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Amazing Accuracy Stories Wanted


Guest bunkerdave

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Guest bunkerdave

d up the road. It was pleasantly steep (I am happiest over 7,500 feet) and we quickly reached the summit and continued down the other side. It was a beautiful drive, quaking aspens in partial glory (peak season is past) and snow-frosted peaks on all sides. Only saw two hunting camps the whole way, although it was a pleasantly cool 60-70 degrees most of the way. Unseasonably warm at these elevations.

 

I was downloading data this evening, and running the trip through my Delorme TopoUSA 3.0 (Fun software, I recommend it) and ran the profile of the route. (Vertical profile, shows the steepness of ascents/descents. It showed my MAX elevation over the route to be 8,936.06 feet. Pretty good, I thought. Almost 9,000 feet on a leisurely Sunday drive. Out of curiosity, I picked up my LGB (Little Green Buddy) to see what it recorded as my MAX elevation for this trip. Get this - 8,937 feet. Close enough for you? Now, I am open to the idea that it is possible that the map and the GPS are equally inaccurate, but I am enough of a mathematician to know that the odds are...let's just say it's unlikely, to say the least.

 

Anyway, I have plenty of stories like this, and I am quite certain most of you do, too. Even my non-caching friends (I still have some icon_wink.gif ) are impressed when I tell them these stories, and I love to hear them from other GPS users. If you have a story or two, post you best ones here. I am sure a bunch of us would love to read them.

 

-BunkerDave

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Hey Bunkerdave,

 

I have a thread going on the General board about an accuracy fluke I had this weekend. I found a cache when the GPS was saying .7 feet. A couple of other guys had some interesting comments about accuracy that close can not really be achieved by our little units, but it was pretty dang cool none the less.

 

Also interesting was that I was sitting on the beach on Ocracoke island the next day and I was getting a WAAS lock on the birds. My altitude was showing at -8.8 feet. Strange, cuz I was dry as a bone! :^) When I've been out on my boat I'll get readings as much as 30 and more feet below sea level. No, it's not a sub! :^)

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Guest bunkerdave

I have heard that many GPSRs do not give negative readings. This has been a topic of lively discussion on the Map330 users Yahoo Group. Apparently a few users have taken theirs to Death Valley, CA, and have not received the negative reading they were hoping for. I have found, however, that the vast majority of the earth's surface (positive elevation) or at least the part I have taken my GPSR to, allows me to get a nicely accurate reading. icon_wink.gif

 

bd

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Interesting about the map330's not being negative. Since I live at the coast, I see negative as much as positive. I run a GPSMap76, so maybe the Map330 shouldn't be used under water, eh? :^) I was showing +28 feet in the back yard last evening (actually is closer to 8-10 feet above sea level). I have been in the VA mountains and have been less than 10 feet different from what the sign at the scenic overlook says. Of course, who knows exactly where the reading was taken at the overlook and by what method.

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Hunted a cache - couldn't find it given the waypoint. read the comments and many have posted that the origonal reading was about 50 ft off. One cacher posted their waypoint. I entered it and it brought me to withinn 2-3 ft of the cache (no WAAS).

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Guest bunkerdave

How close do you get when you use Mapblast coordinates or any other source for coordinates? I have been getting consistently within 50 feet, which is always pretty exciting. I travel around the state on business quite a bit, and I always get the coords before setting out on a trip. My colleagues are always amazed at how I seem to know EXACTLY where our destination is. I try to tell them it's the GPS, but they don't buy it. Whatever. icon_wink.gif

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Guest tnunnery

I recently "placed" a virtual cache. By coincidence, there was a Geodetic Survey Marker on the very spot I marked as the virtual cache. Once I was back home, I checked the coordinates of the marker on the USGS site and it was exactly what I had marked! I was quite suprised.

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Guest bunkerdave

I have had the same experience with the Survey Markers.

 

When I placed the egocentric "BunkerDave's Cache" on a mountain in SE Utah, it was down a ridge from a high summit. I had taken my coordinates from Topografix, via a search for the name of this particualr mountiain. I entered the coords exactly as they were listed on the map, and the elevation as well. When I got to the summit, I found the marker, only about an inch or less in diameter, and set my GPS right next to it. After a few minutes auto-averaging, the Latitude, Longitude, AND the elevation - 12,721' - on my GPS were exactly what the map had given me.

 

Never underestimate the power of a GPS. icon_biggrin.gif

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Guest bunkerdave

Here's another one:

 

Yesterday I did a little shopping by phone for a hikers headlamp. I decided I wanted the Black Diamond Moonlight, so I called the Black Diamond store in SLC and they had it. I had never been there, so I promptly logged in to MapBlast and punched in the address. I got some coordinates, and put them in my GPS. When I left work, I did the GOTO, and drove to the place. When I pulled into the parking lot, my GPS read 142 feet, and continued to count down as I approached the front door. It was at 78 feet when I entered, and then it quit counting, of course, as I was indoors. Given the size and shape of the store, as well as the direction the compass was pointing me, I figure the zero point was right where the cash register was.

 

Actually, this is more of a reflection on Mapblast than on my GPS, but it is interesting (and amazing) IMO. I love MapBlast coords.

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One night i was sitting in my lazy boy in the living room with my gm100.Checking out the different maps and stuff.I decided to take a waypoint.Just to see where it would take me.After pressing go to it told me i was 1 foot from the location.I found this pretty accurate.I have had this happen several times. I might start geocaching in my house icon_biggrin.gif

Maybe a waypoint to the freezer this could be a good cache icon_wink.gif

 

[This message has been edited by 300mag (edited 11 January 2002).]

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Guest dmurray14

Not sure how good this was, but when I went on my first cache, I was about 3 feet from the cache before I spotted it, and the display read 3 feet away on my Mag315. I thought that was pretty impressive.

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Guest jfitzpat

When I was putting together the Map Maker for http://www.lostoutdoors.com I wanted to show it to my oldest daughter. We turned on my GPSr, walked out on the balcony off my bedroom, waited about 30 seconds, then took a waypoint.

 

We walked back in, plugged in the serial cable, clicked on the waypoint exchange, selected the waypoint and hit the map button. It was dead on. We tried again at the end of the driveway next to the street. Again, we couldn't have placed the dot any closer. Since then she was tried waypoints other places. For example, we were at an event at Dodger Stadium and she got a waypoint from the rubber on the pitcher's mound. I'm still amazed at how dead on the GPS coordinates usually are.

 

When I go on casual hikes and map them, the coordinates are sometimes a little off, especially if the lock was weak. But some are amazingly dead on. We were recently at Shoshone Point, overlooking the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. There is a large, 10' or so high arrow head shaped boulder near the brink. At my daughters request, I climbed to the top and took a waypoint. It plotted dead center on an object just barely large enough to appear in the NAPP image.

 

Judging from the caches that I have mapped, I am not the only one routinely seeing a pretty amazing level of accuracy.

 

-jjf

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