Sat Signal Interruption 6:05 Pst: Possible?

[+Greenjeens]

I know this sounds stupid, but tonight neither one of my GPS units would see more than one satellite for about 5+ minutes, just after 6:05 PM PST, near SF California.

Anyone else notice an outage or have I just not turned them on for some time (2 weeks and 4weeks) and they needed to rebuild a data base, possibly due to some kind of sat network upgrade?

 

GPS receivers can be blocked for national defense purposes, which made the long wait for a signal lock a bit unnerving.

Never experienced just looking at the screen and seeing only one sat locked for an extended time on my 60cs AND Emap, just wanted to check if I'm the only one experiencing this and look for a possible explanation.

 

Any web site that would track the satellite network performance and include any disruptions, as unlikely a possiblity as it is?

 

Thanks,

Greenjeens

Edited August 2, 2005 by Greenjeens

[+Sputnik 57]

Intentional disruption is always a possibility, but I would suspect a natural cause first. Solar activity is a likely suspect.

[+damel]

I did not have my GPS on at 6:05pm PST but did not notice anything strange at 8:30-9:00pm PST from the LA, CA area.

[+drag-racer]

When we used to use C-band satellite, we would have a few days in the winter and again in the summer where there was solar interference for about 5-10 minutes(on each satellite). It would completely knock out the signal. I forgot what they called it but I remember reading about it several years ago. It would hit one sat. and then be ok. You could move the dish to the next sat. and it would hit it. You could follow it all the way across the sky. It was wierd. It could be somthing like that but I was thinking it was at the end of June, not July. I dunno. Since the GPS sat's are not stationary, one of them could have passed directly between you and the sun I suppose.

 

<edit> DUH....That doesn't really explain why you could only see one sat I guess. Never mind.

Edited August 2, 2005 by drag-racer