Started Today....

[+tomcatuk]

Found two small micro cache's today on a visit to hyde park... to feed the ducks...

ahem!

 

I took a borrowed (next door neighbours) satnav unit a Blazer12 he uses it when he goes fishing, so as this was my very first attempt at geocaching I thought I better read up the unit.... after downloading the manual for it from the internet I managed to suss it out (I hope)

 

I'm a bit confused about the way you enter the waypoints from the cache pages

ie

N 51° 48.569 W 000° 03.154

 

I only have space to enter 51° 48.56 and 000° 03.15 I don't have the space to enter the last digit of the co-ordinates... but still managed to find the locations ok.

 

Any advice on this please?

 

Funny thing though I entered the location for one other in Hyde Park and notices it was over 3000 miles away... Eh!

Then I realised this was in the USA....

 

I am considering (maybe an xmas treat) getting a new etrex unit but undecided as to go for one with a compass or not...as it's basically only going to be used for Geocaching... any advice on that would be welcome..

 

Regards Steve

[+Renegade Knight]

First of all West Longitude is negative. So if you input numbers and not the West designation you would enter -000. I'm assuming you are West longitude so if you are East then nevermind. (Being in the UK you could be either and a 3000 mile error would mostly likley be a typo when entering coordinates)

 

Second the accuracy of only two decimals shouldn't stop you from caching.

 

DDD MM.MMM is similar to DDD MM.MM if you chop off the last decimal.

Normally older unitls do enter UTM coordinates. UTM coordinates are based in Meters and Meters are a smaller unit of measure than the missing decimal.

 

Cache pages give the cache location in UTM as well as Latitude and Longitude.

 

As for what kind of GPS to look at, that's another thing entirly.

 

Edit: Read OP's profile and tweaked post.

Edited September 12, 2004 by Renegade Knight

[+Thot]

I'm a bit confused about the way you enter the waypoints from the cache pages

ie

N 51° 48.569 W 000° 03.154

 

I only have space to enter 51° 48.56 and 000° 03.15 I don't have the space to enter the last digit of the co-ordinates... but still managed to find the locations ok.

 

Any advice on this please?

Some GPS gadgets let you change the resolution from two to three decimal places.

[+SixDogTeam]

seek and hide using UTM and you'll be cool!

[+Riddlers]

Welcome to the sport. My question is how can you wait until Christmas? Once we found our first caches, with another experienced cacher, we had to have a unit in our hands by the next week. We got our garmin and had to find two caches on the way home. All I can say, is be careful, it can be addictive.

[+Sputnik 57]

Older units (before the GPS system was released to civilians) often were limited to 2 decimals. .001 is about 6 feet (or less in latitude as you move north), so .001 should get you within 60 feet (plus or minus 20 feet or so in GPSr accuracy).

[+KG7JE]

I'll just jump in and correct the typo of the previous poster. .001' = 6' (N/S and less E/W as you get closer to the poles). Therefore .01' is 60'.

 

Hmm, that might be confusing as in once case the ' means minutes and in the other case ' means feet.

 

Therefore, .001 minutes = 6 feet (approx) and .01 minutes = 60 feet (give or take). Note that at the 45th parrallel .001 minutes is approxiamtely 71% of 6 feet (or about 4-1/4 feet) so .01 minutes would be about 42 feet (measuring in the East/West direction -- it would still be 6' in the North/South direction.)