[Rockhounds] more thoughts on sharing collecting sites

[DonH]

Tim Fisher wrote:

>  The easy way to avoid the
> issue is to leave your friggin GPS at the default setting of WGS84, 
> which is the universal standard for transferring waypoints between units 
> (thank the gods that there is a standard or the problem would be a lot 
> worse). The problem comes when people futz (a PA Dutch word for the 
> obvious) with their settings and then upload perfectly good WGS84 
> waypoints that the GPS, doing exactly what the user told it to do, 
> obligingly treats as NAD83 or whatever silly datum they set it to and 
> translates them to WGS84!


Geez Tim... perhaps a more considered discussion, in the holiday spirit, 
would be to point out that the datum depends on which coordinate system 
you use.  The UTM system has many advantages over the lat/long system, 
though some prefer one or the other.  The WGS84 datum should be used 
with lat/long and, for some reason, NAD27 should be used with UTM.

Just like any other tool, people need to learn how to use them!  I will 
adapt one of my favorite phrases to apply here: if you don't know how to 
navigate, and buy a GPS, you still don't know how to navigate, but now 
it's recorded electronically.

I am quite surprised that nobody caught that, or that they just didn't 
reject the article altogether.

"May all your coordinates be exact, and may the satellites reach us, 
every one!"


All the best,
Don