Since 2000 the use of the GPS navigation increases considerably. The reason for that was the deactivation of the selective availability in May 2000. However, these receivers do not register the observables, they just estimate and store them and that prevents the post-processing data. Based in this aspect some softwares were developed and are available for free. They allow recording the GPS observables, pseudorange and carrier phase. These programs are able to read in binary files and record information concerning the GPS observables and to convert binary format to a RINEX format. This study presents the GPS Garmin 12 XL evaluation using free programs. Two experiments were carried out in Presidente Prudente-SP region using the relative static survey. The processing was carried out with intervals of 30, 15, 10 and 5 minutes. The results were compared with the coordinates from a geodetic receiver and show that 98.9 % of the points, the values in relation to the planimetric accuracy were better than 0.50 m. The only baseline which the value was larger or equal to 0.50 m is the point M0001 (baseline lesser than 2 km) referred to the first experiment. In terms of precision the values did not exceeded 0.30 m.
geodesy; GPS navigation; precision
