GPSr Accuracy Check Station Traditional Geocache

• You go to a cache site. You finally find the cache after a lot of searching. When you finally find it, your GPSr zeroed in on the coordinates 20 FEET AWAY FROM THE CACHE.
• Now the age old question arises. Was the cache owners GPSr off? Is my GPSr off?
• Should I or should I not suggest new coordinates for this cache?
• Could this difference be the weather conditions? It’s a cool day now, was it hot when they took their coordinates? It’s a clear day today, was it cloudy when they took their coordinates?

• I have found a site that is relatively flat with open sky all around. There are no trees to obstruct the satellite data.
• My request is this; Place your GPS unit on the top of the pipe and stand back. Take as many different readings as you like. You may want to walk about 10 feet away from the pipe then come back and let the receiver sit for a while. When you are comfortable with the data you have collected please record the following in your log.
• Coordinates.
• Elevation.
• Weather (amount of cloud cover, fog, blue sky, rain etc).
• Temperature (cold, cool, mild, warm or hot).
• Time of day.

• When I took the coordinates for this location the elevation was 363’, it was slightly cloudy, the temperature was 72° and it was 2 PM. I was picking up 7 satellites.
• I walked to the platform from 8 different directions and used an average for my coordinates. I’m not asking you to do this; I just thought I would get it as accurate as I could.
• If your coordinates don’t match the ones posted on this web site, note how far and in what direction you had to travel from the platform before they matched those posted.
• I have gone to some trouble to make this cache so easy that it doesn’t deserve a rating. If there were such a thing as a Zero difficulty, this would be it.

Thank you for participating in this experiment and helping all of us to better understand the factors that may or may not affect accurate coordinates readings on our GPS receivers.

Thanks to my Geo Brother Rosco Bookbinder for letting me use his GPS Accuracy Special up in Spokane as a model for this cache.

The park closes at dusk. In the summer they charge a dollar to get in. If you park at the Library at the corner of Tefft and Orchard, you won’t have far to walk. And its free.