Coordinates...?

Having difficulty translating google earth pro coordinates, entering them in my Lowrance HDS Gen 3, and matching the spot. Google has more coordinate numbers than the Lowrance unit allows so while I’m “in the vicinity” with marking waypoints it’s still off by, say a couple hundred yards which defeats the purpose. Anybody have some pointers?

You have to convert it to decimals.

30*26'40.53"N

40.53/60 = .675

30*26.675

Hope this helps.

Great video!

Cool... Thanks for the formula; I should've thought about that (60 seconds in a minute)! I have used website calculators. Now I can code it in excel and translate myself!

In Google Earth you can go to file / options and change how the coordinates are displayed with several options to choose. On you HDS you can go in and change how they are displayed and or entered in as well. Match the HDS to GE or match GE to the HDS by changing the options.

+1
Match the coordinate formats. Set Google Earth and your Lowrance units to the same format if manually entering a few waypoints. For a large number of waypoints, save the waypoints from GE in KML or KMZ format, then use GpsBabel, Reefmaster or RideLeader to make a GPX file to import.

Waypoint and track-point coordinates are internally stored in HDS, Humminbird or Garmin units in digital format as that is what computers calculate. The different GPS formats you set are only for entering or displaying of those coordinates. Change the HDS coordinates display format and change the coordinate format back does not change the internal digital representation.

That's a great Idea David, i did all of mine by hand, never thought about coding it in Excel. Thanks for the tip!

If you get on the computer and go to google maps, not google earth. type in the coordinates u want, on the left in blue it will give the two different styles for you to change it, that's what I did

Make sure you are making the conversion in the same datum format.

There is a setting in google earth to change the coordinates format. Just do that and it will work for you

Here is an excellent "how to" video from Lowrance pro Jacob Scott:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=333nbmdyYlE

Good info...

+1

The simplest tip I received was to switch the unit of measure on Google pro to decimals. Boom. One step, perfect match. No need for conversions.

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