Not sure if it’s of use to us

Talk about reinventing the wheel. Google maps also works with geo-coordinates as does your drone and the rest of the world. Why invent a new complication to an already simplified solution?
Use Long/Lat like everyone else and minimise confusion.

Farmers vs coordinates? Don’t go there :rofl:

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Which do you mean?
N/S +/- ddd° mm’ ss" E/W +/- ddd° mm’ ss"?
Or do you mean N/S/E/W +/- ddd° mm’ ss" N/S/E/W +/- ddd° mm’ ss"?
Or do you mean N/S/E/W +/- ddd° mm.mm’?
Or do you mean N/S/E/W +/- ddd.dddddd°? :wink:

Over poor quality voice communication, they can be misheard/confused and the various formats can be problematic if the one received cannot be (easily) input into the seeking device.

For that reason, MGRS became poplar. When portable GPS became more widely used, it was the default when I was paragliding to tell the duty driver where you were to be collected. Easy by SMS or voice. (Well - it’s military, so easy communication can be critical.)

I’ve used the Google Plus code quite a bit. It’s concise, easily conveyed with phonetic alphabet.
Strange there’s not been more take-up.

btw - it’s Lat/Long, not Long/Lat …. you’d be somewhere totally wrong if you get those two muddled! :rofl:

You just kind proved my point. :wink:

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One system is easier to remember than many. I accept that phonetically there is a case for another system but even then you could phonetically give numerical details. After all, everyone reading this can tell from google maps or their drones that “51.500742, -0.124626” is Big Ben. Drop the last three digits to give “51.50, -0.124” to take you close enough too!
What’s simpler than that?

I’d never even heard of it before you mentioned it here, and I do GIS stuff all day long as part of my job :open_mouth:

Oh I dunno, clean.wider.both maybe? :wink:

/me stops playing devils advocate :blush:

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GV2G+82 Westminster

It does 2 things. It gives a general area in familiar names, which can be very useful initially, but also accuracy.

Just wondering if it was possible to add a W3W ability to the forums to directly go to their website.

I am aware (reading the reply above) that there is a w3w.co url that can be used - but I am not sure how many use this or even know about it.

So whether a short cut in the reply box is even possible, I do not know. But it might help with accuracy in sharing TOAL sites.

Or perhaps the W3W can be imported to the forum version of the drone scene entry with a clickable link?

Been there a while

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But is isn’t showing here

What got me thinking was this entry where Steve had manually added the location - but it involves cutting and pasting and manually opening up a new browser tab etc. even if you know what it even means.

Click the DroneScene Link in top line of the post and it does ?

The w3w is generated automatically from the pin when someone adds a location.

Okay - in reality will people actually do that? Was just thinking it would be good to copy that information over to the forum.

Well I think the work flow is you see the forum post, think, woah that looks nice, where is it?, click the link and DS opens (after all thats what its for) and it gives all the details you need including the daft DJI restrictions ;o)

From there you have the w3w and co-ordinates for the map readers amongst us.

I confess I’d recently wondered about asking if W3W URLs could be automatically parsed and changed into web links, similar to the way you tube links get automatically converted into embedded videos.

So just typing ///farts.gently.wafting would end up as [farts.gently.wafting](https://w3w.co/farts.gently.wafting) and hence, farts.gently.wafting

Not necessarily to circumvent Drone Scene, but W3W is often useful when arranging meets and such. I know it’s only a few keystrokes. :man_shrugging:

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I do know that w3w charge silly money for pings on their API , @PingSpike can explain it better

Or even simply adding the URL part before the three words? That might work if it can be coded into the forum. so you just add the https://w3w.co/ bit

This is exactly the case:

:+1:t2:

But I think @DroneGeek is asking for some kind of w3w support to be built in to the forum itself? :thinking:

Then I got a bit confused by this part :blush:

Because if people are adding the https://w3w.co/ bit then they may as well just type the three words after it?

@DroneGeek what exactly are you proposing be built in to the forum? :thinking:

Sorry, it’s been a long day already :blush:

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All I am saying is that above the reply box there are various icons.

Would be good if the option could exist that someone simply entered into a popup box the three words and this would populate the correct link in the post.

Or if the software detected ///whatever.fred.likes it would convert it to create a link through to W3W

Not asking to pull in anything from W3W but merely give the ability to link easier.


The other part was asking if it is possible to copy over the W3W link from dronescene to the entry here on the forum to save having to visit Drone scene to click on the link.


If these are not possible, then no problem - but it is just a suggestion to make life easier to locate great TOAL locations.