The Iridium low-earth-orbit satellites will enable worldwide phone services beginning this year. Fifty-one are presently in orbit. It turns out that the satellites’ antennas catch the sun and cause “flares” visible from the ground (See http://www2.satellite.eu.org/sat/vsohp/iridium.html ). For minutes at a time the satellites brighten from magnitude 6 (binoculars required) to magnitude -2 or even -4 (brighter than Venus). A web page provided by the German Space Operations Centre ( http://www.gsoc.dlr.de/satvis ) will calculate the next seven flares visible from your location.
Using the Census Bureau’s Tiger Mapping Service ( http://tiger.census.gov/ ) you can pinpoint a spot in the US to 4 decimal places of latitude and longitude, or within about 6 feet. An atlas of place names ( http://www.ahip.getty.edu/tgn_browser/ ) will give you rough coordinates you can start from.
(Thanks to Bob Peret, KD6LFW)