On Monday, April 11, 2016 at 8:08:03 PM UTC-4, 2G wrote:
On Thursday, April 7, 2016 at 4:34:11 PM UTC-7, Blake Seese 3Y wrote:
A couple years ago, I landed out at a contest and my retrieve took quite a while because the driver could not find me even though my position was known. It turned out that the contest person in charge of retrievals had one format in her locating program, and the output from the spot was in decimal. This caused the retrieve to look for me in slightly the wrong place. My question is, which format should be used, and is there a setting on the spot page where the output format can be changed.

Thanks,

3Y

Both formats (decimal degrees and hours, minutes & seconds) are used by various devices. People need to know how to convert between the two. At a contest the retrieve desk should give the retrieve crew the location in BOTH formats.

BTW,
Convert hours, minutes to fractional degrees:
fractional_degrees = hours / 60 + minutes / 3600

Convert fractional degrees to hours, minutes:
hours = integer part of [fractional_degrees * 60]

minutes = integer part of [(fractional_degrees - hours/60) * 3600]

seconds = (fractional_degrees - hours/60 - minutes/3600) * 216000

There has to be apps for cell phones that can do this easily.
What apps for this are preferred? Who recommends what?