Welcome to Paul Edwards's GPS Page.
See below for waypoints.
For those of you who are not familiar with GPS, let me tell you that it is one of the best inventions ever. It is one of the few inventions that really can change your life. Armed with a GPS, the world is a totally different place. I paid around US$180 including tax for my unit, but I think you can get other units for US$100 excluding tax if you try hard enough. It is probably the best money I ever spent.
What a GPS allows you to do is find your way to anywhere in the world, to an accuracy of 10-20 metres. If you spend more money you can reduce this to 1.5 metres, follow the links below for more information. The way it works, is say you're in a foreign country and you've arrived at your hotel and you want to go and do some sightseeing, but you know you'll never find your way back. You simply mark your position on the GPS, and then when you're ready to come back, you say "GOTO HOTEL" on your receiver and hey presto it tells you how many km away it is and in what direction. No need to look up maps, or wander aimlessly around the streets looking for the microfilm that the local council imprinted the name of the street on (before World War I). The GPS knows exactly where you are and exactly where you need to go.
Now that's fine, but how do you get to the hotel in the first place? All is not totally lost. Firstly it's often not your hotel that you want to find, it's a national monument, say Buckingham Palace. So all you need is for someone else to have gone there, and posted the GPS location somewhere on the internet, and you can do a search on "london waypoints" in both web pages and the newsgroups. It is also possible that the hotel themselves knows their location, although the technology is too new for that to be widespread. One other thing you can do is look up your map and find out where your hotel is in relation to a nearby national monument, which you DO have the location of, and then create a relative waypoint, by telling your GPS you want to go 600 metres southwest of the Eifel Tower. If you have a proper map/street directory, then there is a good chance you have something even better, little numbers on the top that you think only surveyors/rocket scientists would use. Actually you can feed those numbers into your GPS, to create your own waypoints, with about 200m accuracy.
Have a look at the stories/waypoints below and you can see how successful or otherwise I have been with my GPS. Another example is when my brother-in-law came to visit me when I was living in London. He went to the "nearby" Hampton Court, taking the GPS with him. On his way back, he didn't have a good view of the GPS satellites from where he was sitting, so he just decided to look at the area, instead of changing seats. He incorrectly recognized the stop to get out, but then the GPS was able to tell him he was a couple of km short, and he was able to walk the remainder of the distance. In a foreign country, a GPS is a godsend. Most people recommend you use a GPS in conjunction with a map, which is true, that is best, but when I've got a waypoint I find I don't usually need any other reference, unless the final 10-20 metres becomes a factor. Most of the problems I experienced were not having the waypoint in the first place. But it's a continually improving situation, with a number of sites sporting waypoints.
A new game has recently popped up, called GPS Stash Hunting. It involves placing a waterproof container in some fairly well hidden location and then publishing the coordinates. People with a GPS can go and find it and take some things they like, and (hopefully) put something back in too. For more information see:
Click here for some of the history of geocaching.
Click here to understand the circumstances that led to me being Australia's first geocacher.
Here are some trips I have done, including waypoints (GPS locations). All waypoints are in WGS-84. Both the waypoint list and tracks are in gardown format. You can convert from this to waypoint+ format using waypcnv in ozpd on the programming page.
Click here for Paris, France.
Click here for Stockholm, Sweden.
Click here for Vienna, Austria.
Click here for Northern Ireland, including Belfast.
Click here for Berlin, Germany.
Click here for London, England, Britain, UK.
Click here for Singapore.
Click here for Sydney, NSW, Australia.
Click here for Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia.
Click here for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Click here for Lautoka, Fiji.
Click here for Hong Kong.
Click here for Macau.
Click here for Shanghai, China.
Click here for Perth, Western Australia.
Click here for Japan (Tokyo, Nagoya, Narita).
Click here for Cairns, Queensland, Australia.
Click here for Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.
Click here for Bangkok, Thailand.
Click here for Northern Territory, Australia.
Click here for Ayer's Rock, Northern Territory, Australia.
Click here for South Island, New Zealand.
Click here for India (Delhi, Jaipur, Agra).
Click here for Los Angeles, California, USA.
Click here for Noumea, New Caledonia.
Click here for Canberra.
Click here for Seoul, South Korea.
Click here for Wellington, New Zealand.
Click here for personal things (no interest).
Here are some links to other sites.
Click here to get an FAQ on GPS.
See OZPD on the programming page for a program called "guppy" which transfers waypoints and tracks from a Garmin to a Psion Series 5 palmtop.
Click here for Australian-specific GPS info.
Click here for an analysis of how much benefit averaging can provide.
Click here for waypoints from other people.
Click here for travelling in London.
Click here for (potentially) tracks from other people.
Click here for an explanation of the difference between UTC & GMT.
Click here for an explanation of why the prime meridian according to the GPS is 102.5 metres west of the Greenwich line.
Click here for a way of postprocessing data using a Garmin 12.
Click here for the gar2rnx port for the Psion.
Click here for garmedit, a freeware waypoint up/downloader for the Psion Series 5.
Click here for an article on geocaching in the Bulletin magazine with my name in it!
