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Route
Data
All the tours in this site have been walked by me and the GPS-routes
are essentially based on track Data.
My system:
GPS: Garmin's GPSmap 60CS, nuvi 550
(new GPSmap62st)
Garmin's MapSource
Garmin's "TOPO Schweiz", swisstopo's "Swiss Map 25".
Usually I carry the GPS in my Breast pocket. Reception in the mountainous environment is sometimes interrupted,
the
GPS would beep at me (then I'd take the GPS out) and later claim that I had made a big
jump.
All those imaginary jumps and the straying for nice views, a plant, a
look at some animals would be registered in the track data's.
At home on the PC, on creating a new route (based on track-data's),
I'd filter out such "detours" and futile data's.
The route does not necessarily follow exactly the tracks on the
TOPO-map or the collected track-data's!
The GPS should be a helper, not the boss.
Route's are not necessarily congruent with the map. In the open, there is probably always a difference between GPS-display,
map and the actual track.
Always carry Reserve Batteries with you.
Recent experiences
 | GPSmap 60 and nuvi:
For hiking the "good old" GPSmap is my favorite, although the nuvi is
much stronger in the acquiring of new data. For the car and finding an
address the nuvi is top. Transfer of maps, tracks, or routes between
Mapsource and each of the units goes flawless. |
| GPSmap 62st:
My newest playmate. I'm amazed! This Model is really fantastic with
its new receiver. No beeping anymore because of lost satellite
contact. I wouldn't want something else now.
Route-manager:
I've stored all my routes on the separate card, but had to get used to
the order in which the routes are displayed on the route-manager. Not
alphabetically as usual in the windows explorer; the route-manager
displays them in a "geographical" order. A reasonable solution. |
| nuvi 550:
I got my new nuvi in Jan 09 (preloaded with City Navigator Europe).
When I first tried to type in a target in the CH1903 grid
system, the Swiss coordinates were falsified
(after typed in onto the display or read back from the map). After
updating the firmware that fault was corrected.
Transfer between MapSource and nuvi (with the old MapSource version
6.10)
was not working correctly. After update to 6.15 the problems were solved.
I've loaded the whole Topo Suisse map onto the SD-card (4 GB
microSDHC). When both maps (city guide and Topo) are enabled, then the
road-names are not displayed. |
| MapSource:
The new release brought another surprise for me.
I recognized changes in the management of symbols. Custom
symbols must now be in the Garmin program directory (they used to be
in " ...Mein Garmin...").
But, when
directly starting a ".gdb-" or ".gpx-" file by
double-clicking, the
custom symbols are expected to be in the same directory as the
mentioned file.
Not a big deal, MapSource still is a comfortable tool. |
CH1903
Earth is assumed as a perfect ball: radius 6'300 km. From pole to pole
there are virtual lines (Meridians, Longitude); towards East 180 lines,
also towards West. The zero Meridian runs through Greenwich.
The original Meter as defined in the 18th Century was the forty millionth
part of the Meridian running through Paris. (Earth circumference = 2*Earth
radius*Pi=40'000 km)
More
exact: 1799 the "Urmeter" was defined as the
10'000'000 th part of the Meridian Quadrant passing Paris.
As one of the results of the measuring of the Sector between
Duenkirchen and Barcelone by Pierre-Francois-Andre Mécain and
Jean-Baptiste-Josef Delambre of Paris, it had to be admitted, that
the Earth is not a Ball and the defined Meter was in fact 0.2 mm
short. The seriously implemented measures were carried out over a
couple of years with Revolution, Wars, Founding of new nations.
The "Urmeter" up to these days remains the Standard,
although in 1983 it was defined as: 1 Meter is the distance, which
is covered by light in vacuum inside 1/ 1/299'792'458 th Second,
where the Time is defined by the Atomic watch.
Book:
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From the equator virtual lines are thought that run around the globe. Towards
North and South there's a additional division: 90 Lines (Degree's) to
North and 90 towards the South. Per division that's 100 km.
In Central-Europe
the distance inside of 1 Degree (Meridian) is about 100 km. If the Swiss
Capital, Berne is 8 Degree's from Greenwich, that will be 800 km.
For tiny Switzerland
a smart Coordinate system was defined. The "zero" point was set
outside Switzerland into the proximity of Bordeaux in France. With that, positions inside Switzerland are always clear and unambiguous, even without
naming the direction of the sky, and negative values are impossible. From
military use the standard form is Rechtswert/Hochwert/(+optionally
height); e.g. 600.000/200.000, where decimal points may be left out. The larger
figure is always "Easting", the smaller always
"Northing".
The first value is
Longitude (e.g. E 7° 26' 19.9" = Coordinate 600.000), the second one
is northern latitude (e.g. N 46° 57' 3.89" = Coordinate 200.000)
Reference point with the coordinate pair 600000/200000 is Berne, the old
observatory.
The faults,
resulting from the idealized straight coordinate system against the real world
are inside some Decimeter's. The system is named "Swiss Grid
1903" or "CH1903".
Reference point for the altitude is the mark on "Pierre de Niton", a rock in the Geneva
Harbor with the value of 373.600 m.
When using Swiss
topo-maps with the usual CH1903-coordinate system (called
"Date"), the Setup in the GPS has to be set accordingly.
Internally the GPS
will always use the WGS84 Date! Only the display will show the CH1903
Date.
Correlation
CH1903 und WGS84:
Downloadable EXCEL-File for converting (formulas based on above
publication):
GPS_Data/CH1903_WGS84_3.zip (84 KB).
Converts Dates between CH1903 and WGS84.
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