Challenge: US Turns Off GPS in Florida - What Is Your Backup ?

[Captain Bill]

Originally Posted by S/V Alchemy

Putting aside the debate over accuracy and the point that GPS can be and has been "turned off" for reasons that are either known or remain a mystery, the stars, sun and moon cannot be turned off.

Maybe they aren't turned off but they are very effectively jammed on every cloudy day.

[bathharbor]

All you new guys with the sextants- I was thinking of pulling out my lodestone...

[CarinaPDX]

Military tests of GPS jamming are nothing new; like all things military there are exercises to practice the techniques, and not just in the US. When I was in the UK I picked up a Navtex message warning of GPS outages in an area off the coast, courtesy of the Royal Navy. Brief outages, always warned by local notices and through Navtex, shouldn't rattle cruisers. Of course losing GPS without warning for an unknown time is a little unnerving, but it would be unwise to not be prepared for that possibility. We lived by DR and CN until LORAN became affordable, and they still work fine if not as easily, quickly, or accurately. With the low cost of radar we are much better off than in those days.

I was underway in the Markermeer in the Netherlands in 1999 when the GPS week number rolled over and my GPS stopped working. It was the talk of the marina that night but I don't recall hearing of anyone coming to grief as a result.

I would go so far as to say if someone feels they would be unable to safely continue if the GPS failed then they should either practice living without GPS or consider swallowing the hook.

[beowulfborealis]

You may laugh, but those Navstar satellites are getting pretty old. They were built long before anyone was concerned about space weather and solar flares. The solar maximum should occur in 2012 and if a large solar flare were to launch toward earth, the resulting ion storm will probably fry 1/3 or even more of all the satellites in orbit. Russia, China, and India are currently putting their own GPS systems in orbit and they are hardened systems.

My advice would be to know how to navigate without anything that requires electricity.

[S/V Alchemy]

Originally Posted by Captain Bill

Maybe they aren't turned off but they are very effectively jammed on every cloudy day.

I'm a "glass half-full" kind of navigator, I guess.

[Captain Bill]

Originally Posted by S/V Alchemy

I'm a "glass half-full" kind of navigator, I guess.

I can accept that, but the engineers amongst us would tell us the glass is neither half full or half empty, it's simply twice as big as it needs to be.

[travler37]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

WOW! The army (or whoever) is like some biblical figure -- can make the sun stand still??? Don't know what you think, but I REALLY doubt that they or anyone else can do something to make celestial navigation "20+ miles off".

Hogwash.

Jim

Let me clarify that,
My GPS and Celestil shots were consistantly 20+ miles off.I can useally get withing 5 miles.Reason was our military sends out a false gps siginal.Then compensates for it in there vehicles.
thank you
Mark

[SabreKai]

Just for yuks, how many of you have hardened electrical systems? How is your radio, GPS, radar, chartplotter, am/fm stereo etc protected from EMP?

Given the sorry state of the world today, I'm curious as to why one of our unfriendly neighbors hasn't popped one off yet.

I'll stick to my compass, charts, sextant and tables. I do have GPS but I hardly ever use it. Of course for now I'm sailing on Lake Ontario so have no need to. But once I hit the Atlantic I'll stay with what I know and use GPS only as a check.

Sabre

[Bergovoy]

if you had any time to prepare and shut off your electronics prior to an emp, then you can be safe, unless the satelittes are affected ... hmmm


if an emp or other wmd attack then it wont matter...

our world as we know it will be over...

water will be the first comodity to die/kill over...

medicines and technical knowledge will be highly valued...

food will eventually become a problem...


most people will end up killing themselves from the shock of change and living 'wild'...

all the mall rats will succumb to mass suicide...


oh well, I could go on in that wild fantasy... I think cruisers maybe best suited to survive and find everything/anything they need and want...

[boasun]

Boo Hoo! Boo Hoo! You guys without GPS or Loran. But if you step back into the past century or two you could use Coastal Piloting & Celestial Navigation. Ha Ha!!

[Bergovoy]

i read an article a few months back in regular news about how gps was making us dumber.. that humans need to use parts of the brain to reason and explore, and that if we realy on something or someone telling us where to go, that we will evolve less intelligent...

[John A]

Books are becoming obsolete, Cursive writing is no longer taught in school, blackboards are a thing of the past. Twitter and ipad/texting are destroying written English.

Ain't progress wonderful?

[Bergovoy]

spelling is no longer needed...

and soon math will be a thing of the past when kids figure out how to use excel

[SaucySailoress]

Originally Posted by micheck

In addition to the reasoning question, how are they shutting off GPS in Florida and not Georgia or Idaho or ...?

Hmm, someone didn't follow the link at the start of the thread!

Originally Posted by Bill_E

It is possible that someone in the Dept of Defense could be testing some kind of "jamming" or misinformation hardware

Bill

We regularly had our GPS jammed back in 2003/4 when the Yanks invaded Iraq. Perhaps someone is now planning to invade Florida??? And why would they do that? Have you got any resources worth stealing???

Incidentally - the GPS only jammed our position - it didn't stop the electronic charts on the GPS working so there was no need to get the paper charts out... however, we had to use our eyes and ears to establish our position, rather than just confirming our position....

[SaucySailoress]

Originally Posted by John A

Books are becoming obsolete, Cursive writing is no longer taught in school, blackboards are a thing of the past. Twitter and ipad/texting are destroying written English.

Ain't progress wonderful?

You sound just like my Moth-in-Law. Sorry for ranting off-topic, but believe it or not, we do still teach our kids how to read, and write, and even join up (I bet most kids in my primary classes have better handwriting than yours).

Blackboards are past history because IWBs are better. Social networking is enjoyable (we are doing it now), so why shouldn't teachers tap into this, and use it as a very effective tool?

Would you have us stick with Victorian (PM me if you don't know what they are) teaching techniques in the classroom and ignore innovations in elearning?

It's largely thanks to us that you can take your kids on a boat, show them how to use a GPS, and they will become safer navigators than many an old-time yachtmaster with his pencil and ruler (until, of course they block the GPS)!

Oh, and I might add, it was the old folks around here who developed computer technology and thrust it upon us whilst we were still kids.... I was only ten when I saw my first ZX81.....