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

[North26West80]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

GPS is here to stay and unfortunately sextants etc are destined for a trash can of navigational history.



Dave

Would you also agree that airlines are here to stay and sailboats are destined for the trash can of transportation history? After all, airlines are far cheaper, faster, safer and convenient.

[RTB]

Flying from point A to point B is about mass transportation. Sailing your boat from Florida to Hawaii is different. GPS makes that journey easier, and safer. Plus, aviation uses the latest available means of navigation for the same reason, doesn't it? Last I checked, pilots don't use too many paper charts. I see you are a jetpilot. Seriously?

[Bergovoy]

Originally Posted by callmecrazy

I usually charge 30-35 an hour for cutting grass (and any other landscaping or handyman work) and that's less than any landscape company in town. The only people charging less than $20/h are neighborhood kids.

Just Sayin...

Im assuming you are a contractor, (legit or handyman), and that $35 per hour is your time, and truck and equipment, etc...

if you were to break that down to 'union or govt accounting'

you end up getting nothing per hour.

my labor rates are strictly labor only..then on top of the hourly rate you would get time off for vacation, personal, holiday, federal, and state, and health and pension and all that..

typcially, tha adds up to about 40% of the hourly rate...

so if you were to make $10 per hour, then you would actually get $14/hr, or you would get teh $10, plus the actual benefits.. and obviously only union shops actually have those real benefits, so NON union workers get teh benefiots in cash..

so thier plan tohire only union, backfired, and non union workers actually get more then them..

anyways, I am glad you can get $35 even if it is for your equipment and insurance and all that... I trulyhope you live in an area that is worth while for you at that wage... I dont mean to say or imply anything about lower payed workers and or specific trades...

my point would be the same or worst if i used electricians, as they are getting upwards of $45 per hour to screw in light bulbs, (ok, they do other stuff then that )

[goboatingnow]

Would you also agree that airlines are here to stay and sailboats are destined for the trash can of transportation history? After all, airlines are far cheaper, faster, safer and convenient.

Sailboats have been completely consigned to the trashcan of transportation history, a once, global, skilled and beautiful form of mass transport is now the preseve of a bunch of jumped up overweight, over paid "yotties" sailing around in tupperware.

Dave

[North26West80]

Originally Posted by RTB

Last I checked, pilots don't use too many paper charts. I see you are a jetpilot. Seriously?

Yes seriously; a pilot for 40+ years. And in 1980 using a Apple II I wrote the first commercial computer software for general aviation flight planning. Later for the original IBM PC and what followed for the next decade. In about 1985 my business associate partnered with Jeppensen to design and build the first FAA approved in-cockpit laptop with electronic charts. I fly a so called glass cockpit airplane for a living now and I can assure you there are still plenty of paper charts around.

Since this topic is about GPS and what if it fails, aviation has pioneered this issue and it is an ongoing debate there too. I fly Gulfstreams which use GPS but does not rely on it. The navigation computer constantly tunes all available ground stations and computes position three different ways and compares that to GPS which will be ignored if it does not agree. In addition, if all else fails, there are three laser inertial navigation systems and only the two that agree most closely will be used by the nav computer. All of the above is automatic and independently duplicated for pilot and copilot and then cross-checked again and on separate aircraft power sources with multiple alternative power sources and the INS has its own battery backup. This is a fairly typical setup for most modern jets, so it just goes to show where aviation's head is at regarding reliance on GPS and redundancy.

So, back to the original question of this thread, what is your backup plan if GPS fails?

[svHyLyte]

Regardng back-ups for failed GPS, there is a certain irony in the fact that the Obamanation decided to dump LORAN and eLORAN last year to save roughly a million bucks a year, and (almost) everyone on this site proclaimed so loudly that LORAN was a waste given how "reliable" and advanced GPS is/was. Ironic indeed, eh?

[John A]

Originally Posted by svHyLyte

Regardng back-ups for failed GPS, there is a certain irony in the fact that the Obamanation decided to dump LORAN and eLORAN last year to save roughly a million bucks a year, and (almost) everyone on this site proclaimed so loudly that LORAN was a waste given how "reliable" and advanced GPS is/was. Ironic indeed, eh?

Oh Good Lord!

LORAN was scheduled to be discontinued years ago and was only kept alive because of the fishing industry.

Put a cork in your polictial rants on this forum..

[svHyLyte]

Originally Posted by John A

Oh Good Lord!

LORAN was scheduled to be discontinued years ago and was only kept alive because of the fishing industry.

Put a cork in your polictial rant of annual foreign trade s on this forum..

Gosh John, you thought my posst was a political rant? You think LORAN was only kept alive because of the "fishing industry" (which your intonationation seemed to imply the pejorative)? FYI old son, the commercial "fishing industry" in the US is a $31.5 billon/annum industry that generates upwards of $12 billion of foreign trade revenue per annum. To my mind that is not a inconsequential user. As for other, related matters, the USCG itself was in favor of continuing LORAN and over 40,000 "public comments" were received in favor of the system (all fishermen?) Furthermore, the GAO's 2008-'09 budget report stated, interaliea:

“It is uncertain whether the Air Force will be able to acquire new satellites in time to maintain current GPS service without interruption. If not, some military operations and some civilian users could be adversely affected.” and "... the current [GPS] program is about $870 million over budget and the launch of its first satellite has been delayed to November 2009, almost three years late. [And, as of January 2011, still not launched, sic]

So now, rather than a reliable, simple, alternative to GPS, we are discussing Celestial?

"Frankly Scarlett, I don't give a damn." I learned Celestial in the early '60's and did quite well with it until the early '90's and am quite happy to do so again. But those that don't know an LOP from a BFD are SOL if the GPS is DNS...to use the colloquial, eh?

[John A]

You totality missed the reason of my post. Your referance that the demise of Loran was a knee jerk of the current admistration (that the Obamanation decided to dump Loran last year) was the comment that I took issue with.

It is my understanding the Loran signal comes from one primary radio station located inland (on a mountain top in Nevada for the west coast) and two secondary stations located on the coast. And is receivable to a distance of 600 miles from the coast, at least that was the case when I used Loran to sail down the coast of Washington and Oregon. Every 25 miles the secondary stations would have to be manualy changed in your receiver as each lighthouse we approched sent a different signal. The Loran receiver measures the wave length of the signal and indentfies the distance from the station and was plotted on a paper chart. You ever see a chart with three sets of lines spaced every half inch apart running at an angle to the lat lon lines? That's a Loran chart.
Distances further than 600 miles from land were unable to receive the Loran signal due to the curvature of the earth. Airplanes had a easier time.
What about Sat Nav? I've used that also.

I perfer to use GPS. Your preferance may very.

If you wish to use my post for your own agenda that's ok but I wish you'd refrain from calling me cute names.

[svHyLyte]

John—

Six hundred miles--or even sixty miles--from shore I do not need electronic navigation. But if I am trying to make my way to the southwest channel to Key West from Smith Shoal Light at 0430 after a rainy, windy exhausting night spent dodging squalls in the Gulf, a reliable electronic navigation device is the difference between getting to port in time for breakfast or laying hove too on a northwest track waiting for morning twilight in hopes of shooting a round of stars or feeling my way along following bottom contours until I can pick up the first range. It is near shore where the merit, and danger, of electronic navigation comes to the fore. Although “antiquated” the LORAN system was very reliable, and even more so the CG’s recommended eLORAN system which would have eliminated manual chain selection, even for many legacy systems with reasonably simple software up-grades. Once corrections were entered, our own Raynav 550 consistently gave us positional data within 20 yards of positions reported by our WASS enabled Garmins (3). If I learned anything from my years in the military and subsequently as a professional engineer, it was the advisability, if not absolute need, of redundancy.

The foregoing not withstanding, in my (perhaps biased) view, I see a certain (bitter) irony in the up-roar concerning the (often forewarned) failures of GPS now that its inexpensive, reliable, back-up has been dispensed with. Never-the-less, there is no cheese down this side-track and so…

Here Homer nods.

PS: Cute Names? Read John, Read. Somehow "Gone with the Wind" seems appros, non?!?

[Rod Headlee]

Juat follow the jet trails.

[John A]

svHyLyte,

kind regards,
John

[Captain Bill]

Originally Posted by North26West80

After all, airlines are far cheaper, faster, safer and convenient.

Apparently you haven't had to fly in the back for quite a while. Unless your destination is a major hub, you can probably beat the airlines there by driving on any trip under 600 miles. I can certainly beat the airlines in my Cessna on any trip under 600 miles in my Cessna if not going to a major hub and I don't even have to be strip searched. I noticed that you left comfortable out of your list.

Comparing airlines to sailing vessels is ridiculous. One is a form of mass transportation; one is a form of entertainment. One sails because one likes sailing and all that that entails. I don't know anyone that actually likes flying on a airliner any more. To fly on a airliner, you are first herded like cattle to get checked in, charged extra just to bring a suitcase, herded into another line where you are treated like a criminal, then wait for your very often late flight, sometimes to sit on the tarmac for hours waiting to take off, being stuck in a very uncomfortable seat often with crying inconsolable children nearby for entertainment, charged extra for the earphones to drown out the crying children, starved because the airplane carry’s no food, and then just for extra thrills sometimes one gets to sit on the tarmac at the destination waiting hours for an open gate. All this and if you ask to get off the airplane you are arrested and charged with a felony. Flying on an airliner these days is simply torture to be endured and I only do it when there are no other options.


Perhaps a better comparison is to private aircraft, but there are not many of them around that I can sleep 6 people in, has cooking facilities, showers, and that I can actually stand up and walk around in for less than a quarter million dollars. I doubt that private aviation where you fly your own plane is any safer than private boating.

[bathharbor]

There is a Book called Emergency navagtion in which tell how to navigate with only simple items without even a compass. It was interesting and informitive. The forward in the book was written by DR David Lewis which attempted to be the first to singlehand the southern hemisphere Back in the 1970's- he got pitchpoled and lost his mast in the most distant place in the ocean from land .

[Bergovoy]

Technolog - 'Death by GPS': Could it happen to you?