I was playing with my GPS yesterday (rainy day) and had it wired to my
laptop, running Capn 6.1.

I noticed that the GPS was displaying the Long. and Lat. to three (3)
decimal places while The Capn, was displaying it to 3 decimal places, the
least significate digit was always zero. There didn't appear to be any
'rounding' either.

However, The Capn cursor coordinates were always shown to a three decimal
place precision.

I should think, that if the program is going to display the vessel position
to only two decimal places of accuracy, they shouldn't display that third
digit as a zero. In engineering drawings, that third digit would indicate
that all accuracy should be assumed to the third decimal place.

I suspect that since the decimal digit is simply dropped, there is no such
degree of accuracy.

My "lesson learned", if I need high accuracy, I will look at the GPS
display, and ignore the Capn.

BTW. In this observation, I'm using a standard GPS without any external
enhancements.

My observation and opinions, FWIW.

Steve
s/v Good Intentions

Just another thought.

Is the NMEA sentence capable of sending the Long. and Lat. to three decimal
places of accuracy??


Steve
s/v Good Intentions

"Steve" wrote in
:

Just another thought.

Is the NMEA sentence capable of sending the Long. and Lat. to three
decimal places of accuracy??

That's probably the problem. Look at how many digits your GPS is
outputting. My Capt'n display shows 3 digits.

-- Geoff

"Steve" wrote in message
...
Just another thought.

Is the NMEA sentence capable of sending the Long. and Lat. to three
decimal
places of accuracy??

Yes. According to the standard document, the Lat and Long. fields are
fixed/variable, meaning that there is at least degrees and minutes left of
the decimal point and a variable number of digits for the decimal fraction
of minutes. So this can be any precision the GPS manufacturer likes to
output, as long as it fits within the maximum sentence length :-)
My GPS OEM-module outputs 4 decimal digits.

Meindert

On Wed, 10 Sep 2003 11:47:06 -0700, "Steve" wrote:

Just another thought.

Is the NMEA sentence capable of sending the Long. and Lat. to three decimal
places of accuracy??


Absolutely! The M602 displays either the Garmin or Raymarine to 3
decimal places via the NMEA network from our multiplexer.....



Larry W4CSC

3600 planes with transponders are burning 8-10 million
gallons of kerosene per hour over the USA. R-12 car air
conditioners are responsible for the ozone hole, right?