GPS Issues on March 10

Or gremlins from the Kremlin?

I'm sure it was just you Sometimes you have to hard reset your GPS or just do cold start. Once it gets a proper sat. fix then it should work fine.

I had trouble with two units on Saturday morning while in ST Louis MO. We were going for brunch before the game to a restaurant about two miles north of Union Station and had set the Garmin for it. I had been there the year before and it is a very popular place.
All of a sudden the Garmin had me take a right turn and before I knew it I was crossing the Mississippi River into Illinois with no road or bridge shown. My dash GPS showed the same thing. We drove across the water and when we got to the other side I turned around and drove over the water again and only then did the road appear.
I then stopped the car and reset the Garmin and set the dash GPS for the restaurant. They both tried to send be back over the river.
I then stopped again and cancelled both units and under Points of Interest I found the restaurants name and said GO. It led me straight to the front door.
The Garmin has the latest map and the car last years map.

I had not fired up my handheld unit for some time (30-45 days?). It took over 15 minutes to lock into the fourth bird before it would start tracing my route. It usually maxes out at about 2 minutes at the worst... YMMV

I used my every day including last Monday between 7:30am to 5pm contantly and have no problem at all. I am in DC area and I don't think it matter.

As Solar Cycle 24 continues it is more likely that solar flares will interfere with radio communication. Like it or not, our nuvis operate by radio.

http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/

http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/advisories/201403100655_outlook.htm...

dobs108

This is a link to the Federal Aviation Administration Notice to Airman page: https://pilotweb.nas.faa.gov/PilotWeb/

From there you can do a couple of different things. For those so inclined, on the right hand side under the "Global Navigation Satellite System" is a Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) system availability. I don't know off hand if the Nuvi's use it. I know some of the handheld outdoor units do.

In the center is a heading titled "ARTCC Notices, TFRs and Special Notice Page." If you click on that it will expand. It will show a list of the various FAA traffic control centers. You can select the one(s) you are interested in and then select "View GPS NOTAMs" below the center list. You then get a bunch of items that look like this:

!GPS 03/098 (KZKC A0015/14) ZKC NAV GPS (INCLUDING WASS, GBAS, AND ADS-B) MAY NOT BE AVAILABLE WITHIN A 468NM RADIUS CENTERED AT 330701N1062540W (TCS 094044) FL400-UNL DECREASING IN AREA WITH A DECREASE IN ALTITUDE DEFINED AS: 425NM RADIUS AT FL250, 360NM RADIUS AT 10000FT, 353NM RADIUS AT 4000FT AGL, 327NM RADIUS AT 50FT AGL 1403220731-1403221400

If you look closely you can see they have hidden the lat/long (330701N1062540W - usually DDMMSSNDDDMMSSW) for the center of the circle along with the radius of the circle for different altitudes. The last set of numbers is time range (start and end)- Year (14), Month (03), Day (22), Time (0731)

These NOTAMS will usually drop off as soon as they expire. When I just checked there were 53 GPS NOTAMS listed, though some may be duplicates if they impact multiple facilities.

Henry

The GPS worked fine earlier that day and has worked fine since. No reset required. Not sure what caused it.