AML switches on location services, but as Matt ZL4NVW says, this might be a GNSS Cold Start.
AML is quite sophisticated though. The system waits for a while to try to get a decent fix. It also passed on details of how the fix was derived and what the estimated accuracy was. It’s a really well thought out system.
Generally my experience is that AML data (if it gets provided to civilian Mountain Rescue) is generally good.
Im not sure if it was using AML or something else, but I had to call 999 recently due to an accident (not involving me!) and the police somehow knew my approximate location and just needed me to confirm which side of the river I was on.
I can see how w3w might distinguish between either Bow and Bough, and I assume it is capable of using Bow with the meaning of the pointy bit of a ship and the other Bow, referring to either an archery weapon - not forgetting of course the bow you tie with rope or tape (as in Bow tie) and, or the thing you might do if you meet royalty. So does it use only the one word, ‘bow’ even though there is more than one meaning?
What happens if it gives the position as 'Bow, Bow Bow., each having 3 separate meanings. How would you know and how would anyone else know which bow was which? And if you gave the position using bow, bow and bough how would you distinguish bow & bough and bow as in the pointy bit on a ship?
I’m also welcoming explanations on how you pass on by voice, bough and bow (the pointy bit) when you have to pass on the position ?
Almost certainly AML. It gets sent to the Police on every mobile call. The data might say it’s invalid or inaccurate, depending on what happened during the AML data gathering, but in your case it looks like it worked.
Surely callers would spell the words out if they were to use this system? Then there would be no issue with however the word was presented. Is this an issue with spelling or with the phone app not producing a correct GPS position to feed in? I use the app at a number of air displays where finding someone who has a medical issue in a large field or airfield location full of people is, otherwise, quite difficult.
W3W claims for emergency service use is that saying a location as just the words i.e. “badly.designed.system” is less error prone that saying NT22755 66189. If you have to spell the words out you defeat the point of it for emergency use and may as well give a lat&long or NGR. This is the fundamental design flaw in the words chosen and renders it no better than what already exists. If it’s no better then there is no point to it for emergency use.
And you don’t have to use W3W app or website (with commercial usage costs) to use NGR, lat&long, Maidenhead etc. etc.
I never heard about w3w before. I am aware that Croatia is covered also but I think nobody is using that system.
Maidenhead is system used by radio amateurs and not widely known and spread.
So, I decidet to stick with lat/log system. My only question is what is better. DD MM SS or decimal? DD MM SS is on my paper map but google maps and lot of other services use decimal degrees.
You have to spell the words for it to work, as I experienced, even face to face. Over the phone, i suspect you’d struggle without the phoenetic alphabet.
Apparently the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, which was in charge of The Queue last week, made the mistake of using W3W to give the position of the end of The Queue. It probably worked just fine most of the time, but apparently there were occasions when the end of The Queue was in Bradford, or North Carolina, or Uxbridge…
It really annoys me when I’m given a location as W3W as my maps do not have such a scale on them. I have to go to the website and convert to a grid reference.
One day you will have to pay to convert that reference to something usable.
If W3W really wanted to be taken seriously as a locator system they would not have hit every legitimate reverse engineered clone with their big lawyers. The only people who they believe should be able to convert a W3W location to something usable is themselves. BECAUSE THIS IS ALL ABOUT THE MONEY and nothing else.
What.Three.Words locations are becoming more popular in my industry. The standard for directions to gig venues always was, and probably still is the good old postcode. Following a satnav to a postcode almost always gets you to within visual contact of the venue.
This wasn’t the case a couple of Saturdays ago, when I was booked to play at the Cavendish Pavilion, Bolton Abbey, near Skipton. The supplied postcode landed me at a farm entrance on a country road. Not there. I’d just driven past a visitor car park for something on the Bolton Abbey estate, so I turned around and drove back there. Not there either. Phone calls were made, and other band members were hopeless at describing or pinpointing things on maps.
A few weeks earlier, I was at another rural location wedding gig in the Malverns. Anticipating the “large postcode area” issue, the bandleader issued his musicians with a W3W locator - and this worked perfectly.
I’d agree that things like OS grid references are desirable, but not all musicians are as bright as bass players and keyboard players. When you’re dealing with guitarists and drummers, then W3W really is advantageous, providing of course you impress upon them the importance of correct spelling, and making them read back what you’ve sent them - or even better sending you back a screenshot of the map location they’ve generated for verification!
A bit unkind, Tom! I’ve played with a few fairly dim bass and keyboard musos and some quite bright guitarists and even a very intelligent drummer! Perhaps its because it needs a bit of extra nouse to play jazz! It used to be that you put the least accomplished guitarist on bass because few punters even hear it but happily those days seem to be gone.
