Thread: latitude and longitude question

I believe "DMS" stands for Degrees, Minutes, Seconds and "DDM" stands for Decimal Degrees Minutes.
You can Google these terms and find several converters for typical mapping coordinates.

It's two of the three ways of writing lat. long. coordinates. Think of it like metric versus imperial measurements. DMS is written as Degrees, Minutes, Seconds or 40° 5' 18" N or spoken as 40 degrees 5 minutes and 18 seconds north. DDS is written as Degrees and Decimal Minutes where the Seconds are converted to a decimal. So the same position as above would be written as 40° 5.3' as the decimal can be carried out further than Seconds DDM is slightly more accurate. From here you can convert the decimal minutes to Decimal Degrees, the most accurate position. Where 5.3' would equal .08833°. Giving you 40.08833° N

If you start at 5' 18" you divide 18" by 60 (the number of Second Degrees in Minute Degrees)

18/60= .3 - So 5.3'

Then do this once more for Decimal Degrees

5.3 minutes divided by 60( the number of minutes in a degree)

5.3/60= .08833°


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Originally Posted by DaveB40

I believe "DMS" stands for Degrees, Minutes, Seconds and "DDM" stands for Decimal Degrees Minutes.
You can Google these terms and find several converters for typical mapping coordinates.

Close. DDM stands for Degree, Decimal Minutes. In this mode, instead of seconds you just have minutes as a decimal number. For example in DMS you'd have 31 degrees 15 minutes 30 seconds or 31°15'30". The same coordinate in DDM would be 31 degrees 15.5 minutes or 31°15.5' since 30 seconds is 0.5 minutes. The third common format is DD which is just decimal degrees. There you'd have 31 degrees plus .25 degrees from the 15 minutes and then another .00833 degrees for the 30 seconds which gives you 31.25833

Danny ... here's the conversion site I used : GPS Coordinate Converter, Maps and Info

But, I "had" to use it back a few years ago, because the KDFWR Fish Attractor site only gave one version of GPS coordinate readings ... DDM
Now they offer 3 different versions : GPS - DMS - DDM

I had to use the conversion site because my Lowrance Elite 5DSI would only accept the "GPS" version numbers of the conversion site. If I put the DDM numbers in my unit, my waypoints were in the desert somewhere in the Middle East (not all the numbers would fit, so I left off the last digit, thinking it was measuring "inches" ... because I didn't know what I was doing, never having had a unit that had GPS capability)

Just be mindful of the Minus(-) symbol in front of the numbers. I forgot that on my first Lowrance unit. Got to the lake and go to to waypoint........Well it was on the other side of the world.

thanks to all, man i had no idea having gps would create a need for so much math might have to sell it

Depends on the model of FF/GPS unit you have. You might post make/model and someone may help you out more.

humingbird 798