Ever use the Grid System of your GPS?

Hi Basic, Advanced or Expert GPS user,

Grid System, mainly use for Grid Navigation, may also be named as: G-System, Grid Squares, Grid Location and QTH Location. In the end, they all come down to the same purpose. It is a system of navigation by use of an arbitrary set of grid lines, as constructed to navigation by use of latitude and longitude. A grid navigation chart contains a set of straight lines (grid navigations) parallel to the 180° and 0° meridians. The lines are used like true meridians on a Mercator map. With respect to the grid meridians, great circles and rhumb lines are identical. Thus, some navigational problems are greatly simplified when grid north is used instead of true north.


The navigation grid overprinted on certain small scale navigation and planning charts published by the Defense Mapping Agency was originally intended for use in Polar Regions by navigators utilizing such older techniques as celestial navigation and LORAN-C. The use of grid north gave the navigator a uniform reference direction to use rather than the highly convergent meridians. The concept of a non-changing north is remarkably like that encountered in an inertial navigation system (INS or IRS).

As of today, there are many kind of grid or locator system which exist around the world. The World Geographic Reference System (WGRS), the Maidenhead Locator System (older QRA locator system), the German Naval Grid System and the Dutch RD-Grid System, are juste a few example of Grid Systems. The World Geographic Reference System (WGRS) is probably the most used one as it is international and used in Aviation maps, by Military and by Government agencies (as Searche and Rescue). On the other hand, the Maidenhead Grid System is used mostly by Hams Radio operators.


Radio amateurs and different contest a the VHF/UHF Century Club (VUCC) Award, use the grid-locator or QTH to describe a geographic location on the earth. Those Gird Navigation users have access to many online QTH-Locator-Applet and conversion table in order to know their Square Grid. It is even possible to use a simple Geographical Coordinate conversion rule in order to find your grid square. The square grid will be in the form of MM44, XX22LL or DD99FF99 depending on the precision required. Today I won’t show you the whole process to find your square grid position by calculation but I’ll give you some online tool to automatically find it.

All you need to do is to use the arrow and zoom and then click on your “house”:
http://f6fvy.free.fr/qthLocator/

For Example: Birdgewater, Nova Scotia, Canada would be in Grid Square: FN74RJ


Find your Grid Square from a Geographical Coordinate (Lat./Long.):
http://www.arrl.org/locate/grid.html

You can also plug in your Grid Square (Maidenhead) address in any of the on-line map programs and get the Lat/Long.
http://www.qsl.net/dl3bak/qrb/en/frame.htm

Today, you can get it even easier by using a GPS and setting it to Maidenhead Coordinates instead of Latitude and Longitude. On the other hand, it eventually turned out that only Military, Government agencies and a very limited amount of Radio operators were using GPS with the Grid Navigation features.


Therefore, those GPS are normally not offered to the general public. However it is important to note, that it is not an illegal technology, and it is possible find and buy such GPS. The only downside is that, in order to have a GPS including access to this technology you will have buy a GPS of a good quality. Ham radio operators (radio amateurs), who simply want to know their Grid Square, will have to pay a few hundred dollars. For a good GPS system unsing this feature, price will usually start at $300 and could go up to $800. Find below, some of the rare GPS systems allowing the position format to be the Maidenhead Locator System:

Garmin GPSMAP 76S
Garmin GPSMAP 60CSx
Garmin GPSMAP 96C/96
Garmin Etrex Venture
Garmin GPSMAP 276C

Luckily, for non Hams Radio Operators, as the Grid System is not an indispensable tool or function, it is possible to obtain a GPS for a much lower price.

Hopefully I didn't lose you with so many technical terms and I’ll see you on the next tip about How to choose a GPS. To receive this tip sign up in my Tips and GPS Offers list by clicking on the following link:

http://www.GPSMadeEasy.com/


Thank you,


Charles Godbout
President/CEO - Preferred GPS & GPS Made Easy
http://www.GPSMadeEasy.com
http://www.PreferredGPS.com


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