+ras_oscar Posted February 19, 2020 Share Posted February 19, 2020 (edited) I'm curious in a scholarly way about the cause of a recent event in the field with my GPS. Was caching in an open field with no trees nearby. I logged a find and selected the next nearest cache, poked "navigate to" and started walking towards the next coordinates. The compass pointer both in the map view and the Geocaching dashboard pointed backwards. However, the distance to the coordinates was counting down and the map indicator showed me getting closer to the next hide. ( FYI the countdown was correct, the arrow was wrong) After a few minutes the compass arrow flipped to show me going in the correct direction. Any Idea why my Oregon 700 would give conflicting information like that? Edited February 19, 2020 by ras_oscar splng crrctn Quote Link to comment
+kunarion Posted February 19, 2020 Share Posted February 19, 2020 It's a magnetic compass sensor, affected by varying magnetic fields. When I see anything funky while caching, I stop and calibrate the compass, and the problem clears up. The full "calibration" is kind of a chore, but some spots simply have the jinx, and you do what ya gotta do about it. Quote Link to comment
+Atlas Cached Posted February 19, 2020 Share Posted February 19, 2020 Routing method was set to something other than 'Direct'. 1 Quote Link to comment
+colleda Posted February 19, 2020 Share Posted February 19, 2020 3 hours ago, ras_oscar said: I'm curious in a scholarly way about the cause of a recent event in the field with my GPS. Was caching in an open field with no trees nearby. I logged a find and selected the next nearest cache, poked "navigate to" and started walking towards the next coordinates. The compass pointer both in the map view and the Geocaching dashboard pointed backwards. However, the distance to the coordinates was counting down and the map indicator showed me getting closer to the next hide. ( FYI the countdown was correct, the arrow was wrong) After a few minutes the compass arrow flipped to show me going in the correct direction. Any Idea why my Oregon 700 would give conflicting information like that? I use Garmin Etrex 20s (non magnetic compass). It often does that but soon flips around. As long as the counter is going down I'm ok as I've gotten used to it. Quote Link to comment
+ras_oscar Posted February 20, 2020 Author Share Posted February 20, 2020 21 hours ago, Atlas Cached said: Routing method was set to something other than 'Direct'. nope, Not locking on to the road. I was in the middle of a park field Quote Link to comment
+cerberus1 Posted February 20, 2020 Share Posted February 20, 2020 On 2/19/2020 at 1:05 PM, kunarion said: It's a magnetic compass sensor, affected by varying magnetic fields. When I see anything funky while caching, I stop and calibrate the compass, and the problem clears up. The full "calibration" is kind of a chore, but some spots simply have the jinx, and you do what ya gotta do about it. Similar, we have so much iron ore that it's like that a lot. It eventually calms down... If not, re-calibrate. The other 2/3rds was told that by Trimble Outdoors back in '05 for her app too... One odd one we noticed is, if my phone's in a front pocket, and below the GPSr on my belt, the "pointer" will do the same. Moving it to the other side usually fixed it . Quote Link to comment
+ras_oscar Posted September 2, 2020 Author Share Posted September 2, 2020 Resurrecting zombie thread to post solution for archive. As suggested above, calibrating the compass resolved the issue. Quote Link to comment
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