Hi Guys
I needed to use my GPS on a trail ride to log a waypoint when a trail rider came off his bike and hit a post, the score was post 1 rider 0 as always.
For interest sake I had a chat with Stu from Westpac Rescue afterwards to make sure we had our ducks in a row as my GPS was set at factory settings and I gave them the Northings and Eastings which they converted for their system to fly too.
Westpac Rescue will accept whatever coordinates / waypoints you can give them however they have to use a calculator on some systems to convert it into something useful for them, obviously this is not ideal as you can end up with errors which could see the Helicopter going to the wrong spot.
After speaking with Stu he said their preferred units are Degrees, Minutes, Decimal Minutes as opposed to Degrees, minutes, seconds and True North is preferred as opposed to Magnetic North.
These are what the icon letters stand for
h = Hemisphere (North, South, East, or West )
d = Degree
m = Minute
s = Second
hddd.ddddd is Decimal Degrees Format
hddd mm.mmm is Degrees, Minutes, Decimal Minutes Format
hddd mm ss.s is Degrees, Minutes, Seconds Format
I have a Garmin 62s and have listed the steps below to check your settings.
From any screen press menu twice in succession, this brings up “setup” page, with the “setup” icon highlighted press enter, “system” should now be highlighted, scroll down to “Position Format” and press enter, “position format” is the top icon, press enter and you will have a list in alphabetical order, scroll down till you highlight hddd° mm.mmm’ and press enter, this is now exactly what Westpac wants.
Ok step two, press quit to go back one screen, then scroll down to “Heading” icon and press enter, on this page you will see an icon with “North reference”, press enter and scroll up or down to highlight the “True” field and press enter, all done, now press quit to go back to the main screen.
Obviously different GPS’s will have different menus but the end results are the same hddd° mm.mmm’ and True North.
It is not something we need to do often which makes it very important to get the GPS set up correctly before you need it as it is not a good time to learn if one of your riding buddies needs help, you will have enough on your mind without trying to learn GPS set up.
Now you have learned GPS 101 hopefully you never need to use it and ring for a rescue, however if you do need it you are ready to rock.
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