Dakota and BaseCamp Definitions

Former Member over 11 years ago

In BaseCamp Track properties there is Elevation, you will see Ascent and Descent. I know Ascent is up and Descent is down. What i like to know is how do you use them and what do they mean.
I have a Dakota 20 and in some fields to change there is settings that i not know on what they do, is there a guide to explain on how to use them for eg Guide Ratio and turn etc as the manual only explains the main fields, Thank you for any help.

0 BTLAAKE over 11 years ago

A Garmin track file records time, location and elevation for each point. From these values, everything else you see is calculated by BaseCamp or your device.

From the elevation data, the change in elevation between each adjacent point is calculated. The sum of all positive numbers is Ascent. The sum of all negative values is Descent.

As far as I know there is no way to add columns to the table (which would be similar to changing fields on the device). The plot will give information on %grade for a point by placing the cursor inside the graph. I’ll assume you meant Glide Ratio which is related to %Grade. Glide Ratio is horizontal distance/change in elevation while %Grade is 100 times change in elevation/horizontal distance.

If you are really interested in Glide Ratio, I suggest you copy the data table and paste it into Excel. A simple formula can be used to strip off the units and convert the text to a number for the elevation and leg distance data.

Use is up to the user. For example, a hiker might be interested in how much climbing they did.