Instructions for Vetting Control Placements by GPS

1) First draw your courses using OCAD.  When you go out to place controls, carry a GPS a create waypoints at each of the control locations (WGS 84 datum).

2) OCAD can import waypoints and tracklogs directly from a Garmin GPS. If you have a different brand of GPS you will need to extract the information from the GPS and save in .GPX format to load into OCAD.

3) In OCAD, set the coordinate system for the map using the “Options->Scales…” menu option. Choose “Real World Coordinates” and enter the values for the map that you are using from the following table:

Map Name	Map Scale	Horizontal Offset	Vertical Offset	Map Rotation
APU	10,000	350,000	6,787,000	21.6
Bicentennial	10,000	349,000	6,785,000	21.6
Crevasse Moraine	10,000	383,000	6,829,000	21.6
Elmendorf	10,000	351,000	6,796,000	21.6
Fossil Creek	10,000	361,000	6,801,000	21.6
Kincaid	10,000	338,000	6,782,000	21.6
Pia	10,000	349,000	6,785,000	21.6
Russian Jack	10,000	350,000	6,789,000	21.6
Section 36	10,000	352,000	6,775,000	21.6

4) Click the “Change…” button for the coordinate system and set the inputs to UTM, Zone 6 North.

5) Click “OK” to close the two dialogs boxes.

6) Choose the “GPS->Import from GPS…” menu option.  If your GPS is connected to your computer and turned on, the status should display “GPS Connected”. If the status shows “Unable to connect to GPS”, you may need to click the “Settings…” button to set the correct communications port and speed.

7) Once the connection to the GPS is established, click the “Get Waypoints” button to import the waypoints from the GPS. Or, if you have already saved the waypoints to a .GPX file, click the “Load…” button and load the file.

8) A list of the loaded waypoints should display in the left part of the form. Select (by clicking on) the waypoints that you want to use.  If you want the waypoint name to show on the map, click the checkbox for “Set Labels”. Click the “Create” button to add the selected points to the map. It doesn’t look like anything as happened, but they should appear when you close the dialog box.

9) Close the dialog box, then zoom the map to an area where one of the waypoints should be. You should see a small light-grey “+” at the waypoint location. If you created labels with the “Set Labels” option, there should also be some text for the waypoint name.

10) You can change the symbol for the waypoints and/or the labels. Select one of them, then select the symbol that you want to use (from the symbol list on the upper right side of the screen). Click the “Change all Symbols” button from the toolbar at the top of the screen. The button looks like

11) Look at each of the waypoints and controls to verify that they agree. They probably won’t match exactly due to lack of accuracy of the GPS and errors in our mapping, but they should be close.  If you find that the waypoint shows up on a different feature from your control, you should probably go back out to re-check and fix the location. If you find that the waypoint is a significant distance from the control, but doesn’t appear to be on a different feature, it may be an indication that the map is inaccurate in that area and that perhaps it should be fixed or you should use a different control location.  Once you are done checking the locations, delete or hide all the GPS points and labels so that they don’t print on the course maps.