Display MGRS coordinates at 10-meter level, omit or gray out 100km square designators, add US National Grid
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adriangriffin Mar 23, 21:06 PDT For hikers, coordinates would be clearer and more compact if there was the ability to restrict the display to 10 meter accuracy and suppress or gray out everything above the 100km level. For example, the groove in the middle of Big Island in Lake Berryessa would be displayed as simply 6757 6989 with the 10SEH in small or grayed type. You might also consider graying the 10 meter figures, to emphasize the the six-figure 100 meter reference because in many cases, that's all that's needed. Displaying coordinates in US national grid would be another way of making them clearer. I have some experience in transverse Mercator grids. I'm from England, where the OS national grid has been in use and widely understood since the 1950s. In high school geography classes and scout hikes we always used just the 100 meter reference -- six figures, easy to understand. The letter designations for the 100 km squares were rarely needed for hiking purposes. |
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I was doing a search and rescue drill this weekend with the Moraga Orinda Fire Department as part of CERT training. Communicating coordinates via radio link can be tedious and inaccurate. The current preferred method is USNG for emergency services. We have been asked in the future to use only apps that support this format. The recommended app "MyUSNG" has no abilities other than instant location.
It would be a tremendous help to have all the normal Gaia functionality along with pictures and tracking to assist in documenting a SAR operation. This drill was focused on the aftermath of a major earthquake where outside assistance would take days to arrive. Local CERT could be making a Rapid Needs Assessment of local communities so that outside help could be focused on the areas that needed it the most.
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I just took a class for CERT and other rescuers. As a CERT member and a member of a SAR team, we were informed that FEMA uses the USNG for coordinates. If a situation arose where FEMA needed to get involved, it would be nice to provide their USNG coordinates and not MGRS coordinates (or others)...although close, they are not exactly the same.
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