This mabey a dumb question.

[The Pinto Bean Clan]

I am somewhat new to GPS and navigating, and two terms are confusing me. What is the differance between Heading and Bearing?

[+Clan Ferguson]

Heading is were you are going.

or the direction you are walking

 

Bearing is where you should be going.

or the direction from you to the cache.

 

If you are walking West and the cache is south

Your heading is 270 and your bearing is 180

 

Cache On!!

 

James

"Big Dog"

-Clan Ferguson

[+MrGigabyte]

Heading is the direction you are... well.. heading.

 

Bearing is the direction from where you are to where you want to go (i.e. a waypoint).

 

If you are heading right to the waypoint, these will be the same.

 

Setting your GPSr to display both heading and bearing in the Goto or navigation screen will greatly help in locating a cache, if you also have a magnetic compass handy.

 

The compass will tell you if the heading displayed is correct (as it will not be when you slow and near the cache). Use the bearing displayed and dial that into your compass and use the distance displayed. never fails.

 

[The Pinto Bean Clan]

Thanks, now it is all coming together.

[+Jamie Z]

Uh oh... we had this question a while back. Remember where that went??

 

Here it is.

 

That's some reminiscing.

 

Jamie

[Magellin]

But I have to

 

I'm "HEADING" to the Autoparts Store to get yer "BEARINGS"

 

Eye, Ham, We, Todd, Did

Sofa, King, We, Todd, Did

[+mrp]

quote:

---

Originally

Setting your GPSr to display both heading and bearing in the Goto or navigation screen will greatly help in locating a cache, if you also have a magnetic compass handy.

---

 

If you're going to use a magnetic compass, it's a good idea to set your GPS up to use magnetic north rather than true north. Most cachers who use magnetic compass headings in hints, puzzles, etc, and aren't always very good about labeling the headings as such.

 

Most maps use true north however, so if you're going to use both, then learn to convert. Here near San Francisco the magnetic deviation is 15 or 16 degrees east, which means that to convert from true to magnetic, I need to subtract 15 (or 16).

 

-- Mitch

[+EraSeek]

You can find your declination here: http://www.thecompassstore.com/decvar.html

 

As I understand it, "Deviation" refers to Local magnetic influences (such as metal near by or local variences) were as "Declination" refers to the angular difference between true north and magnetic north

 

[+SamDeG]

Is this a dumb question?

 

Just remember, there are no dumb questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots.

 

It's an inside joke []

[+SamDeG]

Is this a dumb question?

 

Just remember, there are no dumb questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots.

 

It's an inside joke []