2015-04-30 51 13

Thu 30 Apr 2015 in Dresden: 51.0461775, 13.7606843 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Location

Today's location is in the Berufliches Schulzentrum für Agrarwirtschaft und Ernährung ("Vocational school for agricultural economics and food"). The GPS inaccuracy (due to bad reception) of the spot covers the wall to the central yard with a corridor on the inner side and the yard on the outer side.

Country: Germany; state: Sachsen (Saxony, EU:DE:SN); district: Dresden; Ortsamt: Altstadt; statistischer Stadtteil: Johannstadt-Süd

Planning

• As the hashpoint is only 850 m from his home, Danatar will try to get there, although he might not be able to reach the spot itself. The try will probably be around 08:00 / 08:30 in the morning, after the night shift and during working hours, so that there might be somebody to allow him in.

Expedition

Danatar

The change of shift took longer than usual so it was already quarter to 9 when, very tired, I started to walk from my home to the hashpoint. I went there in a roundabout way, circling the block first before arriving at the front door from the other side. Apparently I arrived during recess because there were two dozen pupils smoking outside. After passing them and the door (there was nobody checking visitors) I found that a corridor ran directly along the wall where I knew the hashpoint must be, so getting to the spot was no problem. Now, finding the exact spot and getting a perfect GPS reading was much more difficult. From the satellite image I knew on which part of the wall the hashpoint would be situated, so I stood there and looked at my GPS unit. People were passing me by, some glancing at me but nobody talked to me while I stood there looking out of the window in a relaxed way as if I belonged there. At least I hope that's what it looked like, after 3 night shifts in a row they might have seen an unshaven guy with reddened eyes and droopy features, twitching now and then, staring at them and at something that must be an oversized phone with burning eyes. I didn't take a picture of myself for a reason.

GPS reception inside the buiding and on the ground floor was very bad, so I went to the first(BE)/second(AE) floor, then to the uppermost (=second(BE)/third(AE)) floor. There I stood in front of the principal's office, where teachers and secretaries came and went every few minutes. Reception was a little better there, I got a GPS fix for 1-3 seconds at least once every 2 or 3 minutes. Even opening the window and holding the GPS unit outside didn't help. I don't know what the pupils that could see me from the classrooms opposite the yard thought. I never saw perfect coordinates on the GPS unit, the nearest I saw was 0.00002° off, the nearest I could take a photo of (see below) was 0.00002°+0.00002° off. I even left the building in between, hoping to catch more satellites, but going back in always lost them again. After almost one hour (and after probably having been seen by all the teachers, one guy came by at least 5 times) of trying to get a better GPS fix I called it quits and walked home where I very soon was in a deep sleep.

vocational school building   almost there, the hashpoint is somewhere on this wall...   ...it may look like this...   ...or like this, two stories up   GPS   the central yard

tracklog

triton tracklog I probably should have changed the trackpoint saving settings from "automatic" to "every second", since the coordinates I took the picture of aren't even in the tracklog :-(