Re:Learning from Turing’s silver hoard (2016)
by grawprog on Tuesday February 18, 2020 @05:28PM
(#22361077)
The best i've ever personally got with a handheld GPS under actual work conditions was +/- 15m. I've gotten +/- 5m in large open areas lacking trees, mountains or large rock formations but areas without any of those things are rare.
Weather conditions can make a big difference. In stormy or rainy weather I was lucky if I could get +/-20m
In practice, though, I've spent a fair bit of time trying to re-occupy sites taken with handheld GPS receivers. (I'm a geologist -- it comes up a lot) 30m is a better representation of typical repeatability for a consumer-grade handheld unit or a phone.
You're often on the side of a hill, so you can't see the full constellation. If you don't have line-of-sight to more than a few satellites, you risk an inaccurate location. You're often in highly remote areas, so WAAS doesn't always help (it's based on proximity to a ground station). If you don't have WAAS, you're at the risk of atmospheric effects significantly affecting your accuracy.
There's also the user error side: You might have the handheld set to display in NAD27 one time and WGS84 another, which can easily offset the same lat/long by several hundred meters.
+/- 3m with consumer GPS is definitely possible, but that's for ideal conditions. You're rarely working with ideal conditions in the field.