Summary

Despite the fact that the assumption of a flat earth is fundamentally wrong, calculation of areas, angles, and lengths using latitude and longitude can be complicated, so plane coordinates persist. Therefore, the projection of points from the Earth’s surface onto a reference ellipsoid and finally onto flat maps is still viable.

Heights, orthometric, ellipsoidal and dynamic, may appear, at first, to be simple. However, understanding them in a world of satellite positioning requires knowledge of the surfaces to which they refer and the methods by which they are derived. Perhaps this lesson has provided some of that understanding.

Next, we will delve a little deeper into the details of the most commonly used GPS techniques; Static, DGPS and RTK. At this point, we are really beginning to get into some of the most immediately applicable aspects of new developments in the field.