Novel uses of GPS?

[+planetrobert]

i use mine snowboarding to...

 

1. Know my max speed for each run

2. How far I traveled on my board(yes i turn it off on the lift

3. Know My Average Speed

4. Find lengths of runs

 

ofcourse i also have a camera mount for putting a video camera on my board. and NO i dont really worry about ruining equipment, i have been boarding nearly 15 years and am confident in my abilities.

 

Now where did I set my GPS??? planetrobert.net

[aleholding]

I took my Vista on a couple of roller coasters at Six Flag Riverside in MA. The Superman ride clocked at 73 mph and the thunderbolt wooden coaster clocked at 37mph. I also tried the new Batman ride but the vista lost the satellites.

[+GLM]

quote:

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Originally posted by Bo Peep & The Sheep:

I am sure Balloonists also use them.

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Sure do! I bought my GPS back in 1996 or 1997 to track my flights in the balloon. I would then take the tracklog and download it onto Delorme Street Atlas so that I could see exactly where I had been. Here is an example of one weekend of flights.

http://www.purespeed.com/personal/gmumma/balpic20.html

Gary

 

Drop back 10 and ........trip over the cache.

[+Alan2]

I check the altimeter on my Vista to see the height my ears pop when going up or down the mountain.

 

Alan

[+Bull Moose]

I use mine to find out where I am and how to get to where I'm going.

[+Capt Slog]

Kite Buggying, Which is sitting in a threelwheel cart steerred by the feet whilst being pulled along by a large(usually parafoil) kite of 3 to 12 square meters in area.

 

These have reached speeds of upto 60mph, and the "buggyers" sometimes use GPS to find their max speed, dist, and way back to starting point (not always easy on a large coastline).

 

I found out about Geocaching through a kite buggy "uses for a GPS" link.

[+KC0HEV]

We are using it on ambulances and fire trucks to change the timing of traffic lights for emergency vehicles.

 

Bryan

[+DavidMac]

quote:

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Originally posted by Brant:

One thing I like to do is take my GPS when I am traveling on commerical jets. If I get a seat by the window, it sits nicely on my armrest. It is interesting to watch the speed, altitude and know what you are flying over.

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Tried this on a 'ferry' flight (open cockpit, no paying passengers- luckily I have 'connections' ) and found out that a pressurized cabin simulates about 8000 feet altitude, give or take a few hundred. The pilots showed me an internal altimeter that reported this simulated altitude, and I found it to be pretty accurate. GPS altitude (from satellites, not barometric) reported 39,000 feet, while the plane's altimiter showed us cruising at 39,020 ft. The plane didn't have GPS, so relied on gyros to figure out it's location once we got far enough out over the ocean to lose signal from the ground stations. Thought it was funny that a multi-million dollar plane only knew it's position to within several hundred yards, while my little handheld knew it to within 23 feet...

 

Now I have a collection of waypoints taken over several interesting looking places in Minnesota, Utah, Nevada, and California that I want to go back to and visit from the ground someday...

 

...Not all who wander are lost... unless the batteries in their GPS die, their maps get ruined by rainwater when their pack leaks, and they find themselves in a laurel thicket. Then, they are probably lost.

 

-DavidMac; (formerly Someonenameddave)

[WH]

I like to use mine for geocaching

[Mungerbees]

I usually look for satallites at night but I guess you could use your gps for that but I dont because its more fun.Just use your advance sky view on the gps it should work.

[+YankeeRage]

 

http://snopes.com/photos/cornmaze.asp

[+ToolkiT]

I use the service mode of my etrex to use it as a thermometer..

see:

http://etrex.webz.cz/service.html

[millenniumtree]

My friend has a Toyota Supra with a huge turbocharger and plenty of racing upgrades. The only problem is that his spedometer only goes up to 140 Mph.

 

He maxed it out once and had to use the RPM gauge and some crazy math to figure out how fast he was going. (about 174 Mph) Now if he had had a GPS with him, he wouldn't have had to guess, or do all that math!

 

--Tree

 

 (o< -!!

 //  Never laugh at live

V_/_  penguins.

[+DoodleCat & MisterKrrk]

Saw the posts about golfing earlier. Thought I'd share this, for the golfer who has everything but still has money to burn:

 

http://www.golfps.com/storeframe.asp?all=1

[+Darwinkle]

Uh, YA, What he said! ;-)

 

quote:

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Originally posted by Kordite:

> Brian, since GPS uses triangulation between satelites is the speed accurate when going downhill?

 

Actually, they use trilateration which is just like triangulation except with spheres instead of circles. Working in three dimensions doesn't care whether it's horizontal or vertical movement for the calculation of speed or distance. It's one point in 3D space to another point in 3D space. It should be as accurate for the vertical movent component as for the horizontal.

 

http://img.Groundspeak.com/user/89355_500.gif

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[mikeacrossamerica.com]

The NY/VT ferries go 11 mph when it's calm, and as low as 8 mpg when it's windy and rough.

 

I also mark the places during work which I have shot news stories at or logged locations and interesting places that I've photographed.

 

And I know a dude who couldnt imagine where his dog was at night so he strapped the GPSr to it's back. Bingo. The dog was out behind the diner all night eating garbage. Who knew?

 

Mf

I¦like¦nachos¦&¦I¦miss¦Mr.¦John¦Cash.

 

got¦coordintes?¦¦Check¦this¦stuff¦out:¦http://www.esg.montana.edu/gl/usa1d.html

http://terraserver.homeadvisor.msn.com/AdvFind.aspx

http://www.geocities.com/mfrenchy2002/GEO.html

 

see¦GCGX7T

[+Lord Elwood]

I take mine with me when I travel and waypoint the hotel and the shop. I tend to get turned around very easily when in a new place the the GPS unit bailed me out when I was in Tulsa, OK. I live in Fort Wayne, IN.

[+Volvo Man]

quote:

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Originally posted by NattyBooshka:

quote:

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Originally posted by kevin917z:

well, i have heard of people using them to clock the speed of their lawnmowers

 

the military uses gps in artillery rounds to monitor the trajectory and lots of data about the flight of the rounds as they head for the target, maybe you could find a way to make a golf ball land on target?

---

 

Now that could just work... need somebody who can aim properly though... really, you'd have to see me play. Looking on the brightside, I get much more excercise than the average golfer when playing!

---

 

I'll bet you are awsome at finding difficult microcaches from 30 feet.

 

Perhaps you should stick a cache sticker on your golfballs, then others can find the ones you don't and log them as a find. HEY, new product idea for Groundspeak, geocaching.com golfballs

[+Mad Scientist]

I used mine to find the range of our pumpkin gun. 3500'! Not quite ready for the Pumkin Chunkin in Delaware.

[gpsblake]

My 9 year old daughter used the GPS on a swing at the park to tell her how fast and far she had gone in the swing. She said it kept going North, South, North, South, North, South, North, South etc. and when she was done on the swing, she traveled nearly a mile at an average of 2mph on the swing.

[pilot8766]

I actually fly for a living and I can tell you there is no problem with GPSr's in planes. I have gotten to use them to log miles on Travel Bugs (PonyLU Travel Bug Flying) Like somone else said, some airlines have policies against it. I can say from experiance that some Flight Attendants add it to the restricted items because they dont like it, even though the airline does not mind.

I think the reason it freaks some people out is that the 9/11 hijackers ALL had handheld GPSr's which they had used to navigate to their targets. They had actually gone as tourists to the twin towers to mark the position in their handheld units so they could easily go direct.

I have heard that CORN MAZES are made with GPS's. They plant a whole field of corn, draw a maze on paper then scan it into a program that plots the maze as lat long coords. They then go into the field when the corn is small with the waypoints (turns in maze) as a GPS course and pick the baby corn. After the corn is big you have a perfect maze with no missing links.

Another weird one I saw recently is GPS tracking of people via their GPS enabled cell phones. Check it out here. They have a demo of about 4 people that are tracked all the time. The phone uses a program to send its position via text message to a server, which is then plotted on a map. Good for kid tracking or "Moving Geocaching Caches".

[+gnbrotz]

I was recently able to get permission for my gps to ride along with a house, as it was moved to a new location. The house traveled 3.8 miles in less than 12 hours (over two days), most of this NOT on roads.

 

My reward: Some cool data to study.

The homeowners reward: An aerial photo showing the old and the new place, with the tracks drawn in on the map showing the journey between the two.