Re: [Paddlewise] UTM

Sisler, Clyde wrote:
> 
> Spent an hour or so last night _at_ http://www.nps.gov/prwi/readutm.htm trying
> to make sense of this UTM stuff.
> 
> My BBA charts are 1:94,000 but some of my others are 1:40,000.  No UTM grids
> on any of them.  The only grids I have are every 5 lat/lon minutes.
> 
> Tried to supplement the tutorial with some other reading and checked out
> Fundamentals of Kayak Navigation by David Burch and Be Expert With Map &
> Compass by Bjorn Kjellstrom and neither has any reference to UTM.  MapTech,
> my electronic charting software doesn't mention it either.  My spelling
> verifier does like UTM however????
> 
> I think whomever that evil person was who mentioned UTM to Bob Denton, also
> mentioned something about a grid template or something.  Am I missing a
> piece of hardware somewhere or just a few brain cells?
> 
> The examples end up with coordinates from 4-10 digits in length, depending
> on desired accuracy.  That's some pretty big numbers and sounds like it
> would take just as long or longer to come up with and enter them into a GPS
> as lat/lon .  (I really haven't entered anything yet).
> 
> What makes UTM better/easier or whatever than lat/lon or is it just another
> technothingee?

I thought that both Burch and Bjorn did refer to UTMs but your search is
obviously right.  I first heard of them about 25-30 years ago when the
hiking map world was abuzz with UTMs as being more accurate.  I
remembered sweating out figuring them out at the time.  The advantage of
the Universal Transverse Mercator is/was a significant reduction in the
distortion of placing a globe on to a flat surface of maps; it is an
international standard and in kilometer increments, if I recall
correctly.  For awhile back then, people started playing games of
identifying places by UTMs instead of longitude and latitude. I even
knew my street location by both UTM grid and Longitude/Latitude but I
have since forgotten.  Besides it confused visitors to tell them to go
to such and such UTM grid or x longitude and y latitude.  Better to just
say 70th Street just west of Central Park.

ralph diaz
-- 
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Ralph Diaz . . . Folding Kayaker newsletter
PO Box 0754, New York, NY 10024
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"Where's your sea kayak?"----"It's in the bag."
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