Poor GPS reception... did we lose some GPS sats?

I have a garmin streetpilot, and have never really had trouble with it...

occasionally it lose connection and give me a "satillite lost" signal, but quickly finds it again (usually when passing trucks or going thru valleys)

this weekend, it told me it had poor satillite connection but still started...
it would only lock onto 3 satillites and had only 3 more that it was trying to use...

basically it was only reading about a third of the GPS sats that it usually reads...

anyone know why a majority of the GPS sats were turned off this weekend?

or why I couldn't connect to them?
thanks

If it makes any difference... I live in Oklahoma...

Uhh, stuff happens? That'd be my guess. I don't claim to be a complete expert, but GPS can be fickle, and so are the satellites. I'd expect it just had to do with random errors making you life hard.

I've also read that the satellites can be turned on and off by the U.S. to make readings less accurate. Remember, the U.S. is not the only country using them, and perhaps the U.S. wanted/needed to make another country's (or terrorist group's) GPS devices (or weapons) less accurate. Or perhaps another country was attempting to "jam" the system.

[edit on 7/25/2005 by centurion1211]

We had some problems on saturday with sat comm with other locations.A tech guy said it had someting to do with a solar flare and some sats were either rotated or turned off to avoid damage.He didn't sound too sure of himself so he may have guessing.

Everyday I use a highly accurate GPS for surveying. It requires a clear signal from at least 6 satellites for a "fixed" position at the accuracy we need. Yeah, right now life sucks.

From what I understand, each satellite moves at its own speed, so the configuration in the sky is always changing, almost randomly it seems. But there are always good parts of the day and bad times. Sometimes the sky has no GPS satellites at all. Right now, there are only 3 from about 11:00 to 5:00, MT. They'll start spreading out sooner or later, but damnit I have deadlines.

I checked out a couple GPS systems in a couple helicopters and they had no problem picking up 8 "space vehicles", as they are called. This was in Southeast Alabama.

Oh yeah, after working hours theyre all over the place. The conspiracy is against me, Im sure.

Well, now that we've got that straight!

I experienced the same thing on a job site a couple days ago. My Garman could only figure out accuracy within 186 feet (which was no good to me!). About 1/2 an hour earlier it could only find 2 satellites and couldn't give me a coordinate reading. I thought about looking online at flare activity for that day when I got home, but forgot all about it until I read your post.

I had to return to that jobsite the next day to align things properly.

Originally posted by centurion1211
Or perhaps another country was attempting to "jam" the system.

Maybe not another country... I remember when they had one of their military exercises in Norway. They told the public that we should not trust the GPS-system between such and such date. They said they would randomly jam the GPS-signal as part of their exercise. Just a thought...

For what its worth, my Direct TV signal was freakin out on Sat/Sunday...

It goes out from time to time saying "searching for signal," but this weekend it didnt do that. It was doing alot of "other things" with the signal. I never lost a signal- except the picture was changing colors like a digital image would in photoshop if you slid the Hue/Saturation level back and forth. And the sound was cutting in and out. That sucked because i was watching the History channel on Sunday on Secret Societies and everytime it got to a "good part/revelation" the sound cut out!!


Prob nothing...

Peace

[edit on 27-7-2005 by Serum39]