CSUMarmot wrote:Heres my reasoning for using UTM
The maps I buy have Grid overlays for UTM, when Im bushwhacking and like to have a general idea of where exactly i am, I can find myself within about a 100 meters.
With my GPS i can find my lat long coordinates, but what the hell do they mean? unless you are sitting within half a mile of some crosshairs, you will have no better idea of an exact fix then just guessing.
UTM is based on tens, not sixtys, which might be easier to figure out in the bush
and in the way of distortion, usually when i set out from the TH im not travelling across UTM zones enough for there to be a difference
I use UTM as well. It is easy for pinpointing oneself on the map. I doubt Lat-Long was ever intended for hiking navigation, since it's been around for centuries in some form or another, way before anyone ever dreamed up GPS. It's too broad, but ideal for drivers, skippers and flyers who move fast and cover great swaths of the earth in one go. Early navigation was deeply related to time (especially in tracking longitude). It was natural for minutes and seconds to be carried over in this way.
Face it, you metric people: base-10 just doesn't lend itself to everything! If so, we'd reckon time in base-10. I'm sure it's been tried. We don't "tenth" or "fifth" things in practice, instead we half, quarter, eighth, etc... Non-base-10 has its advantages too. There's nothing magical about 60, either. Anything that can easily be halved, quartered and eighthed easily is probably ideal. Metric is the Esparanto of measure. I like base 8 frankly. We don't need pinky fingers anyway, do we?