Nov 04 2007

GPS vulnerable to solar flares

Published by at 10:22 under Sailing

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Solar Flare - NASA photoWho’d a thunk it – the sun may drown out your GPS.

The earth experiences bursts of energy in the GPS frequency due to solar flares. These flares vary in intensity, ebbing and flowing in an 11 year cycle. Right now we’re entering a period of increasing intensity, however, if there are any outages in the next few years, they’ll most likely be brief – on the order of 15 minutes. In 2011, there might be wide spread outages of more serious magnitude when the flares become most intense.

Even if we were not anticipating solar flares, the prudent sailor still records fixes on a regular basis, particularly when sailing out of sight of land or in unfamiliar waters. Our practice aboard Sancerre is pretty simple: we record our GPS lat/long every half hour. If the GPS dies from solar flare or the batteries give out, we’re ready to start our DR track.

If your DR skills are rusty – or you never acquired any – sign up for ASA 105 which we’ll be offering on Sundays starting 13 Jan.

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