I have a few questions for everyone here in the GPS forum. Seems like everyone uses lat/Lon when they give a GPS location. Im wondering why you use what you use?

1) What position format do you use and why?
2) For those that use Lat/Lon using a map and plastic location finder can you get the coordinates?

3) For those that use UTM/UPS using a map and plastic location finder can you get the coordinates?

I will go first,
1) I use UTM/UPS format because I use USGS topo maps and Mckenzie maps that have the tick marks in the margin.
2) no I find it too hard to calculate location on a map.
3) yes very easy for me to find location on a map with a plastic layover location finder.

1) When asked for a point, I give in lat/lon because that's what I have currently set on my Garmin and in BaseCamp on my iMac. I figure that anyone who wants to can do a conversion to what ever they use. It seemed like UTM used to be more helpful when I had early gps models that didn't have a map display.

2) The only time I even think about lat/lon is when I am looking at a gps map which already indicates my position. (and not really then, either) Otherwise, I look for bays, islands, streams, etc to fix my position on a map.

3) My McKenzies are also mapped in UTM and I suppose that if someone said "Meet me at such and such a lat/lon," I could just convert it to UTM and plot it. Otherwise, all of our anticipated points are already marked and (again) I don't really think about the numbers.

I like using the UTM because I can relate to what the numbers mean. UTM numbers are the number of meters east and north of the corner of the zone you are in. When looking at a 50000 scale topo map the grid is in 1000 meter blocks. If the UTM number ends in 500 you know it is half way across the grid square. All this is not as important now that most GPS units have such detailed maps loaded and showing on screen. Also using the features in a GPS now allow us to skip the math and let the GPS tell us how far away our destination is.

schweady's opinion practically mirrors mine. With the mapping GPS'r now available and the fact I print out the same maps displayed on the GPS, leaves location format a fairly moot point.
Have spent more time with Lat/Long and have no problems using that method.
UTM is primarily a military map grid reference solution.
Lat/long use is traditionally water based, SAR, borne out of sea rescue service primarily use lat/long.

butthead

quote Marten: "I like using the UTM because I can relate to what the numbers mean. UTM numbers are the number of meters east and north of the corner of the zone you are in. When looking at a 50000 scale topo map the grid is in 1000 meter blocks. If the UTM number ends in 500 you know it is half way across the grid square. All this is not as important now that most GPS units have such detailed maps loaded and showing on screen. Also using the features in a GPS now allow us to skip the math and let the GPS tell us how far away our destination is."

Bingo.