GPS settings for my Garmin in Tenerife (1 Viewer)

Dear all,

Being relatively new to hand held GPS I am a bit of a thicko when it comes to the nuances of the settings.

Can anyone help with my query here?

I am going to tenerife and have some "UTM co-ordinates", which all start

28RCS or 29RCS followed by what look like ten figure grid refs.

Can anyone tell me if I need to change the settings on my Garmin GPSmap 60CSx?

On my settings I have two UTM options - one is UTM UPS, the other is user UTM grid. It has various other choices, like British Grid, Dutch grid etc etc but no Spanish one.

Finally, do I need to calibrate the altimeter? The grids I've been given also have altitude information, which is crucial to the sites. I have an auto calibrate menu choice which is defaulted.

Sorry if this is a stupid question. Thanks in advance for your advice.

Cheers

Sean

Hi,
I do not know the local coordinate systems in spain and tenerife, so i can just give some general hints.
How to set up you GPS depends on what maps or coordinates you use for reference on the ground. If you got some coordinates that others have been taken by GPS, or some maps based on the WGS84-UTM system, you don't need to change settings at all (WGS84-UTM is the system GPS uses worldwide). However if you use local topographical maps, they very often have local coordinate systems. You need to look up the indications about coordinate systems and projections that should be writen in the legend of the map and change the settings of your GPS accordingly.

Elevations measured by GPS cannot (don't need) to be calibrated. However some GPS include barometric altimeters to enhance precision of elevation measurement. In that case it is useful to calibrate the altimeter maybe once a day on points with known elevations.

good luck! Florian

Dear all

I'm sorry, but my inglish is very bad.

I need to buy a GPS Garmin Oregon 550T in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. But I can find a store have that exactly product.
Somebody relp me!!!!

Tanks

In Spain we use the "European 1950" datum.

Calambres said:

In Spain we use the "European 1950" datum.

Click to expand...

Very true, but most major map makers use WGS84, as well as the transmission from satellites being in this format too. Using the incorrect datum can result in the actual position being out by several kilometres.

The number in front of the co-ordinates you have, refers to a "box" for want of a better word, box number 28 includes the Canary Islands. The rest of the numbers are merely x and y co-ordinates within that box.

If you only have a few, i can convert them to WGS84 for you, so a normal GPS readout will be able to be used, but you should be able to use the x-y too, though not as easy to follow. If you just bought yours its probably already set to WGS84, unless you have got into the menu to change it.

Height can be calculated, the more satellites you are locked onto, the ore accurate the reading. If yours has no barometric correction, i wouldnt worry about it, unless 1M accuracy is essential.

( All done from a previous life, when i travelled the world fitting GPS fed cameras to aircraft all over the world )