FieldGrid What are my UTM coordinates? See your zone, easting and northing live
Set FieldGrid's Primary format to UTM and the top of the Map tab starts showing it live: something like 11N 272058 4181085, which is zone 11, northern hemisphere, 272,058 m east and 4,181,085 m north.
Who actually needs this
UTM shows up on topographic and forestry maps, in search-and-rescue reports and field surveys, and on the permit or incident forms nobody enjoys filling out. It's just metres, which is the whole appeal: working out the distance between two UTM points is subtraction and the Pythagorean theorem, nothing fancier.
How to see your UTM coordinates in FieldGrid
- On the Map tab, open the gear to reach Settings.
- Under Coordinate format, set Primary to UTM. You can keep MGRS or Lat / Lon as Secondary.
- Go back to the map and read the top line once the accuracy figure settles.
- Tap it to copy the text, or press and hold to share it.
How to read a UTM coordinate
| Part | Value | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Zone | 11 | 6° wide strip, here 120°W to 114°W |
| Hemisphere | N | North of the equator (S = south) |
| Easting | 272058 | Metres east, from a false origin 500,000 m west of the zone's centre line |
| Northing | 4181085 | Metres north of the equator |
Easting and northing round to the nearest metre, but that's cosmetic; the real limit is whatever GPS accuracy is showing on screen next to it. Head south of the equator and the northing starts at 10,000,000 m there and counts down, which trips people up the first time they see it.
So what's my zone, exactly?
It's the number at the front, 11 in the example above. Zones run 6° of longitude wide, numbered eastward from 180°. FieldGrid works yours out from your actual position, irregular zones around southern Norway and Svalbard included.
| Lat, long | UTM | MGRS |
|---|---|---|
| 37.74870, -119.58720 | 11N 272058 4181085 | 11SKB 7205 8108 |
| 47.60620, -122.33210 | 10N 550200 5272749 | 10TET 5020 7274 |
| 35.00000, -106.00000 | 13N 408747 3873500 | 13SDU 0874 7349 |
That letter after the zone isn't the MGRS band
In the UTM line, the letter after the zone is just the hemisphere, N or S. In MGRS the letter after the zone is a latitude band, S for 32°N to 40°N here, which happens to also be a letter. Same point: 11N in UTM, 11S in MGRS. Confuse the two and some software will quietly put you in the wrong half of the planet.
Getting UTM for a point you're not standing on
For your own position, flipping the format is the whole trick. For somewhere else, save it as a waypoint by typing its decimal lat/long (Waypoints, +, then the Manual selector), then with Primary already set to UTM, press and hold that row in Waypoints to copy it.
What it won't do
- UTM is read-only here: GOTO and manual waypoints take MGRS or decimal lat/long, never UTM.
- Metres, full stop; there's no feet toggle anywhere in the app.
- The map's overlay lines are latitude and longitude, not UTM grid lines, so don't plot off them.
Questions and answers
Why is my UTM northing so large?
Does it work without signal?
Can I type UTM coordinates into FieldGrid?
Which datum does FieldGrid use?
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- All questions about FieldGrid
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