On Thu, 12 Oct 2006 00:53:25 +0000, Tom Francis wrote:

After doing some searching, I've found complaints from the
Agricultural community in the US and in Australia. Apparently the
outages are raising some problems with harvesting wheat, corn and
such (GPS is used for positioning and reporting yields per acre plus
other arcane agricultural stuff) and for planting (like in Australia).

Curioiuser and curiouser.

I'm wondering. Is this a recent problem, or, perhaps, an ongoing problem
that you are just noticing?

The complaints are due to some unhealthy satellites. At one point a few
weeks ago, there were three that were out of commission at the same
time.

At certain times during the day in certain environments, you wouldn't
be able to get a fix due to the lack of satellites.


After doing some searching, I've found complaints from the
Agricultural community in the US and in Australia. Apparently the
outages are raising some problems with harvesting wheat, corn and
such (GPS is used for positioning and reporting yields per acre plus
other arcane agricultural stuff) and for planting (like in Australia).

Curioiuser and curiouser.

I'm wondering. Is this a recent problem, or, perhaps, an ongoing problem
that you are just noticing?

I first noticed it about three weeks ago when I was on a fly fishing
guiding trip at Webster Lake. We were fishing "Small Mouth Alley"
south of Goat Island right smack in the middle of the Middle Pond when
I looked at the GPS and there was a "NO FIX" indicator. I reset the
GPS, but no joy - brought up the sat screen and no signals, etc. Then
they came back and I had the GPS back again.

Couple of days later, I was at Quaddick Reservoir same thing
happened.

That weekend again - this time I was just off Fisher's Island near
Race Rock - same thing.

I was off the water for a few days, then out in Narraganset Bay same
thing - open water, same problem.

It kept happening, but the latest was last Friday on the CT River near
Portland.

I figured I was having problems with the GPS systems, but I have two
and both were doing the same thing - I figured maybe a software or
receiver glitch and I'd research it after I put the boats up.

It all happens late morning or early afternoon. I looked for sunspot
activity as that can cause problems, but there weren't any reports of
serious flares.

The tonight, I received this message from one of the list members, a
couple of other members chimed in with replies to emails from Garmin,
Raymarine and Lowrance.

Which is what started me looking around. There are hints of this and
that, including the Aussie ABC site in September complaining about
loss of GPS signals, some car groups and what I've been relating.

The USCG Nav Center reports all current birds up and running.

There was a report of the Chinese spotting US GPS sats with lasers a
couple of weeks ago that I read somewhere - can't remember where.

So that's the story to this point.