Garmin GPS - Satellites 48 and 51

Author

Satellites 48 and 51

Ramon

2006-10-27, 3:33 pm

I am in the Northwest and it seems that recently satellites 48 and 51 (as
shown on my eTrex) have been giving pretty good signals.
Are satellites now fully operational, outting out all the necessary data
(for handheld gps)? Does anyone know where I could more details? I tired
Google, but could find any usablle info...Thanks.

Fred McKenzie

2006-10-28, 3:33 pm

In article <Jkt0h.201231$R63.197298@pd7urf1no>,
"Ramon" <rvsamson@hotmail.com> wrote:

> I am in the Northwest and it seems that recently satellites 48 and 51 (as
> shown on my eTrex) have been giving pretty good signals.
> Are satellites now fully operational, outting out all the necessary data
> (for handheld gps)? Does anyone know where I could more details? I tired
> Google, but could find any usablle info...Thanks.

Ramon-

I understand these high-number satellites are geostationary over the
equator, and used to provide an error correction factor for the Wide
Area Augmentation System (WAAS). Apparently your eTrex has that feature.

I did a search for "WAAS GPS" and came up with several sites with
information, such as
http://gpsinformation.net/exe/waas.html which has links to other sources.

I sometimes receive one of them on my Nuvi. However, I suspect it is
just for "show". Someone did a test with common GPS units that have the
WAAS option and found that it didn't actually improve accuracy even if
the GPS claimed a smaller error!

Fred

apreslin@gmail.com

2006-10-28, 10:33 pm

Ramon wrote:
> I am in the Northwest and it seems that recently satellites 48 and 51 (as
> shown on my eTrex) have been giving pretty good signals.
> Are satellites now fully operational, outting out all the necessary data
> (for handheld gps)? Does anyone know where I could more details? I tired
> Google, but could find any usablle info...Thanks.

The following link is what will tell you the status. Apparently last
Monday #48 was possibly going to go from test mode to operational mode.
But they do warn you that the schedule is subject to change. #51 is
operating in test mode, and isn't supposed to go operational for a
while, possibly until spring from reports I have read.

If your receiver is picking up the satellites in test mode, it should
work, but they may sporatically go in and out of service at any time.

Usually the following document is updated weekly, but it seems that
they didn't update it this week.

http://www.nstb.tc.faa.gov/incoming..._Geo_Status.pdf

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