Wacky readings today

[Team GeoLogix]

Anyone else find they were getting very inconsistant and erradict readings today?

[+Couparangus]

Negative - my eMap was working like a champ!

[+GroundClutter]

Nope. Did 4 caches today, and coords were pretty consistant, and with the usual level of accuracy.

 

Step away from the tupperware!

[Team GeoLogix]

Hmm, very strange indeed. I just read your posts here and thought, well, maybe it was just my GPSr but then I read this post on alt.rec.geocaching -

 

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I experienced a funny thing yesterday: while driving in the

Nürnberg/Erlangen area (Frankonia, Germany), I switched from Digimap to

Cetus GPS and back. Out of the blue, the GPS reception is all screwed

up: I do receive a position, but the values jump aound, about 10 to 20

miles off the real position where I am. The situation didn't improve the

whole evening. This morning, I switch the GPS on and it works fine.

 

Now, do I get paranoid or did the satellites in my area transmit faulty

signals yesterday evening? What I find a bit confusing: I did a reset of

the Magellan GPS companion, I did a reset of the Palm M515, I did use my

daughter's Palm M505, and the results where still identical. So, just

waiting a night cleared the problem, I didn't really do anything to

correct the problem (other than removing the batteries of the Magellan

over night).

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[+res2100]

I too receive strange satelite signals on my GPS on Saturday...at around 2:30pm EST on Lake Ontario...I was out in the open and all of a sudden it put me about 50 kms away to where I actually was...this went on for about 10 minutes. I have never experienced this before...very strange.

 

http://ca.geocities.com/geocachingcanada <---NEW!

http://ca.geocities.com/rsab2100/pond.html

[+Couparangus]

I think whacky readings once in a while are par-for-the course with handheld GPS receivers. In my 3 years of GPS ownership I've seen crazy things on the screen about 20 times. One not unlike yours where I was walking through York Reg forest yet my GPS insisted I was travelling in a straight WSW line at 30,000ft through northern Quebec. Oh yes, I was amused to see I was "walking" at over 300 miles per hour. This went on for a solid five minutes before it resolved itself. I think once a number of Rx errors hit the GPS and it determines a incorrect valid position, it can take some time for it to re-adjust to where you really are. There are papers that describe in great detail how a GPS determines where you are and it is appreciably more involved that I had initially thought! I'm quite happy to be an appliance operator of GPS but have the appreciation that it isn't without some flaws.