Dakota 20 accuracy

[+maurycy]

I have recently upgraded my old Triton 400 to a Dakota 20 GPS. I really like the touch screen and paperless geocaching which came with this upgrade. Unfortunately, I am very disappointed with the accuracy of the Dakota 20. I have used the Triton for few years and in the map mode, when I positioned my cursor over the cache's icon, I was basically standing on the cache. There was a matter of checking an area of a small radius (less than 5 feet) around my initial location to find the cache. With Dakota, when according to the GPS I am standing exactly on the cache's icon, I am nowhere near the actual location. The last two examples took me either on the other side of the road (about 20 feet from the cache's location) or today, it was showing the cache to be about 30 feet away even though I was standing right where the cache was hidden. GPS info showed the accuracy to be 8 feet. It was all open area with no tree coverage. GPS reception was all four bars.

 

Am I doing something wrong or I got spoiled by Triton being more accurate GPS?

[+maurycy]

I have WAAS/EGNOS set in the GPS mode (as opposed to "Normal" setting) and WGS 84 in Map Datum and Map Spheroid settings.

Edited August 10, 2014 by maurycy

[+highrez]

I have the same issue with my Dakota 20. The compass is pretty accurate but not the map.

[+Shinook & White Juan]

My dakota 20 is pretty accurate. No issues other than the map being a bit off.

[+gpsblake]

You can never use a geocache to test the accuracy of your unit. The reason is the cache itself could be off coordinates as it is reliant on the accuracy of the GPS unit of the person who placed the cache.

 

The best and true way to test the accuracy of your GPS is to go a benchmark that has ADJUSTED coordinates... You can search the geocaching database of them by going to

 

www.geocaching.com/mark/ - search your local area

 

Underneath the coordinates look for the following

location is ADJUSTED. That way you know the mark is 100 percent accurate

 

If it says located is SCALED, do not use that to test your GPS accuracy as it means they just used a map to estimate the location

[+maurycy]

The best and true way to test the accuracy of your GPS is to go a benchmark that has ADJUSTED coordinates...

 

I will try that and report back.

[+Walts Hunting]

From your description it sounds like you are using the map to walk to the location not the compass. You should have it set to go to that cache and work off the compass and distance to destination.

[+maurycy]

From your description it sounds like you are using the map to walk to the location not the compass. You should have it set to go to that cache and work off the compass and distance to destination.

 

Why would that be different than using a map zoomed in all the way? I would assume that the cache icon on the map shows the same coordinates that the compass uses? I am not rejecting the option to use compass. Just asking. I have used the map all the time before with my Triton and it never failed me. With Dakota is more miss than hit.

[+ecanderson]

When your position arrow is cover all or most of the cache icon, it's harder to see just how close you really are unless you're at maximum zoom in, and then it's not always that easy, either. That's not a problem when using the compass.