Better get serious..

[AA3JY]

..about this..and yes..I remember using LORAN

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/23/o...45VtLSKCOoR06A

[sailorboy1]

I still have a working compass

[Mike OReilly]

Good thing we have GLONASS, BeiDou, Galileo, NavIC, and QZSS.

[Andreas W]

I would never rely only on an electronic aid to navigation. On passage I don't go anywhere without sextant, log, paper charts and of course the trusty magnetic compass. But ok, I am an old fart

[tradrockrat]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

Good thing we have GLONASS, BeiDou, Galileo, NavIC, and QZSS.

I've been curious about this for some time and maybe you know - does the standard marine GPS system have access to and/or use those other sat systems?

For example, does my Vesper AIS use GPS, or does it actually use GNSS and whatever is available up in the sky? I always assumed it was GPS only, which would mean that if the evil <<<insert Bond villain here>>> was able to spoof the GPS system, I was gonna be looking real hard at my compass for a while.

[Manateeman]

I actually went on an ocean passage without any electronics. Nothing. No radio.
Paper charts. Barometer. Log. Wood boat. Oil lamps.
Would I do that again? Nope.
If you have a neat little fire onboard and you loose all the blinking stuff, it will be nice to know how to get home.
Happy trails to you
Captain Mark and his “They made oil out of whales? Dang!” Manatee crew.

[rslifkin]

Originally Posted by tradrockrat

I've been curious about this for some time and maybe you know - does the standard marine GPS system have access to and/or use those other sat systems?

For example, does my Vesper AIS use GPS, or does it actually use GNSS and whatever is available up in the sky? I always assumed it was GPS only, which would mean that if the evil <<<insert Bond villain here>>> was able to spoof the GPS system, I was gonna be looking real hard at my compass for a while.

It depends on the system. A lot of newer hardware supports at least one other beyond GPS. And a cell phone makes a decent backup as well, as most modern phones have pretty good GPS chips. I know mine will use GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, and BeiDou, for example.

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by tradrockrat

I've been curious about this for some time and maybe you know - does the standard marine GPS system have access to and/or use those other sat systems?

For example, does my Vesper AIS use GPS, or does it actually use GNSS and whatever is available up in the sky? I always assumed it was GPS only, which would mean that if the evil <<<insert Bond villain here>>> was able to spoof the GPS system, I was gonna be looking real hard at my compass for a while.

My not-very-current Garmin Handheld 76CSx can access the US GPS network as well as the European network (Galileo-EGNOS) and I believe GLONASS as well (I don't have the device in front of me to confirm).

I assume most current devices can use these alternative networks.

[tradrockrat]

Originally Posted by Manateeman

I actually went on an ocean passage without any electronics. Nothing. No radio.
Paper charts. Barometer. Log. Wood boat. Oil lamps.
Would I do that again? Nope.
If you have a neat little fire onboard and you loose all the blinking stuff, it will be nice to know how to get home.
Happy trails to you
Captain Mark and his “They made oil out of whales? Dang!” Manatee crew.

When I first started living on my sailboat and really learning to sail (as opposed to getting on a sailboat with my family every once in a while), I had a compass, one house battery, and nav lights. My cabin lights ran on AA batteries.

Some of the best advice I ever got was to learn how to sail to and from Catalina island to Longbeach, San Pedro, and Marina DelRey with just the compass and an awareness of winds and currents. Being stupid and young (same thing) I of course misinterpreted this to mean I DON'T NEED to buy a radio or GPS. Imagine my surprise 6 months later when that same guy called me an idiot and a damn fool...lol. I went out and bought a handheld radio and a later a handheld GPS (which I literally lost overboard while using it the very first time - but that's another story).

GPS is good. GPS is my friend. I can sail without it, but I don't know how to use a sextant, so I'd prefer to sail with it...lol

EDIT: I should say for the sake of clarity that I DID have a radio on board the whole time I sailed, but it was a handheld one I borrowed from a friend,

[psk125]

Having "backup systems" like Glonass or Galileo to replace a blocked US GPS system is not a solution. If the US system - the one that all our defense armament depends upon - is knocked out, Washington will be knocking out the others in short order, (like in within two minutes?) to prevent attacks. Someone above suggested that they could use a cellphone to back up their GPS. Right. It's like a power outage. Changing the lightbulbs or running an extension cord to a different outlet is not going to make any difference. Nothing that plugs in is going to work. You will need flashlights and candles: compass, chronometer, sextant and tables - to determine where you are if the systems are shut down.

[lestersails]

Originally Posted by rslifkin

It depends on the system. A lot of newer hardware supports at least one other beyond GPS. And a cell phone makes a decent backup as well, as most modern phones have pretty good GPS chips. I know mine will use GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, and BeiDou, for example.

I thought that cell phone didn't have standalone satellite GPS.

I thought that if you were out of range of any cell phone towers or wifi signals, that you were outta luck with positioning. I bought a BadElf GPS unit for my phone that connects via bluetooth to the positioning software in the phone.

Am I correct about this?

[Kamen]

Originally Posted by lestersails

I thought that cell phone didn't have standalone satellite GPS.



I thought that if you were out of range of any cell phone towers or wifi signals, that you were outta luck with positioning. I bought a BadElf GPS unit for my phone that connects via bluetooth to the positioning software in the phone.



Am I correct about this?

No, you are not. Modern smartphones contain a GPS chip. There are many phone apps that are specifically designed for offline navigation: Gaia GPS, OnX, even Google Maps. However, it is true that a phone can fuse GPS with cell tower and wifi signals to improve accuracy and reduce power consumption.

BTW, smartphones also contain other cool sensors that are useful for navigation, such as accelerometer, a gyroscope, a magnetometer.

[StuM]

Originally Posted by AA3JY

..about this..and yes..I remember using LORAN

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/23/o...45VtLSKCOoR06A

Requires a subscription or login. Can you give us the CliffsNotes version?

[AA3JY]

Originally Posted by StuM

Requires a subscription or login. Can you give us the CliffsNotes version?

America Has a GPS Problem
The system is essential but also vulnerable. We need a backup.

By Kate Murphy
Kate Murphy, a frequent contributor to The New York Times, is a commercial pilot and author of “You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters.”
Jan. 23, 2021

Time was when nobody knew, or even cared, exactly what time it was. The movement of the sun, phases of the moon and changing seasons were sufficient indicators. But since the Industrial Revolution, we’ve become increasingly dependent on knowing the time, and with increasing accuracy. Not only does the time tell us when to sleep, wake, eat, work and play; it tells automated systems when to execute financial transactions, bounce data between cellular towers and throttle power on the electrical grid.

Coordinated Universal Time, or U.T.C., the global reference for timekeeping, is beamed down to us from extremely precise atomic clocks aboard Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites. The time it takes for GPS signals to reach receivers is also used to calculate location for air, land and sea navigation.

Owned and operated by the U.S. government, GPS is likely the least recognized, and least appreciated, part of our critical infrastructure. Indeed, most of our critical infrastructure would cease to function without it.

The problem is that GPS signals are incredibly weak, due to the distance they have to travel from space, making them subject to interference and vulnerable to jamming and what is known as spoofing, in which another signal is passed off as the original. And the satellites themselves could easily be taken out by hurtling space junk or the sun coughing up a fireball. As intentional and unintentional GPS disruptions are on the rise, experts warn that our overreliance on the technology is courting disaster, but they are divided on what to do about it.

“If we don’t get good backups on line, then GPS is just a soft rib of ours, and we could be punched here very quickly,” said Todd Humphreys, an associate professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Texas in Austin. If GPS was knocked out, he said, you’d notice. Think widespread power outages, financial markets seizing up and the transportation system grinding to a halt. Grocers would be unable to stock their shelves, and Amazon would go dark. Emergency responders wouldn’t be able to find you, and forget about using your cellphone.

Mr. Humphreys got the attention of the U.S. Department of Defense and the Federal Aviation Administration about this issue back in 2008 when he published a paper showing he could spoof GPS receivers. At the time, he said he thought the threat came mainly from hackers with something to prove: “I didn’t even imagine that the level of interference that we’ve been seeing recently would be attributable to state actors.”

More than 10,000 incidents of GPS interference have been linked to China and Russia in the past five years. Ship captains have reported GPS errors showing them 20-120 miles inland when they were actually sailing off the coast of Russia in the Black Sea. Also well documented are ships suddenly disappearing from navigation screens while maneuvering in the Port of Shanghai. After GPS disruptions at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport in 2019, Israeli officials pointed to Syria, where Russia has been involved in the nation’s long-running civil war. And last summer, the United States Space Command accused Russia of testing antisatellite weaponry.

But it’s not just nation-states messing with GPS. Spoofing and jamming devices have gotten so inexpensive and easy to use that delivery drivers use them so their dispatchers won’t know they’re taking long lunch breaks or having trysts at Motel 6. Teenagers use them to foil their parents’ tracking apps and to cheat at Pokémon Go. More nefariously, drug cartels and human traffickers have spoofed border control drones. Dodgy freight forwarders may use GPS jammers or spoofers to cloak or change the time stamps on arriving cargo.

These disruptions not only affect their targets; they can also affect anyone using GPS in the vicinity.

[rslifkin]

Kamen is correct that modern phones have real GPS chips in them (and usually fairly decent ones). In my mind, the cell phone is the last resort before dropping to non-electronic nav, as at least until the battery dies, it'll generally still be usable even if the boat electronics are dead for whatever reason.