help w/ gps long./lat.
 

I was way off-road today and tried finding my longitude, latitude on my tom-tom one 130s gps. It showed coordinates but then when I moved to another location about 500' away it showed same coordinates. Is this because I was not near a road, or...???

You have to consider the accuracy, which is dependent on how many satellites your receiver is picking up at that moment, there should be a screen that shows you this.
Another consideration is elevation; for example, if you move 500 feet but you go up or down hill, the horizontal elevation will not change much. GPS only shows flat/ horizontal movement, not vertical movement.

These are the two most likely possibilities

mine does the same thing while i TRY to geo-cach :hillbill:

i have come to the conclusion, that a car gps is made for traveling 70mph down the interstate, so it just guestamates long. lat., while a handheld gps, is for doing exactly that. walking or moving real slow in the woods, so its much more accurate, and pinpointing

Not all handhelds are that accurate all the time. Like 87 said it depends on how many sats. you are picking up. The more sat signals you have the more triangulation you have. With mine if I only have the 3 required I think it is good to 100 meters but if I have five it is good to 10 meters.

Some GPS units can only recieve a certain number of signals at once so they will be limited on accuracy. I have never used a Tom Tom so I don't know how many they can receive but one of my units is limited to 5 so by default it will only get me within 10 meters of where I am.

Its a tom tom. You expected anything better from it?
Buy a GPS made for offroad travel if you want good accuracy in the back country.



:dj:

When geo-cashing, you have to know the type of map reference database the poster used. There are many.

:facepalm:

No. You need to know only 2 things, traditionally. The geographic latitude and longitude coordinates of the geocache. _°_'_" N/S & _°_'_" E/W








PS, please don't participate in that senseless activity. It's nothing more than littering and an eye-sore at best. Small scale destruction/manipulation of the natural environment and/or public property in some instances. And it annoys THE HELL out of me. Now there's a bunch of idiots running through the woods looking for trinkets and/or places to hide them(or not hide them in plain sight!). Like it's some kind of fricken real world board game. Grow up kids! Nature should be enjoyed and respected for what it is. We don't need you spoiling what little of it is left with your STUPID GAME!!!
:pop:

Thanks!

PS, please don't participate in that senseless activity. It's nothing more than littering and an eye-sore at best. Small scale destruction/manipulation of the natural environment and/or public property in some instances. And it annoys THE HELL out of me. Now there's a bunch of idiots running through the woods looking for trinkets and/or places to hide them(or not hide them in plain sight!). Like it's some kind of fricken real world board game. Grow up kids! Nature should be enjoyed and respected for what it is. We don't need you spoiling what little of it is left with your STUPID GAME!!!
:pop:

Thanks![/QUOTE]

Maybe if you hate it so much you should start a thread on it. I wonder.....if you enjoyed it would you still think its destructive and stupid or would you defend it?
Seems like you insult people quite a bit over little things that you personally don't like.

I agree with my friend Janderson. When I was training for Army recon for iraq, we geo-cashed hundreds of times in training. All I can say is if you dont want to do it---dont. I don't geo-cash, but I have no problem and I even encourage those who want to do it to have fun. It's called freedom baby! Enjoy

mud hippy, ive always felt the same exact way about geocaching....the only reason i par-took in it TWICE is because the local search and rescue gave the townspeople a scenerio in wich the "cach" was a stranded individual, and we had to use our gps's to find them.

other then that, ive never been intersted, nor SUCCESFUL :hillbill:

Mud: your opinions have been running rampant lately...

lat/long suck..I prefer the MGRS, much more accurate. My Garmin 60Csx is so much more accurate than a tom tom or the stuff that they sell for finding your way on a vacation...I have three:D

I apologize.

I had that one pent up for quite awhile. It's been MANY long years I've been wanting to give a "geocacher" a piece of my mind about their obtrusive behaviour. However, I'm not going on and on about it now am I? I said what I felt needed to be said. I even said "please" & "thanks".

The truth is I've always been very opinionated, I believe my track record shows that all too clearly. My goal as of late though is to be less oppositional.