Irish Transverse Mercator

[DaveWalsh]

The Irish National Grid is apparently about to be scrapped in favour of what is called the Irish Transverse Mercator ( Knotman, where are you when we need you, what is all this about ?).
The new system will continue at 1:50,000 but it works from the south upwards, 20x40km sheets, and there will be fewer of them, 69 –v- 89. Sheet 1 will be in Cork, not Donegal, and Dingle is 11 not 70, so it is all change. There will be no correlation that I can see between existing grid-references and the new.
Guidebooks and GPS are the big losers. Oileáin is threatened with obsolescence as a working navigational tool, unless it adapts, adopts, improves. For instance, an edition 2 based on the old system would have a short shelf life, but an edition 2 based on the new system before the new system really truly kicks in ???
Oileáin is challenged by this, and to meet the challenge it needs to understand the challenge. Is there anyone out there with technically accurate information and understanding of what this is all about ?
Thanks
Dave Walsh

[tee]

clearly an attempt to sabotage Oileain. I feel a strongly worded letter to the Times coming on......

[knotman2]

Thanks for the kudos, Mr.Walsh. Seems we have both surfaced at the same time. You have been greatly missed. Not able to help you directly, but do have two very good Orienteering (map expert) friends, who can surely help. Need a day or two to contact, as way way offshore at the moment, with limited computer access. Sennen

[donalmcnamara]

A nice dilema here indeed.
We have the same issue in MR. (However one cynic said those who call us are already lost so it wont make a difference what datum they use). Seriously though we are hoping the OSI comes up with a conversion routine. Its also means we need new sets of maps as you said, but have you tried navigating from the back to the front of a map!
Apparently all the engineers/ surveyors types are happy about it, so this is progress.
In our inocence we assumed the discovery series would be left alone. Think of all the retraining we need to give new grid references.
PS Hope the GPS manufactures in the world develope a new datum for us to replace Ireland 66 on our GPS\'s.

Donal

[donalmcnamara]

Did a bit more research on this issue. The OSI are now providing some nice conversion tools.
http://www.osi.ie/calculators/converter_index.asp

http://www.osi.ie/en/alist/co-ordinate- ... -tool.aspx.

The second link is a converter for the various datum\'s. Haven\'t tried it but one assumes it works.

Donal

[niallmadden]

tee wrote:

clearly an attempt to sabotage Oileain. I feel a strongly worded letter to the Times coming on......

Gerry,
You must be psychic.
http://www.irishtimes.com/letters/index ... 4252081288

Niall.

[DaveWalsh]

Let the record show that Gerry Spain\'s contribution to this topic turnd out actually to be quite a good suggestion, very positive in fact.
Thanks Gerry - An rud is annamh is iontach, as I always say.
Getting 5 / 10 fathom contours on the new maps is much more important than bemoaning the inevitable grid detail difficulties, so those who have the energy might try to keep the topic alive in the Irish Times ?
DWalsh