GPS Locator

I'm not all that familiar with gps locators, but it seems to me, that it just might be directing you to the nearest airport.

it'd be kinda hard landing a plane in your driveway wouldn't it?

Stub

How many digits of longitude and latitude does your GPS process? Could it be just be a result of round-off-error? The fly-to feature will go (within some systematic error) to exactly the coordinates you typed in. The where-am-I feature will give you the location but only to the precision of the unit itself and the number of digits it can display.

Eight

Eight

What where the coordinates and we could try it, unless its a sensative location

i will go off and try it now

I,m in the USA, midwest to be more specific. You can try any address, I have tried several with the same result.

oilcan3

oilcan13, a tip you might already know, but just for the record...

You can type the degrees sign directly from your keyboard using its high-ASCII code:

Holding down the Alt key, tap 248 on the numeric pad then release the Alt key. e.g. °

... or on a Mac, type shift-option-8 to get °.

I'm in USA. have tried several addresses same result.

oilcan13

Google earth is not a GPS device. The co-ordinates you get will depend upon the accuracy of the address you provide and the availability of that address in Google earth. Google earth will direct you to some nearest matching location, like air port (as some other post has said).

For accurate co-ordinates you need to have proper GPS device. Garmin has many very cheap devices (if your aim is only co-ordinates)

All the best

It directed Me to an open farm field.

oilcan13

Reading your question carefully, it looks like you never opened the flight simulator feature, you just pasted a grid reference (that you'd previously copied to the clipboard) into the Fly To field. And Fly To is a standard old GE feature, nothing to do with its new flight simulator toy. My guess is it's a decimal degrees to minutes conversion mix-up.

Living in a mid-latitude country (like Australia or the USA), a good rough calc is that each one degree change of grid reference (N S E or W) represents around 50 or 60 miles traveled. And one minute is 1/60th or 0.016667 degrees, which is roughly one mile for each minute of arc. (Yes this relationship becomes taller / shorter as you get near the equator / arctic but never mind the fine tuning for now.)

I reckon that if the clipboard and/or some default setting in Google Earth was transcribing your D:M:S grid reference as a decimal D.DDDDDD grid reference (or vice versa) then that might account for your 30 miles error, especially if it was like a big 55 minutes component being transcribed as 0.55 degrees which would produce about a 20 mile error component, N S E or W.

If You look at My question You will see that I catalized EXACT. Meaning I made no mistake

with the coordinates.

oilcan13

Although your title says 'GPS Locator', your text does not indicate any use of a GPS (Global Positioning System) device.

If I understand correctly, you typed a street address, presumably together with a city and state or province, or perhaps with a zip code, to find a particular location.

I assume you then observed the latitude and longitude from the Google Earth display, and later entered those values in the search box.

You don't say how far you were zoomed in or out; The screen width could have covered 50 meters or 50 miles, etc. The latitude and longitude values displayed in Google Earth are those of the cursor location, not necessarily those of the place you searched for. If your screen was displaying a large area at the time you wrote down those values, your cursor could easily have been 30 miles from the target location.

Google Earth can display the location coordinates in several different systems. I believe the default is Degrees, minutes, and seconds. If you do not use the correct symbols (°,',") in the correct locations, the values you enter can be interpreted incorrectly.

If you enter the correct coordinates with full precision using appropriate symbols, Google Earth will take you to the exact location indicated, within a few tens of feet..

You have read and understand My question exactly! I was zoomed in as close as possible with the cursor on the grid locating the address, which enlarges when You are exactly over it, I then wrote down these coordinates. I then went to "fly to feature" typed in the Exact coordinates and it took Me to a farm field at least 30 miles away. I did double and triple check all numbers and they were correct. I entered the coordinates as 00.000000 , not with symbols as degrees, min.,and sec.

thanks for the best answer so far.

oilcan13

I believe You are correct. I seem to come up south(about 25-30 miles) and a little east, no matter what address coordinates I imput. I will try Your method and see what happens. In the mean time I am recommending You for a good answer!

I think I confused everyone with the heading GPS locator, I could have worded it differently and there would have been less confusion.

oilcan13

Assuming you did not make an error, may I ask which country you were looking in?

The UK for example has a code in the address that brings you very close (usually, but not always) to the physical location.....

Germany's system is far less physically accurate than the UK system as the post codes are given for quite large areas......

I cannot comment on the US system with regard to accuracy.....(Or France, Ireland or wherever!!)

May I suggest that you let us know the complete address and we will check it out for you as far as possible.....

I'M in the USA. I tried several addresses with the same result. You can try any address and see what happens.

oilcan13

What they are asking for is not your address but a common address that others can try.

Google Earth is 'map lite' - kind of a nice general reference that is all.

Google Earth is not very good at exact pin pointing a specific coordinate set, but if you zoom in as close as possible, you should be able to get closer than 30 miles. I would expect no more accuracy than a couple hundred feet though.

Check to see if you entered the coordinates using the same Datum as google earth. I believe the program uses WGS84 as the default.

what part of the world were you searching?

Google Earth -

1) fair accuracy for locations

2) elevations are meaningless except to say yes there is a hill or no there is not a hill

3) The maps are so outdated it is impossible to believe!

USA

oilcan13

USA

oilcan13

Give us an example address please.....

There are different projections available. It is possible that the different programs are set on different systems.

entering the data in the format 00.0000000 may indicate decimal degrees while your input data may be deg min and seconds.0000. if that is the case first convert it to the same units.

here in SA we work on lo systems of 2 degree strips calculated from the uneven numbered centre line. exceeding the 1 degree will produce strange results. and using the Clark 1880 or WGS 84 systems. The calculated centre point of the earth is about 300m apart.

If you work beyond the limit of 1n deg the results may be incorrect.

In about 1980 I came across the American system for surveying and were not very impressed. The different states had different systems.

For real flying they work directions from radio beacons with calculated coordinates.

\But a 30 mile error seems to be excessive.

\

Oilcan, I have to agree with the other posters that think you are getting inaccurate GPS coords from Google Earth.

When I try this in Google Earth or Maps and take the coordinates from URL, they are accurate. I have copied them down for several addresses, closed my browser, gone back in and always come to within a few hundred feet -- usually much closer.

The really odd thing is that when you do an initial search on something, you get bogus lat/long. When you go someplace else, then search for your destination, you get good lat/long. Here is an example in finding the lat/long for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.

Open Google Maps or Google Earth and search for the Lincoln Memorial. When you get there click the "Link" in blue bar just above the map (Print - Send - Link). Copy the URL and you'll see lat long embedded in it. ( I can't guarantee you'll get exactly what I am showing here, but it will be close.)

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Lincoln+Memorial,+Washington,+DC&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=27.643082,56.25&ie=UTF8&hq=Lincoln+Memorial&hnear=Lincoln+Memorial,+Washington,+District+of+Columbia,+20037&z=14

Of the two lat/longs embedded in the URL, one shows up in Kansas and the other in Iran. How Google Maps uses this to pinpoint the Lincoln Memorial is beyond me.

But, if you start a fresh search for someplace else, like the George Washington National Masonic Memorial, you'll get something like this. Oddly enough, the lat/long following the "masonic+monument&hnear" is within a few miles of the monument.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=george+washington+masonic+monument&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=27.643082,56.25&ie=UTF8&hq=george+washington+masonic+monument&hnear=&ll=38.843451,-77.066002&spn=0.099206,0.219727&z=12&iwloc=A

Without closing the browser, search for the Lincoln Memorial and you'll get something like this:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Lincoln+Memorial,+Washington,+DC&sll=38.843451,-77.066002&sspn=0.099206,0.219727&ie=UTF8&hq=Lincoln+Memorial&hnear=Lincoln+Memorial,+Washington,+District+of+Columbia,+20037&ll=38.888494,-77.049952&spn=0.026456,0.054932&z=14

Notice that the first lat/long in the URL is the same one as the location of the GW Masonic Monument in the second URL (38.843451, -77.066002). The lat/long following "Lincoln Memorial" in the third URL, 38.888494, -77.049952) is actually that of the Lincoln Memorial. Any time you search on that URL, you will come to the same spot, the southern edge of the Lincoln Memorial.

Now, as to why this works this way, I cannot say. It has nothing to do with GPS. Google Maps and Google Earth are based on geo data bases. When you search or use something like the "fly me to" function, you are simply enacting an html query on the database. How this query is generated and written is beyond me. You see the results in the URLs above.

I hope this helps you to at least understand your frustration, even if it does nothing to resolve it.

One more possible reason..

For defence safety reasons, the coordinates system of GPS method is intentionally kept little misleading.

This I learnt when I was on some ship.

the intentional, "Dithering," of GPS was eliminated in the United States under the Clinton Administration. You can easily tell which side of the street you are on these days.