coordinates

[+Dmumzo]

I am new and I dont understand fully how coordinates work.

 

If I find written Nxxx, Eyyy coordinates (like N345, E231), I dont know how to interpret them. Are they absolute coordinates? Or are they relative to the point I find it? Are the units xxx, yyy in meters?

 

I am pretty sure they are not absolute since I cannot find any coordinate system that supports those numbers.

And if they are relative to the point I find it, I would need to go xxx meters to the North and yyy meters to the East, which is very far away from the point I found the coordinates. So I dont think it works like this either.

 

Can you help me with how this works? I dont think this is a spoiler since I think it is a general coordinates question

 

Thanks!

[+Gitchee-Gummee]

Working on a puzzle cache, eh?

 

Well, the numbers you worked out are not the PRIMARY numbers (as you wrote them). They are most likely the extension to the right of the decimal point, i.e. N xx xxx.345 E xxx xx.231

 

This is assuming that the format is the one used in geocaching (HDD(D)° MM.MMM) -- there are many different types of formats but that shown here is the format generally used by geocachers and geocaching.com.

 

 

A distance jump of just one (1) in the primary number is a very LONG distance. If working a puzzle cache, you should think in terms (usually) of much shorter distances.

[+kunarion]

I dont think this is a spoiler

 

If you have trouble with the cache, it's essential to contact the Cache Owner. There are a ton of puzzle caches that are not formatted clearly, and even have errors. There's kind of a fine line between not understanding a puzzle and not having an understandable one , so if there's a problem, please ask the CO. It might get the cache description written a little more clearly and help the next person who tries to solve that puzzle.

Edited June 7, 2014 by kunarion

[+niraD]

I've found multi-caches where the early stage(s) included only 6 digits, which were used to replace the decimal part of the minutes in the original coordinates. So for example, if the first stage was at:

N 37° 25.502 W 122° 06.834

and I found a tag there with the markings "N123W456", then the final would be located at:

N 37° 25.123 W 122° 06.456

[+Skyboy01]

N35 43.506 means 35 degrees north of the equator plus 43 minutes and 506 thousands of a minute. A degree equals 60 nautical miles. A minute equals 1 nautical mile. A nautical mile is 6080 feet. These distances don't work for E or W longitude because those lines converge as the lines go north or south of the equator. There are many different lat/long formats but this is the one used at Geocaching.com for caching. Most GPS's can be set to any on of several formats.