[aprssig] APRS LAT/LONG standards

[Tapio Sokura]

Curt Mills wrote:
> Careful there.  In our area of the woods the 6º statement is
> accurate.  In Europe and north of there you have to specify whether
> you're using the regular 6º grid or the NATO grid, as some of the
> zones are different widths in that region.  Weird, but that's the
> way they do it.  There are grids of 3º, 6º, 9º, and 12º in that
> region.  A lot of the docs on the web about UTM gloss over this.

This is true. For example in Finland we are moving from a national 
multi-zone grid (3 degree zones) to ETRS-TM35FIN that is otherwise UTM, 
but the zone width is about 13 degrees. This way one zone will cover the 
whole country. Having several zones when one slightly larger one would 
be enough (for most purposes) is a PITA when you end up crossing zones. 
Being slightly incompatible with the rest of the UTM world is a 
considerably smaller PITA in my opinion, you can always use geographical 
coordinates in international contexts.

   Tapio