NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: GPS out by miles
From: Don Seltzer
Date: 2016 Nov 1, 21:40 -0400
From: Don Seltzer
Date: 2016 Nov 1, 21:40 -0400
Initialization error? Turning on the gps unit and not allowing time for full satellite acquisition and ephemeris download.
Perhaps it was in 1999 with a unit that couldn't handle the week rollover.
Don Seltzer
I recently heard a story about GPS fallibility. A sailor related his enthusiasm for celestial navigation. He said that he didn't trust GPS because "sometimes it's wrong by miles". He described sailing off the coast of North Carolina and he knew where he was, but the GPS placed him five miles from that location. I think there's a lesson here... What might that be? Of course without interrogating him in detail, which would have been rude, we can't really be sure what was happening here. What are some of the possibilities??
Frank Reed
