GPS jamming in Flordia

[requiem]

Originally Posted by Auspicious

There are really smart people in the world. Consider that Pactor does pretty well at negative SNR.

Thus my earlier question; GPS is also below the noise floor.

Originally Posted by Auspicious

I would have expected most SAR aircraft to have doppler DF in this day and age. USCG small boats have it, don't they?

Probably fancier. Units like the DF-430 or DF-500 (brochure), which I suspect are vaguely similar to this on the inside, for those who might want to roll their own.

[Waveguide]

Originally Posted by redneckrob

Turns out most Navy pilots spend a lot of time flying over open ocean hundreds if not thousands of miles from the nearest land based navaid. And when you're IMC it's pretty hard to see landmarks, not to mention there aren't a heck of a lot of them on the open ocean! Even as a Coast Guard pilot probably 25% of my total flight hours in my career were spent out of range of land based navaids thus depending entirely on GPS (no inertial nav), and you know all the Coastie jokes about needing stilts and all that.

You may find it interesting that in fact transoceanic aircraft did once navigate by sextant en-route. Many older aircraft still have the sextant port used to take a fix. I wasn't just being snarky there.

As I've said before, if any of us as surface guys can't point our vessel toward the nearest continent and eventually find an approach light to figure out roughly where we are without GPS then we've got no business going offshore. The world doesn't end for my sailboat when GPS goes down, no matter where I am, even if I didn't know how to do celestial nav. I wouldn't even be mildly worried except for what it would portend about the geopolitical situation. On the other hand if it happened while flying when I was an hour away from the ship I was deployed on with only an hour and a half of gas left it would definitely be a cause for concern!

BTW, as someone who spent hundreds of hours trying to DF false alarm EPIRBs/ELTs using a pretty sophisticated direction finding unit....if you think the "wing dip" method could actually get you somewhere safely in the goo then you've clearly never tried to do it for real!

I'm impressed by your experiences Redneck. I have used ADF on many occasions when beyond or below range of VORs (both feet wet and dry). KGO (810 KHz) that's just southeast of SFO for example, can be received nearly all the way to Hawaii. I don't claim to like using ADF because of its imprecision, but it does give a pilot a "pointer" besides the mag compass. I certainly don't like shooting ADF approaches, but I, and I'm sure you, have done it at least once to satisfy an IFR examiner.

In answer to the rhetorical challenge posted here: What do you do when flying and all sat nav quits out far at sea? Use your ADF (RDF for the mariners here).

My point is: there are land-based radio navigation backups available to pilots -- but not to mariners (all but the few who may still be equipped with RDF capability). A look at the USCG's long list of GPS problem reports (focusing on the "unknown interference" reports) doesn't give one the warm fuzzies over GPS reliability: https://navcen.uscg.gov/?Do=GPSReportStatus

I've flown many missions for USAF Aux. CAP, and one can get "pretty good" at using the wing-dip method with practice and familiarity with the specific aircraft: "little dip - that's the empennage, big dip - that's the wing. Getting close - detune the receiver 10 KHz." When a practice ELT wasn't available, we'd use ATIS stations. I have found two ELTs (both false alarms - of course) using that method in my own C182 that didn't have a dedicated DF receiver. But admittedly, there is a lot of meandering around in the process. I wouldn't want to do that in IMC at low altitude where there are rocks in the clouds.

[Midnight Son]

New cases of jamming of AIS/GPS:
https://www.maritime-executive.com/e...f-and-circling


Might have to go to eLoran, to avoid easy spoofing of GPS/GLONAS/GALILEO/BAIDU, report doesn't state who is doing it, but!


Best wishes

[MicHughV]

wow...what a thread....

some time ago, I was on a trip to Bermuda, when I spied a sail on the horizon heading my way.

Soon enough, a small sloop of unknown make, pulled alongside me. Sitting in the cockpit, were an elderly couple that we (myself and crew) guessed to be in their "80's".

They were both naked as jaybirds and brown as berries.

They asked for a "fix" and " directions" to Bermuda. They had apparently left south Florida some time ago.

Their only means of navigation was a schoolboy atlas, they had no instruments of any kind.

I gave them a lat/long update, a compass bearing and pointed my finger to the horizon and told them Bermuda was " thataway..."

True story !!

They thanked me, started their engine and were soon a blip on the horizon.

[a64pilot]

Originally Posted by Midnight Son

New cases of jamming of AIS/GPS:
https://www.maritime-executive.com/e...f-and-circling


Might have to go to eLoran, to avoid easy spoofing of GPS/GLONAS/GALILEO/BAIDU, report doesn't state who is doing it, but!


Best wishes

Not to be picky, but if true this would be spoofing, jamming is easy, even I could build a jammer, it just overwhelms the signal and the GPS won’t lock onto satellites and just won’t find a fix and will lose one if it had one.
Spoofing is much harder, it amounts to signals that will be received and make the GPS think it’s somewhere else, much harder to do.

[Adelie]

For those that want an RDF on their boats but don’t want to pony up for vintage hardware there’s: https://www.amazon.com/TECSUN-Pl-360...1280488&sr=8-8

[gatorman49]

How many old/timers here in SAC remember their navigators using sextant airborne? They were doing it in KC-135s in 60s.

[Midnight Son]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

Not to be picky, but if true this would be spoofing, jamming is easy, even I could build a jammer, it just overwhelms the signal and the GPS won’t lock onto satellites and just won’t find a fix and will lose one if it had one.
Spoofing is much harder, it amounts to signals that will be received and make the GPS think it’s somewhere else, much harder to do.

Okay, so it's spoofing.



Here is another from Nov. 2019
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...-location-data


Papers on it:


Aug. 2019
https://www.ship-technology.com/feat...igation-risks/

May 2015
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7271729

[MicHughV]

where is "Flordia" by the way.....I couldn't find it on a map....

[Midnight Son]

Originally Posted by MicHughV

where is "Flordia" by the way.....I couldn't find it on a map....

Your going to have to ask delmarrey that one.
Cheers

[Cpt Pat]

Originally Posted by gatorman49

How many old/timers here in SAC remember their navigators using sextant airborne? They were doing it in KC-135s in 60s.

The little plexiglass domes in the cabin overhead are still there. I once asked a young airman what it was for, and he said: "that's where we stick our handheld GPS receiver when the usual ones aboard fail." (... sigh ...)

[Capt Gill]

Originally Posted by gatorman49

How many old/timers here in SAC remember their navigators using sextant airborne? They were doing it in KC-135s in 60s.

SAC as in Strategic Air Command? Yes, I remember when flying overseas the navigator would take the sextant out of its box ( it was the navigator's kit, not the plane's) and insert the periscope attached to the sextant through an overhead opening in the cockpit to take sightings. An RDF was used for flying over land. Same with B-52's during the mid- 60's.

[Cpt Pat]

Originally Posted by Hardhead

Here's an interesting article - https://www.csoonline.com/article/33...gainst-it.html


Between satellites handling all banking and credit card transactions - and this GPS issue - the veneer of technology seems pretty thin in the wrong circumstances.

"You got that right, brother." Everyone I know who works in Information Technology is at least something of a survivalist. They know how thin and fragile that veneer really is.

[gatorman49]

I had a friend who was a KC-135 navigator, SAC, and he used to talk about shooting a fix every time they were airborne if he could do it. There is a huge dependence on new technology now. The Internet for example. I could go on and on. FedEx and UPS shipment? No cellular system, no internet, no package. Our country would be crippled in a day. Someone, at least in the Army, has figured out how delicate our comms are and have started training signals guys in the art and science (its both) of HF communications. Unfortunately, earlier, when GPS, SATCOM became the rage, someone said "lets tear all this infrastructure down." How easy would it be to cripple the USCG links to their remote HF stations, not to mention all their remote VHF sites? Unfortunately, we are in a state of terrible propagation on HF due to the sunspot cycle and comms are extremely discouraging. It wouldn't take much to find out we're completely on our own.

[Cadence]

I'm sorry if GPS jamming was some ones fear. Don't take your car out of the driveway. You might get lost.