Settings for gps in Australia

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Caro
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Settings for gps in Australia

Post by Caro » 12 September 16 3:56 pm

Hi there. I hope someone can help me - I'm not sure where I should post this but this is where I've arrived so here it shall be! I recently went to Hawaii and was all enthusiastic about looking for some caches there only to realise that I had to change the settings on my gps. I mucked around and had sort of success but it had me in the sea just offshore - so no caching. :cry: Now I'm home and I cant remember what settings I originally had. My gps is still telling me I'm in Hawaii. I'm going crazy! Please help. :(
I have a Magellan explorist 310 and have gone into tools/settings/navigation and have selected primary co-ord sysem as UTM, prim accuracy as 1m, primary map datum as wGS84, 2ndary co-ord as for the first. It still tells me I'm in Hawaii. I've turned it off and on - Help!!!

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allrounder
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Re: Settings for gps in Australia

Post by allrounder » 12 September 16 4:10 pm

let your GPSr sit outside while turned on with a good view of the sky...you've moved thousands of ks since you last used it so it needs to get a good location fix...

and you DON'T need to change settings when travelling overseas...

Goldenwattle
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Re: Settings for gps in Australia

Post by Goldenwattle » 12 September 16 5:04 pm

I have taken my Garmin overseas several times and there is no need to change settings on it. However, some times when it first is turned on thousands of kms from where it was last, it can take many minutes to work out where it is. Just be patient. I do though calibrate the Garmin, but this is mainly to get the arrow to point in the correct direction; not to get the basic GPS to work.

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gmj3191
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Re: Settings for gps in Australia

Post by gmj3191 » 18 September 16 5:39 pm

Last time I looked at this, some years ago, you could tell your GPS roughly where you were, which would speed up the process of locking into a new location, but on my Garmin 650 I can't find this function.
Perhaps now that processors and chips have improved they don't think that extra hint is necessary.

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Chwiliwr
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Re: Settings for gps in Australia

Post by Chwiliwr » 19 September 16 1:10 pm

Caro wrote:Hi there. I hope someone can help me - I'm not sure where I should post this but this is where I've arrived so here it shall be! I recently went to Hawaii and was all enthusiastic about looking for some caches there only to realise that I had to change the settings on my gps. I mucked around and had sort of success but it had me in the sea just offshore - so no caching. :cry: Now I'm home and I cant remember what settings I originally had. My gps is still telling me I'm in Hawaii. I'm going crazy! Please help. :(
I have a Magellan explorist 310 and have gone into tools/settings/navigation and have selected primary co-ord sysem as UTM, prim accuracy as 1m, primary map datum as wGS84, 2ndary co-ord as for the first. It still tells me I'm in Hawaii. I've turned it off and on - Help!!!
Unless you have a reason for UTM it would be best to have the coordinate system as 'degrees decimal minutes' (dd mm.mmm) which is the one most geocachers use and is the default on most sites. As indicated by others it is not necessary to change these basic settings when you travel overseas. With your device one thing to watch is that you have both primary and secondary settings exactly the same unless you have a good reason to have them different. I recently helped a local geocacher with the same model and found that some of her problems that she had were caused by having the primary and secondary datum different from each other.

The probable cause for showing Hawaii is that without accurate satellite positions to calculate from most dedicated GPS units will show the last known position until it knows the positions of the satellites in space it is receiving signals from so can accurately calculate its position. The only solution is time to let the GPS unit sort it out as others have advised.

The reason for the not knowing where the satellite are in space is that there is a file that the GPS needs that tells it where the satellites are located called an Almanac that must be updated if the GPS has been off for a while. Without an up to date Almanac it doesn't know where in space the signals are originating so cannot calculate where it is. The process of updating the Almanac can take a long time. (More if your GPS uses some of the other GPS satellites systems as well as the main one as it has to update multiple files.)

Caro
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Re: Settings for gps in Australia

Post by Caro » 19 September 16 4:54 pm

Thank you everyone. Sorry I haven't responded until now - I decided to change something in my account while I was waiting to get some replies and then it was deactivated while they sorted all that out. Wish I'd asked you all when i was in Hawaii. The problem was obviously not enough time for the satellites to kick in etc. I got all confused when i tried to put in the coordinates as they were North and west (I think) instead of south and east. Anyway - my gps now knows its back in Tassie. As for the UTM setting - I think I was just guessing. I mightve changed it to latitude and longitude (dont have it by by side just now) but it seems to be working pretty well now. At least I know where to come if i have any more problems. Thanks all!

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Re: Settings for gps in Australia

Post by joemeow » 23 September 16 12:15 am

Caro wrote:Thank you everyone. Sorry I haven't responded until now - I decided to change something in my account while I was waiting to get some replies and then it was deactivated while they sorted all that out. Wish I'd asked you all when i was in Hawaii. The problem was obviously not enough time for the satellites to kick in etc. I got all confused when i tried to put in the coordinates as they were North and west (I think) instead of south and east. Anyway - my gps now knows its back in Tassie. As for the UTM setting - I think I was just guessing. I mightve changed it to latitude and longitude (dont have it by by side just now) but it seems to be working pretty well now. At least I know where to come if i have any more problems. Thanks all!
changing longitude and latitude couldn't be a sol for gps

Caro
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Re: Settings for gps in Australia

Post by Caro » 24 September 16 4:45 pm

Well I thought I was sorted out with regards to my gps problems but when I enter new coordinates it's taking me a long way from where I actually should be. It's accurate when I just go to the map - the arrow shows where I am but when i enter coords for a new cache something's not right. It pointed me about 20km away. I don't know what to do. :cry: I must have a setting somewhere that's incorrect but I don't know what it is. Sorry to be so thick!

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J_&_J
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Re: Settings for gps in Australia

Post by J_&_J » 24 September 16 6:45 pm

On page 29 of this PDF is a list of settings regarding coordinate type and datum for your GPSr.

Datum should be set to WGS84 and coordinate type, if it's what I think it means, should be set to decimal minutes ie: DD MM.MMM

I'd imagine if you set this for both primary and secondary it should all work.


Edit: It's actually on page 38 of the PDF, but if it were a printed booklet it'd be page 29.

Caro
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Re: Settings for gps in Australia

Post by Caro » 25 September 16 12:44 pm

Hi - thanks for searching out the manual for me - I did actually already look at it but it doesn't tell you what setting to use. The manual tells you how to get to the settings and then says to choose what one you want. That's the problem. What do I want? I can't find an option to put in decimal minutes. The primary coordinate system lets you choose UTM, lat/lon, a heap of country names and one called User- which lets you out in all sorts of things I have no idea about like "transvers Mercator" for example. I think I'll try to look at someone's GPS and just copy their settings.

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Richary
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Re: Settings for gps in Australia

Post by Richary » 25 September 16 6:06 pm

Coordinate type is lat/lon.

Caro
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Re: Settings for gps in Australia

Post by Caro » 26 September 16 9:41 am

Guess what? I have a fully functioning gps which is sending me to the correct places- I hope! Thank you all for your input. I changed it to lat/long and I found where the degrees / minutes / seconds were and changed that but it still wasn't right so tried just degrees and minutes. Bingo! This has been a great way to get help. Thanks again. :D

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