WAAS in Europe

[Guest dylanhayes]

Sorry to ask what might be a frequently asked question by those of us without a sophisticated understanding of GPS internals.

 

But, does anybody know if some equivilent of WAAS is planned for outside of the US? Most newer units can do WAAS which allows accuracy down to 1 meter, but of course at present this is only available in the US, and from what I gather the coverage is not great there.

If there is some similar system planned will it be compatible with units which are WAAS enabled.

 

Sorry to ask, but my attempt to find an answer was thwarted by the fact the information about WAAS when from simple to stratospherically beyond my understanding very quickely and all I was left knowing is it works in the US, and other similar systems may be planned.

[Guest Monz]

As I understand it there is the capability for European WAAS as in there is a "bird" up there... just that it is in test mode at the moment so the signal cannot be relied upon. Most UK vista owners will tell you that the accuracy goes out with WAAS enabled.

 

Hope this helps

[Guest Moss Trooper]

What we have over here is EGNOS or European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service.

 

Check this out for more info http://www.esa.int/export/esaSA/GGG63950NDC_navigation_0.html

 

Moss the Boss.. he de man sorta

[Guest Moss Trooper]

What we have over here is EGNOS or European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service.

 

Check this out for more info http://www.esa.int/export/esaSA/GGG63950NDC_navigation_0.html

 

Moss the Boss.. he de man sorta

[Guest Beth]

There is a good article at http://celia.mehaffey.com/dale/dgps.htm which explains WAAS about halfway down the page, and how to enable and use it on a Garmin unit. I have used WAAS both in Europe and also in Canada. Biggest problem I have found there is keeping the WAAS birds visible long enough to get all the correction info as they are all above the equator. As Monz has said, accuracy usually goes down on the Vista, as the unit starts using only corrected satelites, even if they are in lousy positions. In Canada I did get down to 3m accuracy, but to do that I sat the unit on the roof of a pick-up truck with a clear view south and waited. To be honest 10m accuracy is just fine for most things, but was good to finally get the accuracy down that low, was starting to doubt whether it really worked!

[Guest Kimrobin]

QUOTE>quote:

---

Originally posted by Richard & Beth:

To be honest 10m accuracy is just fine for most things, but was good to finally get the accuracy down that low, was starting to doubt whether it really worked!

---

 

And it's pretty useless for geocaching purposes unless the person who planted the cache used the same system.