[MRCA] latitude/longitude

[B. Smith]

First I would master Degrees- Minutes and Seconds,
once you have that under your belt the rest will make sense.  Most 
simple charts, highway maps, TOPO charts  that you can purchase will 
have the even degree Latitude and Longitude  marked usually with a small 
"tick" mark. You will have to draw a line on most simple charts  from 
"tick" mark to "tick" mark. You have to look carefully, then you have to 
divide it up by 60 etc.

Having been on many State and Local  emergency exercises  I can safely 
state that most emergency personnel have no idea how to look at a map 
and extract the Lat and Long. And I assure you that 95 and  percent of 
ham populace has no idea. Up the creek without a paddle.

And what is really sad is most Airline crews  and Corporate crews have 
not idea of what they are inputting into those black boxes.

Degrees , Minutes, Seconds is how it all started, and is the basis for 
our mapping,  grasp the orginal concept and then you will be able to 
move on and convert and interpolate, but most important of all is to 
state in clear English what your are transmitting.

Z

On 11/30/2013 10:08 PM, Al Klase wrote:
> Hi Ron,
>
> I was afraid of something like that.  There is an interesting 
> discussion here: http://www.maptools.com/tutorials/lat_lon/formats