Thread: using GPS as a rangefinder

That will give you a ball park distance MD, but won’t be as accurate as a laser rangefinder. Somewhere the gps unit will give you an estimate of the accuracy of it’s position. If this accuracy was say 20 meters, then it means that your actual position will be somewhere in a circle with a radius of 20 meters of the gps position, and the same for the place you move your cursor to.

20 meters would be quite a poor accuracy for a modern gps, but the accuracy is dependent on the number of satellites visible to the gps unit (possibly not many if you are low in a valley) and their relative geometry or position in the sky.

I should have also said that the accuracy is continually changing as the satellites it chooses to use to calculate position also changes.