Re: [Elecraft] April 6th GPS Reset

2019-04-04 Thread Robert Rennard via Elecraft
As NW8L pointed out, there are simple updates to restore proper date displays 
in GPS receivers.

An update should have a release date inside the build with the associated GPS 
week number when it was released.  With a little coding, this will allow the 
receiver to display date properly for 1024 weeks following the release date.

Another design peril is the Age of Data counters for almanac and ephemeris data 
which are 9 bits.  A company from Illinois thought they could get by with an 
8-bit byte, but in July 2004, a whole bunch of their mobile phones went screen 
of death at the transition from week 255 to week 256.

Somebody commented that WAAS in HI was not as good in the ConUS.  I wonder 
where this came from.  I cannot imagine the FAA would put up with this unless 
it is just too easy to land a plane in HI.  In 2017 the GPS guys at Los Angeles 
AFB were indicating 40 cm repeatability, around 1.3 nanoseconds without WAAS.

Bob R – N7WY







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Re: [Elecraft] April 6th GPS Reset

2019-04-03 Thread Robert Cunnings

There is a warning on the TomTom site - and today I received an email from
them regarding an older Garmin Etrex unit I own. It said in brief:
===
Due to the upcoming WNRO on 6 April 2019, the performance of your device 
will be impacted.


While we no longer offer content and service updates for your device, we 
have made an update available that addresses the GPS Week Number Rollover 
(WNRO).


TO UPDATE: Connect your device to your computer. Click the 'update now' 
button for instructions​ on how to update your device.

===
The message included the serial number of my device, so I suppose I must 
have registered it after purchasing it. The warning page is here:


https://www.tomtom.com/en_us/updates/

Bob NW8L

On Wed, 3 Apr 2019, n...@zianet.com wrote:


Fred Jensen writes:

Eventually, the 10-bit register holding the week number will overflow and 
reset to zero. That's all that's happening, it happens every 1,024 weeks, 
the first was in Aug 1999.


The GPS reset has been the source of hysteria in various circles, including 
exhaustive discussions on the various private pilot and drone forums, since 
most aircraft and drones use GPS for real time positioning and navigation 
while in flight.


In short, when this happened in 1999, changes were made to lengthen the roll 
over period to beyond our lifetime.  The April 6 rollover only effects older 
GPS devices with the 10-bit registers.  Basically, every GPS embedded device 
made in the last 10-15 years or so will not be affected - only the first 
generation devices.


There are absolutely no warnings or cautions on the websites for Garmin, 
Magellan, or Trimble showing it is a non-issue for their GPS devices - not 
even mentioned.  The FAA has a list of the very few GPS devices used in older 
private aircraft that could be effected, only if in flight when the rollover 
occurs.  With 10,000+ people in the air at any moment, there would be a huge 
air of caution by the FAA and airlines if the rollover had any chance of 
effecting the GPS devices now in use.  In this case, "Silence is golden."


73, Paul NA5N
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Re: [Elecraft] April 6th GPS Reset

2019-04-03 Thread na5n

Dave Cole (NK7Z) writes:


How is HAARP involved in this conspiracy, it must be!


GPS is being controlled by HAARP remotely through Google and FaceBook.   
What could go wrong?

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Re: [Elecraft] April 6th GPS Reset

2019-04-03 Thread Dave Cole (NK7Z)

How is HAARP involved in this conspiracy, it must be!

73s and thanks,
Dave (NK7Z)
https://www.nk7z.net
ARRL Technical Specialist
ARRL Volunteer Examiner
ARRL OOC for Oregon

On 4/3/19 12:30 PM, Fred Jensen wrote:
The week number register is in the hardware aboard the GPS satellites, 
although receivers usually read and store it too.  Each rollover is a 
"GPS epoch," epoch being a term used by space travelers, astronomers, 
and other folk dabbling in space-ish things to confuse the rest of us. 
The first epoch ended in Aug 1999 ... 1024 weeks is 19. years. 
We are approaching the end of epoch 2.  In 1999, a few of the early GPS 
receivers hit the WNRO [week number roll over] and thought it had become 
1980 again.  Using a GPS receiver to discipline the K3 involves the 
clock signal and unless you are using your very very old receiver to 
tell you what the current date is, the WNRO will have no effect.


Early in the first GPS epoch, it was discovered that the "civilian" 
signal was yielding somewhat better accuracy than the US Dept. of 
Defense had planned, and they implemented SA or Selective Availability 
to perturb the satellite clocks making it appear that you were moving 
around randomly in a 100-200 m area when you were in fact stationary. 
This would affect the clock signal at the receivers and thus the 
"discipline" applied to the K3.


It wasn't very long before a number of entities, including manufacturers 
and the US Coast Guard ... found ways to get around SA.  One is 
Differential GPS which places stations at very carefully surveyed 
locations, monitors their GPS reported positions, and transmits the 
errors.  The DGPS receiver uses the errors to correct its own GPS 
position.  If you have the new synthesizer for your K3 [or a K3s], you 
can hear and decode the DGPS signals, they're 100 bps MSK in the 284-458 
KHz range and have a distinctive signature on a P3.  The US DoD gave up 
on SA long ago but the DGPS stations remain, or at least did the last 
time I checked.


One GPS conspiracy theory posited that there was a "back door" into the 
satellites put there by another country [which we'll leave nameless] 
which, when activated, would be used to cause all the aircraft in the 
air to converge on one point and create a great conflagration. 
Conspiracy theories have a half-life and fortunately this one was fairly 
short, similar to the half-life of disco and leisure suits. [:-)


73,
Fred ["Skip"] K6DGW
Sparks NV DM09dn
Washoe County

On 4/3/2019 11:24 AM, n...@zianet.com wrote:

Fred Jensen writes:

Eventually, the 10-bit register holding the week number will overflow 
and reset to zero. That's all that's happening, it happens every 
1,024 weeks, the first was in Aug 1999.


The GPS reset has been the source of hysteria in various circles, 
including exhaustive discussions on the various private pilot and 
drone forums, since most aircraft and drones use GPS for real time 
positioning and navigation while in flight.


In short, when this happened in 1999, changes were made to lengthen 
the roll over period to beyond our lifetime.  The April 6 rollover 
only effects older GPS devices with the 10-bit registers.  Basically, 
every GPS embedded device made in the last 10-15 years or so will not 
be affected - only the first generation devices.


There are absolutely no warnings or cautions on the websites for 
Garmin, Magellan, or Trimble showing it is a non-issue for their GPS 
devices - not even mentioned.  The FAA has a list of the very few GPS 
devices used in older private aircraft that could be effected, only if 
in flight when the rollover occurs.  With 10,000+ people in the air at 
any moment, there would be a huge air of caution by the FAA and 
airlines if the rollover had any chance of effecting the GPS devices 
now in use.  In this case, "Silence is golden."


73, Paul NA5N



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[Elecraft] April 6th GPS Reset

2019-04-03 Thread Richard Thorpe via Elecraft
Thank you Skip K6DGW and Paul NA5N for your reply. I now can rest assured that 
my K3 will keep the discipline it needs.

Richard K6CG
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Re: [Elecraft] April 6th GPS Reset

2019-04-03 Thread Fred Jensen
The week number register is in the hardware aboard the GPS satellites, 
although receivers usually read and store it too.  Each rollover is a 
"GPS epoch," epoch being a term used by space travelers, astronomers, 
and other folk dabbling in space-ish things to confuse the rest of us.  
The first epoch ended in Aug 1999 ... 1024 weeks is 19. years.  
We are approaching the end of epoch 2.  In 1999, a few of the early GPS 
receivers hit the WNRO [week number roll over] and thought it had become 
1980 again.  Using a GPS receiver to discipline the K3 involves the 
clock signal and unless you are using your very very old receiver to 
tell you what the current date is, the WNRO will have no effect.


Early in the first GPS epoch, it was discovered that the "civilian" 
signal was yielding somewhat better accuracy than the US Dept. of 
Defense had planned, and they implemented SA or Selective Availability 
to perturb the satellite clocks making it appear that you were moving 
around randomly in a 100-200 m area when you were in fact stationary.  
This would affect the clock signal at the receivers and thus the 
"discipline" applied to the K3.


It wasn't very long before a number of entities, including manufacturers 
and the US Coast Guard ... found ways to get around SA.  One is 
Differential GPS which places stations at very carefully surveyed 
locations, monitors their GPS reported positions, and transmits the 
errors.  The DGPS receiver uses the errors to correct its own GPS 
position.  If you have the new synthesizer for your K3 [or a K3s], you 
can hear and decode the DGPS signals, they're 100 bps MSK in the 284-458 
KHz range and have a distinctive signature on a P3.  The US DoD gave up 
on SA long ago but the DGPS stations remain, or at least did the last 
time I checked.


One GPS conspiracy theory posited that there was a "back door" into the 
satellites put there by another country [which we'll leave nameless] 
which, when activated, would be used to cause all the aircraft in the 
air to converge on one point and create a great conflagration.  
Conspiracy theories have a half-life and fortunately this one was fairly 
short, similar to the half-life of disco and leisure suits. [:-)


73,
Fred ["Skip"] K6DGW
Sparks NV DM09dn
Washoe County

On 4/3/2019 11:24 AM, n...@zianet.com wrote:

Fred Jensen writes:

Eventually, the 10-bit register holding the week number will overflow 
and reset to zero. That's all that's happening, it happens every 
1,024 weeks, the first was in Aug 1999.


The GPS reset has been the source of hysteria in various circles, 
including exhaustive discussions on the various private pilot and 
drone forums, since most aircraft and drones use GPS for real time 
positioning and navigation while in flight.


In short, when this happened in 1999, changes were made to lengthen 
the roll over period to beyond our lifetime.  The April 6 rollover 
only effects older GPS devices with the 10-bit registers.  Basically, 
every GPS embedded device made in the last 10-15 years or so will not 
be affected - only the first generation devices.


There are absolutely no warnings or cautions on the websites for 
Garmin, Magellan, or Trimble showing it is a non-issue for their GPS 
devices - not even mentioned.  The FAA has a list of the very few GPS 
devices used in older private aircraft that could be effected, only if 
in flight when the rollover occurs.  With 10,000+ people in the air at 
any moment, there would be a huge air of caution by the FAA and 
airlines if the rollover had any chance of effecting the GPS devices 
now in use.  In this case, "Silence is golden."


73, Paul NA5N



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Re: [Elecraft] April 6th GPS Reset

2019-04-03 Thread na5n

Fred Jensen writes:

Eventually, the 10-bit register holding the week number will overflow  
and reset to zero. That's all that's happening, it happens every 1,024  
weeks, the first was in Aug 1999.


The GPS reset has been the source of hysteria in various circles, including  
exhaustive discussions on the various private pilot and drone forums, since  
most aircraft and drones use GPS for real time positioning and navigation  
while in flight.


In short, when this happened in 1999, changes were made to lengthen the  
roll over period to beyond our lifetime.  The April 6 rollover only effects  
older GPS devices with the 10-bit registers.  Basically, every GPS embedded  
device made in the last 10-15 years or so will not be affected - only the  
first generation devices.


There are absolutely no warnings or cautions on the websites for Garmin,  
Magellan, or Trimble showing it is a non-issue for their GPS devices - not  
even mentioned.  The FAA has a list of the very few GPS devices used in  
older private aircraft that could be effected, only if in flight when the  
rollover occurs.  With 10,000+ people in the air at any moment, there would  
be a huge air of caution by the FAA and airlines if the rollover had any  
chance of effecting the GPS devices now in use.  In this case, "Silence is  
golden."


73, Paul NA5N
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Re: [Elecraft] April 6th GPS Reset

2019-04-03 Thread Fred Jensen
Not to worry Richard.  GPS has two PR codes on different frequencies.  
The "civilian" code repeats every 100 ms. The "military" code repeats 
every 7 days, and the code is sometimes encrypted.  At the end of the 
code, a "week number" is incremented by one and the code repeats.  
Eventually, the 10-bit register holding the week number will overflow 
and reset to zero. That's all that's happening, it happens every 1,024 
weeks, the first was in Aug 1999.


The first time this happened, the much younger Internet was filled with 
admonitions not to fly between a couple of dates in Aug since airplanes 
would fall from the sky.  It also hatched several conspiracy theories 
[of course].  The hubris surrounding GPS Rollover Day had declined some, 
but as usual, some persists.  It does sound like a good marketing ploy 
however ... "Get your new Trimble now before GPS resets and your old one 
quits."  Kind of what Apple and Microsoft do when I think about it.  [:-)


73,
Fred ["Skip"] K6DGW
Sparks NV DM09dn
Washoe County

On 4/3/2019 8:51 AM, Richard Thorpe via Elecraft wrote:

On April 6th the satellite GPS system is going to be reset, does  anyone out 
there know how this “reset” will effect the Trimble Thunderbolt that many of us 
use to “discipline “ the frequency on our K3 and K3S radios? I’m told that 
older sat programs will not work after the reset. My Trimble unit was old 
(surplus) when I purchased it on Ebay years ago. Thanks.

R Thorpe
K6CG  K3,P3, KX3, PX3



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[Elecraft] April 6th GPS Reset

2019-04-03 Thread Richard Thorpe via Elecraft
On April 6th the satellite GPS system is going to be reset, does  anyone out 
there know how this “reset” will effect the Trimble Thunderbolt that many of us 
use to “discipline “ the frequency on our K3 and K3S radios? I’m told that 
older sat programs will not work after the reset. My Trimble unit was old 
(surplus) when I purchased it on Ebay years ago. Thanks.

R Thorpe
K6CG  K3,P3, KX3, PX3
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