Thread: [Gpsbabel-misc] NPR GeoLocating Story
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From: Beverly H. <Bev@BevHoward.com> - 2006-02-25 17:08:08
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NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday had one of the best news pieces that I have heard on GPS coordinates this morning... recommended listening. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5233408 The most alarming news was the information that most emergency responders are "street" based, apparently not able to use gps coordinates This was underscored by the story of an map experienced witness to a motorcycle accident on a washington freeway who contacted 911, but could not describe his location... then remembered that he had a GPS unit in his pocket, but 911 could not use the coordinates. The other germain point was the focus on emergency services using "National Grid" completely in place of lat/long ...may be advantages, but poll 1,000 current gps users on their location and it would be my guess that of those that knew how to find their coordinates, only a tiny minority would know how to find any other coordinates than lat/long Of those who have opinions after listening, would hope you will email your thoughts to the reporter. Beverly Howard |
From: Beverly H. <Bev@BevHoward.com> - 2006-02-25 18:04:21
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I had assumed this but had not tested it until now, but anyone, anywhere in the USA who may need to find a location using lat/long coordinates without access to mapping software should know that they can go to http://maps.google.com and enter the lat (first) followed by the long and press <enter> Examples; 30.296747 -097.843303 N30.296747 W097.843303 30 17 48, -97 50 36 I am sure there are others, but searching only turned up converters to the other direction... finding coordinates based on addresses. Beverly Howard |
From: James W. <wa...@tr...> - 2006-02-25 21:07:45
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As an emergency responder (Fire Fighter) in both Oregon and now Nevada, I'm happy to report that at least the Life-Flight helicopters ASK for a waypoint when we are setting up a landing zone... They just dial in the coords and fly right to us.. As for police, good luck - jim On Sat, 25 Feb 2006 11:07:59 -0600 Beverly Howard <Bev@BevHoward.com> wrote: > The most alarming news was the information that most emergency > responders are "street" based, apparently not able to use gps > coordinates |
From: Beverly H. <Bev@BevHoward.com> - 2006-02-25 23:00:58
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>> dial in coord... << And, the next question, which coordinate system do you use as a responder? I would assume that air base services would be able to use the information and hope that rural/winderness responders would have adopted for self preservation, but ground responders within a metropolitan area might be "iffy" with gps info. Beverly Howard |
From: James W. <wa...@tr...> - 2006-02-26 15:37:16
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WGS84 On Sat, 25 Feb 2006 17:00:51 -0600 Beverly Howard <Bev@BevHoward.com> wrote: > >> dial in coord... << > > And, the next question, which coordinate system do you use as a responder? > > I would assume that air base services would be able to use the > information and hope that rural/winderness responders would have adopted > for self preservation, but ground responders within a metropolitan area > might be "iffy" with gps info. > > Beverly Howard > > > ------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.Net email is sponsored by xPML, a groundbreaking scripting language > that extends applications into web and mobile media. Attend the live webcast > and join the prime developer group breaking into this new coding territory! > http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=110944&bid=241720&dat=121642 > _______________________________________________ > Gpsbabel-misc mailing list > Gps...@li... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gpsbabel-misc > |
From: Daniel M. <Dan_Mitton@Bigfoot.com> - 2006-02-26 02:22:07
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I would like to ask the extremely knowledgeable folks on this list a question about GPS's (GPSi, whatever)... My wife and I are doing a lot of Geo Caching and we now have two GPS - a Garmin Rino 120 & a Garmin Rino 530. With the 120, we walk right up to the cache and it is fairly consistently within 3-8 ft. With the 530 however, it is consistently off by 40-45 ft (i.e. when we find the cache, the 530 says it's 40-45 ft away, despite the GPS reporting it's accuracy as 8-10 ft.). I emailed Garmin tech support and they don't think that is a problem. What do you'all think? Is this to be expected or is this a bad unit? Thanks very much, Dan & Eileen Mitton Out of the spark shall spring the flame. |
From: James W. <wa...@tr...> - 2006-02-26 15:39:39
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Are both units set up to use WGS84? if one is set to NAD27, this would be likely. On Sat, 25 Feb 2006 18:22:00 -0800 Daniel Mitton <Dan_Mitton@Bigfoot.com> wrote: > I would like to ask the extremely knowledgeable folks on this list a > question about GPS's (GPSi, whatever)... > > My wife and I are doing a lot of Geo Caching and we now have two GPS > - a Garmin Rino 120 & a Garmin Rino 530. With the 120, we walk right > up to the cache and it is fairly consistently within 3-8 ft. With > the 530 however, it is consistently off by 40-45 ft (i.e. when we > find the cache, the 530 says it's 40-45 ft away, despite the GPS > reporting it's accuracy as 8-10 ft.). I emailed Garmin tech support > and they don't think that is a problem. What do you'all think? Is > this to be expected or is this a bad unit? > > Thanks very much, > > Dan & Eileen Mitton > > > Out of the spark shall spring the flame. > > > > ------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.Net email is sponsored by xPML, a groundbreaking scripting language > that extends applications into web and mobile media. Attend the live webcast > and join the prime developer group breaking into this new coding territory! > http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=110944&bid=241720&dat=121642 > _______________________________________________ > Gpsbabel-misc mailing list > Gps...@li... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gpsbabel-misc > |
From: Ron P. <ro...@pa...> - 2006-02-28 04:28:30
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Beverly Howard wrote: > > Of those who have opinions after listening, would hope you will email > your thoughts to the reporter. I was barely awake for the story, but what stuck in my mind is that the coordinates the reporter gave for his own position at the end of the story were reversed (77N, 38W.) Unless he really was somewhere near the Arctic Circle. |