Every device ever made has some measurement error. In the case of atomic clocks this error is quite tiny. But what is the measurement error for a Garmin 600?
Here is my backyard study:
Today, I carried my Garmin "off" to my back yard and placed it in the grass. There I turned it on, deleted the current log, started a new log, and (leaving the Garmin in the grass) I went back in the house for 15 min.
On returning, without picking the garmin up, I looked at the various pages of "current track" information (main page, info page, map view, and elevation plot) available on the 600. Here is what I found.
Distance: 173 ft
Minimum Altitude: 332 ft
Maximum Altitude: 345 ft.
I then turned it off. Picked it up, carried it back inside, connected to my computer, booted up Basecamp, and imported that file.
Basecamp reports that while on my lawn the 600 ascended 5 ft, descended 1 ft, and traveled a distance of 181 ft. I asked my wife (who had been sitting near the back window the entire time) whether she had noted all of this zooming back and forth, but apparently she was too busy knitting to glance out the window.
So here is the thing. According to my 600, yesterday I took a 11 hr 10 min hike in the Adirondacks during which I traveled 20.01 miles and ascended 4,206 feet.
I am pretty sure that the time is accurate (as it matches both my wristwatch and the car clock), but how far did I really walk? and how many feet did I really climb?
Postscript: I have the 600 set to record one reading every 30 second. So I had approx. 30 reading in that approx. 15 min. period.
