GPS Navigation – Waypoints

A GPS portable navigation system can be a powerful tool for motivating yourself to get outdoors, enjoy the fresh air and get some exercise.

This can start a lot closer to home than you might imagine. One popular activity that has literally exploded with the refinement of the GPS satellite navigation system for civilian use is geocaching.

While this article won’t go into all the in’s and out’s of the sport of geocaching, with a little research you may find that there are geocaches registered online very close to where you live, even in residential parks in your city. This is a great way to start using a GPS mobile navigation unit, and one that you can get the whole family involved in.

A key point to understand in using a GPS navigation system is the “waypoint”. This is simply a fixed geographic point of interest, and the associated navigation coordinates, most often given in latitude and longitude. In the city or on a highway these could be a restaurant, a museum, or a gas station. Out in the wilds, a waypoint could be a favorite camping spot, a mountain peak, or a trail head.

In regard to geocaching a waypoint would indicate the location of a “geocache”, a sealed container containing goodies deposited by the caches creator, or left behind by others who’ve found and visited the cache. Along with this will be a log for recording your own visit, and maybe what tokens you’ve swapped.

Here’s a tip when hunting for a geocache using coordinates you’ve downloaded to your portable GPS navigation unit, or if you’re creating your own geocache and recording the coordinates in the field. The GPS Sat Nav system will get you to within 25’ of a given coordinate most of the time, with a consumer GPS unit.

However when the geocache was original placed and the coordinates recorded you can expect the location to be off by 25’. When you attempt to locate the cache, returning to the same coordinates, you can expect another range of error of 25’. So conceivably you will be off by 50’.

This may be compounded by other factors, such as navigation satellite positions, atmospheric conditions or solar activity, but 25’ is pretty typical in modern consumer GPS navigation systems.

But on the other hand, the range of error originally may have been 25’ in one direction, and the inherent range of error of the GPS unit in hand may be in exactly the other direction, which may place you exactly on top of the geocache when you land on those coordinates. Something to keep in mind in your search for geocaches.

You can download the coordinates of many, many locations around the world from the internet. Two great websites to check out are:

One) gpsinformation.net/main/waypts-2.htm

Two) geonames.usgs.gov

The second website is the Geographic Names Information Service (“GNIS”), and is run by the US Geologic Survey. Here you can search for and get the coordinates for millions of place names in the U.S. and around the world, then view and download the location in a variety of map resources.

To find geocaches in your area, visit:

geocaching.com/seek/default.aspx

Good luck and happy hunting!

The author, Mike Wreggitt, has a great love of the outdoors, and is a huge fan of portable GPS navigation systems. Find out more about GPS navigation at http://GpsForHiking.net.

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