hours and 50$ worth of gas later i'm lost. The GPS or Google put me nearly 25 miles from my projected position. It honestly left me saying, after i gave up and went home to check the coordinates, "What the Heck?!?!?". Google had .21 degrees added to both lat and long. What is this problem??? the only way i can navigate using coordinates is to find the location on Google Earth, plug in the coord's and head off. If i'm going hiking, this is hopeless! Please help if you can!

NOTE: I set all my stuff to use the decimal coordinate format. i.e N 50.12345, W 102.67891 etc. Could this be a problem?

Edited February 13, 2013 by Saddle Mountain Man

[+StarBrand]

Best generic advice I can give is to make certain your GPS is using the same datum as Google Earth (WGS84) and the same coordinate format you see - (user configurable in preferences).

[+Lil Devil]

I set all my stuff to use the decimal coordinate format. i.e N 50.12345, W 102.67891 etc. Could this be a problem?

My guess is one piece of your puzzle in not really set to decimal, and you tried to shoehorn something like 50* 52.123 into 50.52123 which is really 50* 31.274.

 

Note .52 - .31 = .21

[+Gitchee-Gummee]

Looks to me to be in somebody's corn field. Both in Google Maps and Google Earth.

Thereabouts 3 miles NW of Kipling, Saskatchewan, with the coordinates you posted.

 

A "little" bit more than 3 hours driving time.

 

But then, those probably weren't the real coordinates used, eh?

Edited February 13, 2013 by Gitchee-Gummee

[Suscrofa]

I think we will never go back to the moon !

[Saddle Mountain Man]

To Glitchy: Yes those are not the real coordinates. just an example.

To Suscrofa: Off topic?

To Star Brand: Yes, it is all set to WGS84. Double-checked the format, it is all in decimals.

To Lil Devil: I'm not that stupid! I checked it all and it's all in decimals.

 

However... I used Google Earth on a different computer and the coordinates match! Maybe i'll re-install the program on my main computer.

[John E Cache]

If you are using the GC supplied google earth coordinates via kml file, the coordinates are intentionally wrong to force you to get a useful list using PQ's.