GPS outage?
Readers of my newsletter are reporting a strange interruption of their GPS reception yesterday -- mainly in the northeastern US but also in SC. This is my first day on this mailing list -- for a while -- so I don't know if this has been discussed or reported previously. Has anyone else noticed this? We are trying to find out is there was some sort of system-wide issue or maybe if it was local interference possibly caused by those GPS jammers that some of the truckers have been using.
By the way, my newsletter is mostly about Paging, and we use GPS/DOs to keep the paging transmitters (in simulcast mode) synchronized and on frequency.
Best regards,
Brad Dye, K9IQY
Editor, Wireless Messaging News
P.O. Box 266
Fairfield, IL 62837 USA
Telephone: 618-599-7869
Skype: braddye
http://www.braddye.com
Hi
My guess is that if GPS was down over the northeastern part of the US for most of a day, you would not have to check with TimeNuts. It would be on the evening news. Since your typical mobile GPS needs more sats than a timing receiver, they should drop out first. When the entire car / truck / bus / ambulance driving population of a couple dozen states all gets lost at once - you'll hear about it…..
Bob
On Sep 4, 2013, at 6:14 PM, Brad Dye brad@braddye.com wrote:
Readers of my newsletter are reporting a strange interruption of their GPS reception yesterday -- mainly in the northeastern US but also in SC. This is my first day on this mailing list -- for a while -- so I don't know if this has been discussed or reported previously. Has anyone else noticed this? We are trying to find out is there was some sort of system-wide issue or maybe if it was local interference possibly caused by those GPS jammers that some of the truckers have been using.
By the way, my newsletter is mostly about Paging, and we use GPS/DOs to keep the paging transmitters (in simulcast mode) synchronized and on frequency.
Best regards,
Brad Dye, K9IQY
Editor, Wireless Messaging News
P.O. Box 266
Fairfield, IL 62837 USA
Telephone: 618-599-7869
Skype: braddye
http://www.braddye.com
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On 09/05/2013 03:37 AM, Bob Camp wrote:
Hi
My guess is that if GPS was down over the northeastern part of the US for most of a day, you would not have to check with TimeNuts. It would be on the evening news. Since your typical mobile GPS needs more sats than a timing receiver, they should drop out first. When the entire car / truck / bus / ambulance driving population of a couple dozen states all gets lost at once - you'll hear about it…..
Each bird "illuminate" about one third of the earth surface, so if about
one third of the constellation would be off line it would have been a
major event and seen over more than half the earth as a drop too. I see
no strange notes in the GPS OPS Advisory, just the normal maintenance
with nominally 32 birds on air.
There are ways by which GPS reception is disrupted, for instance by
other transmitters. A few other causes like solare flares is said to
cause it, and I think I've heard about issues around vulcanos.
Cheers,
Magnus
Hi
Ok, I'll also mention that I haven't heard of any major volcanic eruptions in the north eastern US. GPS outages would not make it on the news if there was a major Volcano doing it's thing outside Cleveland ….
If a sat went down, and did so in a pathogenic fashion, you would have an issue world wide. To keep the problem local, some sort of local jamming is about the only thing that could do it. To take out an area like New England all at once you would need a fairly high flying platform with a fairly powerful transmitter.
Bob
On Sep 5, 2013, at 2:29 AM, Magnus Danielson magnus@rubidium.dyndns.org wrote:
On 09/05/2013 03:37 AM, Bob Camp wrote:
Hi
My guess is that if GPS was down over the northeastern part of the US for most of a day, you would not have to check with TimeNuts. It would be on the evening news. Since your typical mobile GPS needs more sats than a timing receiver, they should drop out first. When the entire car / truck / bus / ambulance driving population of a couple dozen states all gets lost at once - you'll hear about it…..
Each bird "illuminate" about one third of the earth surface, so if about
one third of the constellation would be off line it would have been a
major event and seen over more than half the earth as a drop too. I see
no strange notes in the GPS OPS Advisory, just the normal maintenance
with nominally 32 birds on air.
There are ways by which GPS reception is disrupted, for instance by
other transmitters. A few other causes like solare flares is said to
cause it, and I think I've heard about issues around vulcanos.
Cheers,
Magnus
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Another scenario that would result in many reports from an area like
New England is if only about a dozen people happened to be affected by
one truck that was carrying a jammer. These dozen people would
complain and from those few complaints you'd say "we have a dozen
reports from all over New England of GPS outage." I suspect this is
the kind of thing that happened.
Each satellite serves the entire Earth so a system failure would be
global, not regional. I suspect the problem is that the data were
collected from people who self-report a problem. You only heard from
them and not the millions of others who had no problem. A rather
extreme case of sample bias. A better method is to pool random GPS
users and ask if their systems work. This would be hard work but now
we have GPS inside cell phones so the polling can be automated.
On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 4:08 AM, Bob Camp lists@rtty.us wrote:
To keep the problem local, some sort of local jamming is about the only thing that could do it.
To take out an area like New England all at once you would need a fairly high flying platform with a fairly powerful transmitter.
--
Chris Albertson
Redondo Beach, California
On 09/05/2013 01:08 PM, Bob Camp wrote:
Hi
Ok, I'll also mention that I haven't heard of any major volcanic eruptions in the north eastern US. GPS outages would not make it on the news if there was a major Volcano doing it's thing outside Cleveland ….
Indeed. I think the problems could occur even when there is no eruption.
However, my memory is fuzzy on the details.
If a sat went down, and did so in a pathogenic fashion, you would have an issue world wide.
Indeed. It would also show up in the GPS operational logs.
To keep the problem local, some sort of local jamming is about the only thing that could do it. To take out an area like New England all at once you would need a fairly high flying platform with a fairly powerful transmitter.
Well, it could also be deployment of a system that does the same thing
spread out.
Cheers,
Magnus
Hi
You could indeed deploy a few thousand gizmos and have a pretty significant impact. I'm not at all sure that would be the easier task ….
Bob
On Sep 5, 2013, at 4:18 PM, Magnus Danielson magnus@rubidium.dyndns.org wrote:
On 09/05/2013 01:08 PM, Bob Camp wrote:
Hi
Ok, I'll also mention that I haven't heard of any major volcanic eruptions in the north eastern US. GPS outages would not make it on the news if there was a major Volcano doing it's thing outside Cleveland ….
Indeed. I think the problems could occur even when there is no eruption.
However, my memory is fuzzy on the details.
If a sat went down, and did so in a pathogenic fashion, you would have an issue world wide.
Indeed. It would also show up in the GPS operational logs.
To keep the problem local, some sort of local jamming is about the only thing that could do it. To take out an area like New England all at once you would need a fairly high flying platform with a fairly powerful transmitter.
Well, it could also be deployment of a system that does the same thing
spread out.
Cheers,
Magnus
time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com
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and follow the instructions there.
Guys-
Please forgive me for the BW......
My day-job mgmt. has also asked me today if I knew of any US regional GPS
"issues", as we too have had several reports of
our customers systems going into Rb hold-over on or about the 4th of Sept.
Only fact I can find is that SVN 4 was noted as
an issue via: http://adn.agi.com/SatelliteOutageCalendar/SOFCalendar.aspx
But that can't be the root cause.
At work, I am now the "go-to-guy" for ANYTHING GPS related since I'm a
Time-Nut and we have customers who depend on
GPS timing for their comm. systems; and for reasons I cannot go into here
on this reflector.
So like Brad.....I too have anecdotal reports of issues. The sky is not
falling, nor was it a serious issue.
However if anyone has info that they cannot share via the reflector, a
private reply would be much appreciated.
I am not looking for info that cannot be openly shared. But if anyone has
hint or clue, I would much appreciate it.
BTW....my GPS receivers here in VA seemed to have had no issue. Go figure.
-Brian, WA1ZMS
-----Original Message-----
From: time-nuts-bounces@febo.com [mailto:time-nuts-bounces@febo.com] On
Behalf Of Brad Dye
Sent: Wednesday, September 04, 2013 6:14 PM
To: Time Nuts
Subject: [time-nuts] GPS outage?
Readers of my newsletter are reporting a strange interruption of their GPS
reception yesterday -- mainly in the northeastern US but also in SC. This is
my first day on this mailing list -- for a while -- so I don't know if this
has been discussed or reported previously. Has anyone else noticed this? We
are trying to find out is there was some sort of system-wide issue or maybe
if it was local interference possibly caused by those GPS jammers that some
of the truckers have been using.
By the way, my newsletter is mostly about Paging, and we use GPS/DOs to keep
the paging transmitters (in simulcast mode) synchronized and on frequency.
Best regards,
Brad Dye, K9IQY
Editor, Wireless Messaging News
P.O. Box 266
Fairfield, IL 62837 USA
Telephone: 618-599-7869
Skype: braddye
http://www.braddye.com
time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to
https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
and follow the instructions there.
Can anyone estimate how many GPS jammers there are in the New England
area? There just might be "thousands". I don't know.
I think the reason most people are not effected is that most GPS user
are mobile and if they are near a jammer it is only for a few minutes
On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 4:59 PM, Bob Camp lists@rtty.us wrote:
Hi
You could indeed deploy a few thousand gizmos and have a pretty significant impact. I'm not at all sure that would be the easier task ….
--
Chris Albertson
Redondo Beach, California
Hello All,
Not to go off on a tangent here but are there 'time nuts' distributed
around the globe in such a way as we'd know about an outage?
One good hiccup by the Sun and it could cause an outage - correct? (
http://www.spaceweather.com)
It wasn't so long ago we were told the Iridium 'Flares' were all that were
left of Motorola's project and now you can go buy a phone here:
http://iridium.com/default.aspx
Regards,
John W.
On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 8:06 PM, Chris Albertson
albertson.chris@gmail.comwrote:
Can anyone estimate how many GPS jammers there are in the New England
area? There just might be "thousands". I don't know.
I think the reason most people are not effected is that most GPS user
are mobile and if they are near a jammer it is only for a few minutes
On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 4:59 PM, Bob Camp lists@rtty.us wrote:
Hi
You could indeed deploy a few thousand gizmos and have a pretty
significant impact. I'm not at all sure that would be the easier task ….
--
Chris Albertson
Redondo Beach, California
time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com
To unsubscribe, go to
https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
and follow the instructions there.