Changes To Satellites System In Oz

[Team RABBLE]

Can anyone tellme if there has been any major changes relating to WAAS that might be affecting things in OZ ?

 

Recently a number of people have started picking up extra satellites and also digital corrections, But there is no explanation for it at the moment I use a Garmin legend and have been getting correction info, another cacher reports his magellan 600 is diplaying the initials WAAS on screen which it has not done before ????

 

hoping for an answer

 

Maffu

Team Rabble

Australia

[WH]

Can anyone tellme if there has been any major changes relating to WAAS that might be affecting things in OZ ?

 

Did some munchkins get lost?

[JohnX]

Did some munchkins get lost?

They're just angry because someone dropped a house on their sister.

[+deimos444]

Someone call Leo Singer. Quick.

[+Thrak]

Did some munchkins get lost? 

They're just angry because someone dropped a house on their sister.

You'd need a pretty big house to drop on my sister.

[+Quiggle]

Moving this to a regional forum. Hopefully it will stay on topic there!

[Team RABBLE]

Moving this to a regional forum. Hopefully it will stay on topic there!

Thanks Quiggle, I originally posted there cause the discussions re this on GCA lead me to belive no one is really sure whats happening, I thought someone stateside might of heard something in relation to it

 

Maffu

[+Tangles]

We have turned WAAS off on our unit and can't see any reason to have it turned on. For more information have a look here.

[Zytheran]

Yes clever people who know something about WAAS, we all know it can't work over here in Oz. I would be suprised if anyone in Oz has WAAS left on if it can be turned off. It's a non-feature to us.

 

...HOWEVER, enough people are now reporting that their GPS units are behaving differently from what they used to and those who happen to have WAAS turned on are now seeing their WAAS indicators lighting up and differential coerrections being shown.

Yes we know its impossible but just bear with us for a while until we have a rational reason for why different GPS units in many different places, seperated by thousands of kilometres are now behaving differently when no users have been taking any action to make them do different things.

 

Some input from Garmin and/or Magnellan techies would be appreciated as to what sort of signal and sequence of events is needed for these various GPS's to show that this 'impossible to work is Australia' system is now 'working'. We all assume it (or other similiar systems) still isn't enabled but would to know why our GPS apparently receivers think it is. So the questions are:

 

Q1 What makes a GPS receiver show WAAS?(tech explanation please)

Q2 Why are they doing it now and not in the previous months/years?

[rynd]

I may be way off here but:

 

I think waas comes from some of the birds as apossed to other differentail methods. It seems that I read somewere that the sats could be moved around to give better coverage to different parts of the world as needed. So, mabye it has something to do with Iraq. Like I said I could be way off but this is wht I'm thinking.

[+EraSeek]

You might E-Mail Garmin directly and ask your question. They are pretty good about responding. Here is what I know:

 

There are really 2 parts to WAAS. One is corrections for things like clock errors, satillite drift, relativity and such. If you can recieve a waas sat signal, those thing will help you. The second part is ionospheric corrections. For this part to help you need to be within the correction grid. Basically the US and some of Canada.

 

If I recall correctly, a recent Garmin fix made it so that if you are not in the correction area your unit will not try to use these, but I don't know if the first part will be applied to your units at your location outside the grid.

[+EraSeek]

The patch I spoke of:

 

"Improved WAAS/EGNOS satellite selection algorithm to select the satellite with the most beneficial corrections given the unit's current position. A unit will not use a WAAS/EGNOS satellite if the unit's current position is outside of a given WAAS/EGNOS satellite's service volume. "

[The 2 Dogs]

There has been a lot of discussion about this of late, but you should still keep WAAS disabled in Australia. If left on, it will only degrade your GPSr performance.

 

BTW, Hello to Tangles, and How ya Goin' Bear left.

[Zytheran]

Final guess from teh Oz discussion forum was the signal was being generated by a Japanese bird using the same frequency for *their* version of WAAS.

[Rogerthatv1]

Peoples GPS units may have been receiving WAAS signals of late and the reason was that the Japanese have been testing there new MTSAT System similar to EGNOS and WAAS in Europe and America. They were only testing for a few weeks during September but it looks as though we won't be getting it down here in Australia, well anytime soon anyways. Here is a FAQ from the MTSAT site.

 

Q. Does it mean we have an Australia wide WAAS capability that has yet to be implemented?

 

A. There are no plans to implement WAAS in Australia at this time. The Japanese are well advanced with their equivalent system (MTSAT). Australia (just) might make arrangements to provide WAAS like services using MTSAT; there are no plans at this time to pursue this possibility

 

Hope this helps.

 

Roger

[+Crew 153]

Roger that V1.

 

Thought it was too good to be true.

[+Ran off]

is eny 1 steal hear or have you all gone 2 bed

[+Ex nihil]

I don't know what is happening with WAAS in Australia, only that I know something is. I am used to seeing WAAS on my Meridian in the UK where the WAAS sat. appears in the far SW and doesn't appear to improve the EPE, I've never seen it in Australia. On 18 November 100k south of Darwin I started getting WAAS fixes and WAAS averages for the first time ever in Australia. To start with the GPS flicked 100 here, 100m over there on a clear dry day, then it crashed and turned itself off. On reboot the WAAS sat had disappeared and things went back to normal. Two hours later I got WAAS back for the rest of the day and EPEs consistently 4-5m under wet trees. today no WAAS as per usual, just the empty w marker in the sky. I've looked around the net under everything from Federal aviation to USD but not a hint. Plenty of comment that Australia will never get WAAS most seem to stem from gpsoz; I think they are about to be proved wrong. Love to know if anyone has anything better than furphys.