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GPS
Familiarisation - John McPartlin
Sunday, 20th
November, 2005
In response to an open invitation from John McP, 11 members turned
out at Mugdock Country Park to be given instruction, help and
familiarisation with the use (and misuse!) of GPS instruments. First of
all, John gave us an excellent summary of the principles of Global
Positioning Systems, including highlighting its advantages and its
limitations, illustrated with overhead projector slides, all conducted
in the excellent project room of the Mugdock Centre. Then after some
instruction in inserting "waypoints" in our (varied) instruments,
everyone set out to follow a route using the grid references given by
John. At least no-one was lost!
After that, most people took part in a "Treasure Hunt", to find small
tags representing different prizes which had been given ten figure grid
references at various distances from "base", the most valuable prizes
being furthest away and not so obvious. All "treasure" tags were found,
ranging from marshmallows to bottles of wine and other goodies and those
who didn’t take part had the opportunity to ask John questions about GPS
use and/or to have a belated lunch.
I think everyone went away from the meeting with a better
understanding of other uses to which a GPS instrument can be put, other
than purely using it as a means of "fixing" your position.
Many thanks are due to John for all his preparation to make this an
enjoyable, sociable and instructive afternoon.
H.T.
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