Coordinate help with Legend

[Guest GuyMcBeerdrinker]

I have a business trip scheduled to Paris in about three weeks. Last night I ran into this cool site, Find-a-Grave, and I was trying to program the coordinates to Jim Morrison's grave onto my Legend. This is when I ran into this problem (I'm writing this from my office, I'm doing this from memory so bare with me):

 

the coordiantes to this grave are: N 48.85.962 E 2.393.91

I got to N 48. with no problem, but when I tried to type in the second 8 it didn't let me, so I stopped there. I immediately thought "Well, since this is in Europe I guess it is not programmed to handle these coordinates or I just have to load an European basemap into my unit". Then I tried another thing. I tried to program Jimmi Hendrix's grave coordinates (N 47.48.58 W 122.17.14) and it took them no problem. Then I realized that I had only tried to program the Latitude only, which was odd because at this point I hadn't even touched the Longitude, so I could have tried to program the location of a waypoint that was directly north from me past the 48 Latitude line and it wasn't taking it.

 

I know the box says that it programed with basemaps for North America and South America, put since Alaska sits around the 65 Latitude line it should have let me enter a waypoint past the 48 line. Can someone tell me if I should report this to Garmin as a bug, or maybe my Legend is not programed for those coordinates yet? When I get home this afternoon I'm going to try to enter a waypoint somewhere in Africa to see if it will let me put in something that far east.

Any input and feedback will be greatly appreciated.

[Guest Moun10Bike]

quote:

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Originally posted by GuyMcBeerdrinker:

the coordiantes to this grave are: N 48.85.962 E 2.393.91

I got to N 48. with no problem, but when I tried to type in the second 8 it didn't let me, so I stopped there.

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The coordinates on findagrave.com are decimal degrees (i.e. DD.DDDDD): 48.85962, 2.39391. Do you by chance have your GPS set up to display coordinates as degrees and minutes (i.e. DD MM.MMM) instead? Degrees + minutes is the format that geocaching.com uses. If your GPS is set to degrees + minutes, then you would not be able to enter the second 8 because 59 is the maximum value you can enter for minutes (and thus 5 is the largest number that will fit into the third position).

 

Try setting your coordinate format to decimal degrees and see if that corrects the problem.

[Guest peter]

Don't go complaining to Garmin before learning a little about the latitude/longitude system of coordinates.

 

The units can be specified in several ways:

1) Degrees and decimal degrees (DDD.ddddd)

2) Degrees, minutes and decimal minutes (DDD MM.mmm)

3) Degrees, minutes, seconds and decimal seconds (DDD MM SS.s)

 

When entering the coordinates for a waypoint, you need to check which format is being used and set your GPS to the same format. For example, the grave of Jim Morrison is listed on the website as:

"GPS coordinates: 48.85962, 2.39391 (hddd.dddd)" The note in parentheses shows they're specifying degrees and decimal degrees, so set the 'Location Format' of your GPS to that format and you'll be able to enter the location. Note that there is no second decimal point in either coordinate unlike what you entered above (also true for the Hendrix location - reenter it with your GPS set for 'DDD.ddddd' since what you entered before was in the wrong format). Also note that for latitude, positive numbers correspond to the northern hemisphere and negative to the southern. For longitude it's positive for the eastern hemisphere and negative for the western.

 

The coordinates on the Geocache website are given in DDD MM.mmm format, so set your GPS back to that before you enter waypoints from it.

[Guest GuyMcBeerdrinker]

me. I should have paid close attention to the coordinate formats. By the way, does anyone have a good rec. on an GPS/Orientering book? I know there's a lot of stuff about the subject online, but I would rather buy a book which I could reference to and also be able to read on my bed at night.

 

thanks again,

GMcB

[Guest Moun10Bike]

quote:

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Originally posted by GuyMcBeerdrinker:

By the way, does anyone have a good rec. on an GPS/Orientering book

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These three books are ones that I own and constantly refer to. I think that you'd really like all of them, but the last one listed is my personal favorite:

 

GPS Land Navigation: A Complete Guidebook for Backcountry Users of the NAVSTAR Satellite System by Michael Ferguson, Randy Kalisek, Leah Tucker

 

Wilderness Navigation : Finding Your Way Using Map, Compass, Altimeter, & Gps by Bob Burns, Mike Burns, Paul Hughes

 

A Comprehensive Guide to Land Navigation with GPS by Noel J. Hotchkiss

 

[This message has been edited by Moun10Bike (edited 03 May 2001).]

[Guest GuyMcBeerdrinker]

thanks a lot, I'm going to write them down and visit my local Barnes & Noble this evening and maybe purchase one or two on the list.