Help with co-ordinates please

[superspotter]

Hi Guys;
The first time I tried this and it as wrong I put it down to an anomoly but after the third or fourth different location around the world I am beginning to think I may be doing something wrong??!!
I am talking about when I input my location using the direct longitude and latitude, it is nowhere near my actual location. For instance I am now sat in luxembourg and when I went to Google Earth to find my exact location and input it to Airnav it shows me around 50 south in France. I am sure I am inputting the correct co-ordinates but if anyone would like to check, I am in the Hilton, luxembourg. Maybe I am entering the co-ordinates incorrectly?? regards clive.

[AirNav Support]

Use the site below

http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/geocode

And enter the decimal value of your location which should be the 1st line it shows when it finds your location.

[superspotter]

Thanks but that is only giving me the same info as Google earth etc. However, I may have solved my own conundrum but how and why I am not sure! I changed the map from Mercator to Cartesian and my "home" location appeared where it should be so this begs more questions than answers, why would a change of map type do this and more importantly, what the heck is the difference between the mercator and the cartesian map??

[superspotter]

Bugger! sorry I asked that question, I have just been looking on the net regarding the difference betwixt the two maps.....dont bother answering!!

[CoastGuardJon]

Hi Superspotter, if you go back to Mercator projection and your location is in the wrong place, go to File - Preference - Home Station Data and check Longitude has a "-" minus symbol in front of it, if your location is West of 0 degrees - Greenwich, this should put your location in the correct place.   Mercator projection is the flattened out view of the planet's surface to fit on a map - if you've seen a Shuttle/satellite's orbit path being tracked at Mission Control USA, you may have noticed it appears on the flat map as a sine wave, whereas in reality, it's a straight line around a near sphere.   Don't know what a cartesian map is, but will Google it!

[superspotter]

Thanks for the info but as I am in Luxembourg so east of Greewich then it shouldnt need the - sign. But as I said earlier, for some reason just alternating between the mercator and cartesian put the home logo in the correct place, strange!

[CoastGuardJon]

Hmmmm. That shoots my theory up the Khyber Pass then!