GPS coordinates are confusing me. (1 Viewer)

[gus-lopez]

All this confusion is why I enter a town and road name , not let me down yet

Yes what my american guests did. instead of A) following my precise instructions or B) using co-ordinates. They put in my address & it said they " had arrived" 11 miles away.
Took them 2 more hours to get here then he told me he didn't know how to input co-ords into his Iphone so had put in my address . That's why it had taken him 100 miles across country on a scenic route. He finally & had to resort in the end to google maps.

and never look back at post codes

They don't work here either.
It wasn't many years ago 10 maybe, that when you came past Murcia there was a gps black holewe didn't exist.

I found the settings menu to change the format, the trouble is there are so many to choose from with so many different names I don't know which one would be best for Camper Contact. I'm back in the UK away from my van and satnav so I can't take pics to show.

I will probably be using Camper Contact and they show their co-ord's like this:

Are they giving you the co-ord's in 2 different formats there? And which format should that be on Garmin models, anyone know?

Yes they are.
The first shown is degrees decimal whilst the second is the proper oneD2) dms = degree's ,minutes, seconds. both for the same place

 

[Pausim]

I was rather chuffed to find Copilot Caravan (possibly other versions too) will accept OS map references as well as the more usual coordinates, the one which starts with two letters for the sheet number then up to 5 numbers for Northings and Eastings.

Useful to foil people in our response group who only give the map reference to force you to read a map.

I was rather hoping the os system would disappear altogether. I believe it was only the army refusing to use a proven naval system that gave rise to it in the first place.

 

[Reallyretired]

I was rather hoping the os system would disappear altogether. I believe it was only the army refusing to use a proven naval system that gave rise to it in the first place.

You hoped in vain, it will probably be in existence all the time OS make maps.

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[autorouter]

There is a bit of history behind the various formats. The degrees, minutes and seconds has been used by mariners for centuries and is basic geometry, so I think we can blame the ancient Greeks for it.

Way before the ancient Greeks, the Babylonians used numbers based on 60, and they inherited it from the Sumerians who were using it in the third millennium BCE.

Decimal example: 49.970091 8.668947

DMS example: N 49 degrees 58 mins 12 secs E 8 degs 40 mins 8 secs

Example: 49.970091
49 is the degrees
Split off the decimal part and multiply by 60: .970091 x 60 = 58.20546
Keep the 58, that's the 'minutes'
Split off the decimal part and multiply by 60: .20546 x 60 = 12.3276
Keep the 12, that's the 'seconds'. Ignore the decimal part.
So 49.970091 degrees = 49 degrees 58 minutes 12 seconds

Divide a degree into 60 parts which are minute (as in tiny). That's why they're called minutes. Divide by 60 a second time to get seconds. That's why they're called seconds.

 

[Pausim]

You hoped in vain, it will probably be in existence all the time OS make maps.

Very possibly but originally there were very good reasons for putting N-S before E-W and it seems daft to have an opposite system for local maps.