MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
We will be in touch
I have to plot some bounaries of some common land in the Brecon Beacons as part of the scheme requirements of an agri-environment scheme. I have to do this where there are no physical features marking boundaries such as streams. Ive been told that I can do this by ploting grid reference no's.
I need to do this on the ground rather than from an os sheet, is this some thing can do with one of these fangeled GPS things - never used one before. Will it also plot bearings between these points once recorded.
Any experts?
Could you stick on strava and walk the boundaries/wellingboots for the stream! then overlay to an O/S map?
The easy way would be to wander around with your mobile phone and log a track in an app like Strava or My Tracks, then overlay the data (as a GPX file or similar) on a map either online using Google Maps or offline using something like QGIS.
Depends how accurate you need it. Bog standard GPS wouldn't be good enough for most survey work without expensive kit.
A bog standard GPS would usually be accurate to within 5m, assuming you have a clear view of the sky. You can improve this a bit by averaging, ie sitting there for a while, and recording multiple points. Plus return on different days/times, then take the average of all of the points.
Something like a basic Garmin Etrex 10 would work fine. A phone might be OK - some phones have good GPS receivers, others are a bit poor.
I think GPS will work
But a phone might not be the best. I've seen some very shakey plots from phones
The man who re mastered the Wainright walks carried 3 GPS units. If the 2 in his hand disagreed then he would get the third one out.
You could do that easily with a Garmin Etrex or similar.
You could mark each point that you want to record as a waypoint and then download these to a PC and plot on a map.
However, as others had said you will only get about a 5 - 10m accuracy with a standard set.
Most handhelds now support "EGNOS" [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Geostationary_Navigation_Overlay_Service ]info here.[/url], which will improve accuracy but you must make sure it is switched on.
However, if you really need accuracy then you need a differential system. This can be achieved a number of different ways and can give accuracy of 10 cm. [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_GPS ]Wiki[/url]
If you need this level of accuracy I would suggest hiring a surveyor with kit and doing it properly.
Thanks for all the replies - i'll look into the Etrex