This topic contains 6 replies, has 4 voices, and was last updated by 
Northwoods Tom 13 years, 4 months ago.
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I was out with Dreamcatchr today. I noticed that my GPS was consistently off by 20-30 ft. We did a variety of caches in many different settings. I even changed the batteries. At an Earth cache, one of the tasks was to measure the elevation and our GPS’s differed by 30 ft. I have a Dakota 20. How do I fix the problem? I think it may have interferred with a cache me findind a cache yesterday and me record a DNF.
This is for a different Garmin GPS unit and I can’t say if the Dakota is the same, but check it out.
http://www.gpscity.com/garmin-gpsmap-60csx-videos.html?youtube=SQjOUhCP35k
You can’t recalibrate the GPS part of your GPS unit. What is going on is that the Dakota (and others in the series) do some “averaging” of your location to make the signal look less “jumpy”. That just means that you will have to be a bit slower when searching, as the GPS response will be a bit slower.
You can recalibrate the altimeter (that is in your manual), but GPS altimeters are notoriously poor. I believe the Dakota 20 has a barometric altimeter, so that is about as good as it gets. Maybe you are the one with good altitude reading?
I’ve also found that hiders that use the same brand of GPSr as me have better coordinates than hiders using other brands / models. Just one of those quirky things. 20′ is not a big deal and I would acutally consider this “spot on”.
As a “test” you could try a benchmark and see how “accurate” your unit is. These are well defined coordinates and would give you a good idea of if you’re close to spot on or not. Try to find a benchmark without any tree’s / bushes nearby though and see what the reading is.
Let me clairfy in saying, My GPS has only recently been this far off. Yesterday, at DNR Parking Emerald Drive if Dreamcatchr was not with me I most likely would not have found the cache because my GPS was taking me the wrong direction. Dreamcatchr allowed my son to use her GPS (Colorado) to find the cache. Dreamcatchr had found it previously.
I will try the compass calibration maybe that will help. Thanks Northwoods Tom.
One method of recalibration of elevation that you might also try is to go to a rural airport. They often have the elevation painted on a hanger (At least ours does, and I’ve seen it at a few others. Ours also has the coordinates listed!). The airport manager may even know it and I’m sure there are other sources for it.
Stand at the source and plug it in if yours is different. I would assume it’s at ground level, so don’t stand on the roof of your vehicle 😯
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