Recently there have been several threads going on this list about choosing a GPS and I thank everyone who contributed. I learned a lot. I don't mean to reopen those discussions, but a question came up the other night which I felt y'all could help me with. A friend of mine went sailing as part of a class, and there were 6 handheld GPS units on board, plus the large console GPS installed in the boat. Throughout the trip, the console unit consistently indicated positions which were 3 miles off of the positions shown by the six handheld units and the compass-bearing fixes taken by the students. Now, naive Harold always assumed that a GPS either worked accurately or not at all. Apparently not. Would this discrepancy be due to improper factory calibration of the unit, or can a unit slip out of calibration? Or might the discrepancies be due to the installation of the ship-mounted unit, or what? Inquiring (armchair) navigators want to know. Oh, one other thing. I've heard of cases where people have thought their GPS was off several miles when cruising or paddling in Baja, only to find that the Mexican maps were the source of the inaccuracies. But this trip was right here in So. Cal., using NOAA charts, and all but the console unit agreed with the charts. Any ideas? Harold So. Cal. *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************Received on Fri Mar 12 1999 - 22:41:40 PST
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