Goggle Earth and GPS Waypoints

Advice
#1

Just begun learning to use Google Earth Version 5.0



First looked at my field-checked GPS waypoints for the Canadian Thousand Islands to see if Goggle Earth took me to the correct location - yes, every time.



Then used the Goggle Earth grid system overlay to generate new GPS waypoints for some different locations in the same area.



Anyone have experience with using Goggle Earth generated waypoints in the field?

#2

Worked
for me, I used it for 1300 miles of way points

#3

I use it a lot
close enough for what I need it to do.

#4

Can be quite useful
I have used google earth with a variety of different types of gps units. I used to do quite a bit of surveying in out of the way places and whenever we had no idea how to get places we would just pop on google earth, write down a few waypoints and off we went. Since then i have also done the same thing for paddling waypoints many times.

The only thing you need to remember is any arial photo is that is can only “really” be held to about a 10-15 meter accuracy, it can be better, but for worst case scenario, it’s 10 meters or so. The other factor is how close your clicking is to what you want to actually click on, which lets just assume at the scales most people look at to be about 5 meters. At the same time most handheld gps’s are about the same accuracy, so from my experience, you can be anywhere from dead on when things work out fine, to up to 30-35 meters off when everything works against each other.

That being said, if you’re trying to find a turnoff on a back road and you miss by 30 meters, no big deal, back up a bit and keep going, same goes for boating, so you miss the exact point on the beach you clicked on, or the boat ramp by 30 meters, if you’re that close you’re not paying attention to your gps, but just paddling to the boat ramp or beach. So for paddling, any handheld and google earth waypoints will get you anywhere you actually want to go.

The only other thing you have to be careful of is what coordinate system you are using on your gps. There are all kinds of local systems that are usually quite close, but WGS84 is the most common, and is good worldwide, and as far as i know it matches quite well with google earth coordinates.

#5

Thanks
for your responses.



If you have any interest in the Canadian Thousand Islands, you can check out some seriously revamped GPS waypoints at:



http://www.paddling.net/message/showThread.html?fid=wtrip&tid=908280



Thanks again



Mike