Setting Waypoints

A waypoint is GPS lingo for a location or point that you store in your GPS receiver. Some manufacturers also call them marks or landmarks. A waypoint consists of the following information:

• Location: The location of the waypoint in whichever coordinate system the GPS receiver is currently using. Some receivers also store the elevation of the location.
• Name: The name of the waypoint. You get to choose your own name; the length varies between GPS receiver models from six characters on up.
  
• Date and time: The date and time the waypoint was created.
  
• Optional icon or symbol: An optional icon or symbol associated with the waypoint that appears on the GPS receiver’s map page when the area around the waypoint is displayed.

This could be a tent for a campground, a boat for a boat launch, or a fish for a favorite fishing spot. All GPS receivers can store waypoints, but the maximum number that you can save varies from model to model. As a general rule, as the price of a GPS receiver goes up, so does the number of waypoints that can be stored. Lower-end consumer GPS receivers store 100–250 waypoints, and top-of-theline models can store 1,000 or more.