GPS navigation

Isn't it a pain.

David put together a conversion tool on this site somewhere. That may help. Try in the Articles menu. I doubt if you will find a simple way. Everyone's way is simple to them and they wont change. You may as well ask for a universal Earth Dollar currency.

The more detail you leave off the coordinated, the greater the error. You could end up kilometers away from where you wanted to be. The more digits you have the better the chance of arriving on the front door step as opposed to the center of town.

Are you talking of Ozi or the like? ie Offroad? It may help someone with more thall in the program than simple user me.

Phil

If you are using a Garmin Nuvi there is a button at the bottom of the screen which changes the input requirement from minutes etc to the decimal.

I just found it the other day myself.

Regards Philip A

Most navigators and Ozi explorer, if using it, has a configuration menu somewhere which allows changes to way Lat and Long are used.

Changing the format is usually a very simple task and will save conversion from Decimal degrees to Degrees/minutes/seconds etc.

For accuracy you have to take the format into account. If you are only after a general direction just the degrees maybe enough to get you near where your memory can take over. Depends on whether you have been there before or trying to go to a new spot told to you in lat and long.

Alan

Thank you all
I will now try again and will report back
Regards
PeterM Qld

Easy solution, get HER to use the navigator and you take it easy, less brain stress, and yes you do have to set your device to the co ordinate type before entering lat and long.

The device isn't sexist and will accept either gender pushing it's buttons although some genders don't like their buttons pushed.

There is unfortunately no easy way to do it unless you have an Excel program or the like.
To manually convert decimal degrees to degrees minutes and seconds, you leave the whole degrees alone and multiply the point and the bit after the point by 60 to get the minutes. If that result also produces a bit after the point, you multiply that by 60 to get the seconds.
Edit, I see the forum can't handle the degrees sign, so just take those ° below to be the degrees signs
For instance:-
Take 138.162°
The 138 becomes the degrees.
Multiply the 0.162 by 60 = 9.72
The 9 becomes the minutes
Multiply the 0.72 by 60 = 43.2
The 43.2 become the seconds.You can round out the 0.2 for our purposes
So 138.162° = 138° 9' 43"
You can't afford to ignore the minutes and seconds. a second is roughly equivalent to 31 metres in distance.
In the above example, ignoring the seconds would put you off target by 1.3 kilometres, and ignoring both minutes and seconds would see you miss by over 18 kilometres.

To go the other way is more complicated because a minute is 1/60th of a degree and a second is 1/3600th of a degree.
Try taking 138° 9' 43" back to decimal degrees.

You still keep the whole degrees = 138
Now divide the minutes by 60 = 9/60 = 0.15
Then divide the seconds by 3600 = 43/3600 = 0.012 (rounded to 3 decimal places)
Now add them all together, 138 plus 0.15 plus 0.012 = 138.162°

I have written a 2 way Excel conversion where you just enter the co-ordinates in the format that you have and it gives you the conversion in either direction.
I am happy to share with anyone who desires it, but can't load it on here, so would have to Email it.

Linked the thread to the Coordinates Converter - this will take any format and give you all available output formats plus confirm the location on a map image.

Good luck.
David