birding-aus

GPS navigation units

To: Birding-Aus <>
Subject: GPS navigation units
From: Paul Taylor <>
Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 23:31:13 +1100
Birding Services Brisbane wrote:
[snip]
> Is George Dubya to blame?

In a word, no.

Most likely the problem is due to one of the satellites going bung:

> On February 04, 2003 1401Z, SVN17/PRN17 went off of the air due to an
> anomalous condition on the satellite.  This outage is not expected to
> have a major impact on GPS coverage since SVN15/PRN15 is positioned
> very near to SVN17/PRN17's orbital slot.

That said, SE Queensland seems to have slightly less accuracy than the
rest of Australia according to this chart:
https://www.spacecom.af.mil/GPS_Support/archive/advisory/World_DOP_020503_SVN17_Out.gif
If this is due to less satellite coverage, it may be part of the reason
for the problems you are experiencing.

An important point with GPS units is they need to receive a complete
almanac of data from the satellites to get best results.  This will
occur automatically, but takes time - if you use your GPS infrequently,
leaving it turned on for 15 to 30 minutes to collect the almanac data
from the satellites will make a big difference.  (The more satellites
visible, the better.)

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
   Paul Taylor                                  Veni, vidi, tici -
                           I came, I saw, I ticked.

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