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Fishfiles

GPS Issues

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I run a Garmin Montana on my bikes , it will snap from one bike to another ,  so I always know where I am , I download the bread crumbs to Garmin Base Camp after  a ride , sometime I get Ghost crumbs that will show up when I upload onto  the Google Earth and do a overlay , these Ghost Crumbs are straight lines that extend , always , from my house in different directions , no where else has it ever happened , I think I know what might be causing them to happen , I will ride the bike and not turn off the GPS , it will sit there for an hour or two and then I ride it again and those tracks seem to happened when it is park and left on , but not sure of that , it is not every time it does it -------- so the question is how do I stop it from happening and what is really happening when it occurs -----  Mel , you are the GPS Guru of the site , you ever seen that happen to you ? 

 

Another question , my buddy has a program on his phone that has his property lines over laid onto Google  Earth , he can pull his phone out at any time and see the property lines to his location  , been trying to get that program he has loaded into my Base Camp , but never had any luck yet , know anything about that 

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Hi: The straight lines -- do this when you are at the start of your ride in the woods -- go to Track Manger -- click it -- click on Current Track -- scroll down to Clear Current Track and click it -- then click Clear. 

Now when you stop in the woods and your GPS is still on you will get a bunch of trash lines --- the only way to rid them is to turn the GPS off and turn it back on when you start again. Myself I edit them trash lines (remove them) when I get home in BaseCamp.

As far a property lines -- just walk them with your GPS and load them into BaseCamp.

 

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Yeah like mel said, it's creating a line from your house to where you turn the GPS on because it's last known location was probably at your house. So you need to clear the track at the beginning of the ride to clean up that unneeded line, and probably save it at the end of the ride before you return home otherwise it will likely create another.

 

Property lines....if you could get the coordinates for your property corners you could import them into basecamp and I think create a linework from that? I'm not very familiar with the basecamp software, I've used it a bit but I just found it to be frustrating. I know with Google Earth you can import drawings, shape files etc. from Ersri and other Survery applications and overlay them in Googles satellite imagery. I remember we used to do that for pipeline routes so we could easily see the ROW's, work areas etc. Very cool.

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Like "Mac" has said you can use the coordinates of your property corners -- save them corners as waypoints -- load them to your GPS send them to basecamp and draw a line from each of those waypoint corners -- then send them back to your GPS to keep there.

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Thank you'll ----   Place way  points on  the corners and draw lines , I think I can pull that one off , even though it has a lot of offset corners and is not square or rectangular ----  turning unit  off when I stop is going to be hard to remember to do , I usually don't turn it off till I snap it off the bike  ---- I tried to delete the sections of ghost lines  and that has not worked yet , I am not in the right screen as in the past  I have had it where I could highlight a leg of the trip and it give the info on that leg and it could be edited  , but the screen I am in now is  not allowing that -----you'll  did get me on the right track , thanks 

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Go to your land deed and copy the coordinates off it to your GPS to make the waypoints.

 

 

Track Edit in BaseCamp

First make a Test Folder under My Collection Folder and make a New list under the Test Folder you just made rename the list Test Tracks

Click on the track to edit.
Then right click on the track in the folder list that you have it in and click on Duplicate.
Then copy the Duplicate file to the Test Tracks Folder to edit it there.

If you don't use this method it will delete the track you are working on in other folders or your saved track on your map.
 

To edit click on the track -- then use the Erase or divide tool to repair it -- 

Edited by Melatv
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Thanks Mel , I never realized the long and lat coordinates would be on a deed , going to have to check into that -----

 

as far as deleting the unwanted tracks , I think I am getting closer to figuring that out , right now when I try to delete part of a track from an Adventure it pops a box and says " you can't delete a main track , going to get it , just takes time to figure it out  

 

GPS has come a long way :

 

I have watched the guys that mark the spots for pilings to be driven when building houses or buildings now days , they have a GPS pole , pull up to the job , walk around and stick the flags in the ground , it takes them 20 minutes to mark out  a house

 

I have been putting together a John Deere 470 excavator to start a rock levee job  next month , the company already has one set up with GPS , it not only tells the operator where to put the rocks , it is also calibrated to show  the elevation of the rocks at the tip of the tooth of the bucket so they know the elevation above sea level 

 

 

their  dozer also has a system on it that they can upload the plans to the job site and grade the ground to specs 

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well I all not big on modern things , have used some GPS's

 but far from a  pro with them

 I do know there are a few app's and web sites that offer, property line lay out on aerial sites, that even show property owners names and at times contacts

 one with be https://huntwise.com/

 and another will be this(they offer off road maps as well)

 

https://www.onxmaps.com/offroad-app

 I know a few guys that use them for hunting and have been rather happy

 but also keep in mind most all GPS's are not SUPER accurate, so expect some lines to be farther off one way or the other, when dealing with average civilian used GPS's!

and over lays of lines , will maybe be even more off!

 

best way to know your on YOUR property is to know where the property pin's are and other markers that can be proven!

 

 

 

 

 

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my oyster fisherman friends have a GPS card from the Wildlife and Fishery , that shows everyone's leases , so when they are on the water laying rocks to create reefs , they know where they are at ---- I think the GPS units out there today can get pretty close to being right on , a long time ago they use to have the WASP system , which made your GPS even closer , not sure what they are doing now days  , but there are close , they use them to mark pilings driven into the ground for foundations , so it has to be within inches 

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1 minute ago, Fishfiles said:

my oyster fisherman friends have a GPS card from the Wildlife and Fishery , that shows everyone's leases , so when they are on the water laying rocks to create reefs , they know where they are at ---- I think the GPS units out there today can get pretty close to being right on , a long time ago they use to have the WASP system , which made your GPS even closer , not sure what they are doing now days  , but there are close , they use them to mark pilings driven into the ground for foundations , so it has to be within inches 

from my understanding or what it WAS< , civilian GPS sold to the public, by some law, were not supposed to be more accurate than 3 meters, and as far as I know there still that way

 

 when you get into  more costly units designed for surveyors or I imagine those in state depts that do, things like waterways and such, they can have way more accurate one's

 

 but still think basic handheld one's sold in stores to consumers , are still at the 3 meter rulings side of things!

 and there prices tend to reflect this too

 I am sure MAC can tell you what some of his one's run and the price tag might scare some folks, as a couple grand isn;t hard to spend on the good one's! there also more sensitive to being damaged due to how accurate some are!

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I know the system in that dozer I mentioned was $20K about 3 years ago , I don't know what they are paying for the new set up for the JD470 

 

back in the 70s I got a Si-Tex LORAN  C and thought I was bad to the bone , locating reefs , cut off platforms , wrecks that were under water in open water ------  when GPS came out  , I had and still have  a lot of way points in LORAN  , I tried to convert the numbers to long and lat using programs , some times it was way off 

 

I still have a laptop with several programs for navigation in it , the best one was Capt Jack's  Mosaic Voyageur , it was the program  used on the Coast Guard's cutters at the time , so cool , it is layered with thousands of maps and charts of the entire USA , Alaska , Hawaii and the Carribbean and you can flip to another chart of where you are at , some 5 charts deep , they would update it for me , but as time went on ,  the Windows version I was using became obsolete and I am getting some kind of " clock " error , I can still view all the charts but can't use it for navigation as it won't link up to the external GPS , that set up was very expensive , lucky for me the company bought the laptop brand new and wanted a bigger screen after loading it all up , and I got the set up for the cost of the laptop alone 

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WAAS was the system that brought it to 3 metres. We have GPS, GLONASS an a few others now with make up the new handheld GNSS systems, yes, they aren't technically GPS's anymore they are GNSS devices because they use multiple systems. Anyway, they are all only technically accurate to 3 meters by themselves.

 

Survey and construction grade GPS like on that 470 can be accurate down to about an inch, maybe a little less, perfect conditions you might see half an inch, but I mean PERFECT. How these systems work is they actually use 2 receivers. I'll try to keep this fairly basic here....lol. One on the machine or on a survey rod (in that case usually called a Rover) and another either setup as a base station, or with todays tech it can be remote, connected through cell towers, you don't have to purchase the equipment for the base this way you just pay for a subscription service I guess. So this BASE receiver is on a known point, it's been surveyed in before, at some time, most likely using static GPS which I won't get into. Anyway, this point is known and input into the software, the Rover is able to calculate it's exact position given it's own GPS signals, and by referencing the Base. So this is what's known as Real Time Kinematic or RTK. 

 

The last GPS set I used when I was surveying was the Trimble R10. We ran a base and receiver, plus your data collector which kind of looks like your basic handheld GPS and is just an interface for the RTK system. Retail cost on the whole setup was at that time in the range of about $60,000+ This thing was pretty advanced. The R10 had a gyro in the receiver and had a digital level on the screen of the data collector, if you came across a survey marker with an obstruction above it in a way you couldn't get your survey rod on it straight up and down, you could set it on it at an angle and it would calculate the position at the tip of the rod based on the information from it's internal gyro. Space age tech right there!

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Amazing technologies today , just think of what they will have in 10 or 20 years from now , most likely they already have something more advanced  now , but we won't know about it for a while 

 

The Garmin GPS on my boat has a lot of features I don't use and it is old tech now  , one is a weather radar over lay , the weather radar is over laid on your  map , so you have live weather without a radar , you have to pay for that service , it also has bottom charts so you can see the bottom contours and Bird's Eye , which is aerial photographs of marinas and such so as you are pulling into a marina you can switch to Bird Eye and see where the fuel pumps or docks are at 

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9 hours ago, Fishfiles said:

Amazing technologies today , just think of what they will have in 10 or 20 years from now , most likely they already have something more advanced  now , but we won't know about it for a while 

 

The Garmin GPS on my boat has a lot of features I don't use and it is old tech now  , one is a weather radar over lay , the weather radar is over laid on your  map , so you have live weather without a radar , you have to pay for that service , it also has bottom charts so you can see the bottom contours and Bird's Eye , which is aerial photographs of marinas and such so as you are pulling into a marina you can switch to Bird Eye and see where the fuel pumps or docks are at 

 

No doubt about that. I’m sure the military has GPS that is sub inch accurate by itself, they just limit the consumer GPS to 3 meters. That’s how it was in the 90’s, GPS wasn’t very accurate at all then the government just flicked a switch and boom, 3m accuracy. 

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Just tried my GPS Montana 600 inside the house -- using the waypoint averaging function on the GPS show me at 1 meter over 4.53 minutes averaging.

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Mel , thanks for the deed marker idea = my buddy who owns the land connected to me says he is going to look into checking for coordinates for property lines , also told me about a program or what ever you would call it , that is a map of properties and the name of the owner for the State , that he has viewed and is going to see if he can get it  

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Up here typically when they draft up a plan of your property, it won’t show coordinates of each marker, but it will show it tied to a known point or 2 with coordinates on them. So somebody that knows what they are doing can calc through it and get the corner coordinates. Again, I’ve never surveyed in the US, so I don’t know if that’s how it is there or what. But if it is and you need someone to calc through the plan to get you coordinates let me know. 

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Yesterday we took a 3 hour ride and went into an area we have never rode before , the land belongs to my buddy , so we found this trail system  that was well used and trails that go right into some people's back yard , so there were so many trails criss crossing and having never been there before I got turned around , looked to my Garmin for the bread crumb trail and the unit was turned on but no bread crumbs were being shown , so when I got home , I plugged the unit into the desk top with Base Camp and Google Earth overlay and the bread crumbs are there , so any ideas on how something got changed to not show bread crumbs on the unit while out in the field ??? 

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Fish -- I can't think of anything that would cause that -- other than your finger had moved the screen from the area 

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Mel , I don't know either , going to turn it on and take a ride round the neighborhood later on and see if the restart does something -----  whew I was using it , I was on the map , just no bread crumbs  

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On 11/28/2019 at 7:37 AM, Fishfiles said:

I run a Garmin Montana on my bikes , ........ I think I know what might be causing them to happen , I will ride the bike and not turn off the GPS , it will sit there for an hour or two and then I ride it again and those tracks seem to happened when it is park and left on , but not sure of that , it is not every time it does it -------- so the question is how do I stop it from happening and what is really happening when it occurs -----  Mel , you are the GPS Guru of the site , you ever seen that happen to you ? 

 

 

 

This is a question. I'm wondering if :

 

When you leave the GPS on and the unit is not moving, the image would still appear as a straight line since the satellite is still moving. Basically, the satellite is tracking itself and recording it's own path. Older units seem to do it more often. 

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1 hour ago, Outnback said:

 

This is a question. I'm wondering if :

 

When you leave the GPS on and the unit is not moving, the image would still appear as a straight line since the satellite is still moving. Basically, the satellite is tracking itself and recording it's own path. Older units seem to do it more often. 

I think inactivity is definitely in the equation , when I get back from riding I will leave the bike sit there parked and the GPS is still on for a while ----  might not get to try it out today as the beer is flowing , so no driving  the golf cart round the neighborhood for me 

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I leave mine on all day and while parked it will vary just a little. I have a Garmin Oregon. When you want to record a new trail just clear the track log and start recording. When you are done recording that trail pause it, save and name the trail, clear track log. Make sure to go to tracks menu and torn the trail on so you can see it. 

As for accuracy, the government used to use what was called Selective Availability. They could change the accuracy in case terrorists were up to something. You could sit in one place and your position would move all over. They quit doing that years ago. As a test flag a spot and waypoint it. Go for a ride or walk and see how close it will bring you back. This will help your confidence.

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Prov , gave myself a headache last night  trying to dump the stored tracks from the Montana , found it is 79% full right now , might have something to do with it 

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