Talk:Military grid reference system

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see lists of open tasks and regional and topical task forces. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.

This article has been rated as B-Class on the quality scale.

Additional information and associated task forces:

	This article has been checked against the following criteria for B-Class status: Referencing and citation: criterion met Coverage and accuracy: criterion met Structure: criterion met Grammar: criterion met Supporting materials: criterion met
Associated task forces (general topics):
	Military science task force

This needs to be categorized.

[edit] Georef?

Anyone heard of Georef? When I was in the Royal Observer Corps, many years ago, I remember we used "UTM" on some maps, which seems to be the Military grid reference system; co-ordinates (within Europe, say) were like "PQ 123 456". But on other maps, we used a system I remember being called "Georef". This had a similar notation — two letters to identify a major "square", then two or more digits to identify a point within the "square" — but was based on lat-long, not UTM; hence, the "squares" were curved-trapezoids. You got the accuracy of lat-long with the convenient notation of UTM / British grid. Now I can't find any info on Georef (which, if it really existed, sureley deserves a mention). Anyone ever heard of this? — Johantheghost 18:10, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

OK, to reply to myself, I found some info, and we now have an article on Georef. — Johan the Ghost _seance 11:21, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What?

This makes no sense whatsoever. Anyone care to explain? How does someone have a legitimate lat and long and not know where on earth it is?! RobertDahlstrom (talk) 21:49, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Such an MGRS coordinate, standing alone, may be converted to latitude and longitude. But you still do not know the position on the Earth, unless you also know the geodetic datum that is used.

Sorry about being too brief, but I hoped people would follow the link to geodetic datum. Actually, a better link would be A guide to coordinate systems in Great Britain, published by the Ordnance Survey. It gives the best explanation of geodetic datums that I have ever seen. Figure 1 in the introduction gives an example of what I meant. --Mikael R (talk) 19:14, 13 May 2008 (UTC)