Thanks to an excellent suggestion received from Roger Sando of Whyalla the Caravan Park Photos Trip Planner now gives users three options for GPS Formatting. They are:
- Degrees, minutes and seconds (DDD, MM, SS);
- Decimal Degrees, and
- GPS format
Roger describes the Trip Planner in these terms:
“What a great trip planner….I am currently playing around with it planning a trip to Tibooburra and Camerons Corner NSW. It certainly saves a great deal of time and as we travel with a group usually…I will be able to e-mail all with updated outlines as the trip is developed etc. It works in well with Camps 6 information.”
For readers interested in the technical aspects of GPS Formatting Roger provides this informative commentary:
“Degrees, minutes and seconds (DDD, MM, SS) is the conventional method of presentation. Remember that in the case of degrees of latitude, the format would be negative or positive DD, while longitude could be negative or positive DDD. There is usually a quadrasphere designation as well, such as N, S, E or W, based on the equator and the prime meridian. For the hemisphere, either North or South, the designation is N or S for latitude. East of the prime meridian is E (positive) and West of the prime meridian is W (negative). Negative numbers (in certain situations, Southern latitude is displayed as negative; if you see a negative latitude, it is South while a negative longitude is West) can also be used to express a quadrasphere designation. In this converter, we do neither since it does not matter; we are ONLY converting numbers. All numbers are assumed to be positive.
Decimal Degrees is displayed as the degrees in normal value, with both minutes and seconds in decimal format, as a degree value. There is ONLY a degree designation. (DDD.DDDD) A maximum of 4 decimal places is adequate.
What is most often known as GPS format (though not all GPS units use it o agree on it…), is displayed as (DDD,MM.MMMM) in which seconds are converted to decimal minutes, as a minute value. Seconds have the value of 0 to 60, with 0 and 60 (usually designated as 0 to 59 and then restarting at 0) being the same value, minutes have the same characteristics and degrees are valid from 0 to 180 and 180 to 0, (0 and 180 do NOT have the same value) both North and South of the equator, and East and West of the prime meridian.”
