Well, well, well...
Quite a noise l created with my suggestion of some dork hitting the main switch on the venerable GPS!
If l was the agressor, the first thing l would do, knock out the enemy's communication and navigation facilities.
Russia, China, lsrael and probably few moore could do it. Only a dozen shots.
As far as turning off the civilian GPS, l am sure they can and would do it when the need arises. If one believes othervise, one is childishly naive and needs his head examined.
As far as my political views have been mentioned, l am not biassed, not racist, l would be considered a democrat of some sort as l dislike everybody, equally. Until proven othervise. Period.
(Trump is only a poignant example of the breed, that noone should trust.)
The politicians, those special king of animals, should have this tattoed on their foreheads backwards, so they could read it in their mirror in the morning:
LEADERSHIP IS SUBMISSION TO DUTY, NOT ELEVATION TO POWER!
Select to expand quotesydserge said..
Information only slightly on topic, but in case it will be useful for someone...
Coastal Cruising Club will have a few free information evenings re. cruising from Sydney to Whitsundays over March.
+1.
See you there, if we make it back from Yarrawonga in time.
An event happened last Thursday relevant to this discussion and those who think GPS system is reliable and/or would never be used for unknown purposes regardless of our detriment by the controllers ...
A colleague of mine uses a precision timing system across NSW which derives its time from the GPS satellite system and has atomic clock back ups in Sydney, Wollongong and three other sites. At a high level my friends organization doesn't have confidence in GPS which is why they maintain atomic clocks. This is an example of why they dont and why we should watch out too.
On Thursday his time alarm sounded advising at his location only 2 GPS satellites were providing a time signal instead of normally around 10 or 12 meaning the system he operates was in danger of needing to be shutdown. His location has GPS antenna on top of a high building with total sky view. The other sites do too.
Simultaneously at Wollongong and his other locations their time bases also failed and switched to atomic clock backups. This outage lasted for 20 minutes then miraculously the 10 missing satellites at each site came back online.
The 5 independent systems going out at the same time means the GPS signal really did go almost completely out. Not interference or errors. Why would that be? A test maybe. Or perhaps globally there was a reason we aren't meant to know about. Presumably the two satellites left on were to prevent total mayhem everywhere.
The big important thing is that at any time the GPS system could be turned off.
Now if we were steering the QE2 into Sydney harbour at that instant, with no visibility or charts, we could be in a lot of trouble!
Thursday was also the start of a lot of Telstra outages. Anybody else have problems with satellites? All those people out there with GPS in their cars have not complained. I had a quick search through the Whirpool Forums and there was no mention.
Select to expand quoteRamona said..
Thursday was also the start of a lot of Telstra outages. Anybody else have problems with satellites? All those people out there with GPS in their cars have not complained. I had a quick search through the Whirpool Forums and there was no mention.
My friend surmised that the 2 satellites left on prevented most people noticing for the 20min. His organization only knew about it because all their alarms triggered.
Its possible the Telstra outage was connected. Very interesting.
Select to expand quotesirgallivant said..
Solar flare? 
These solar flares sound interesting. What will they think of next.
I will have to look into it as my flares are nearly out of date.
Can't stop wondering how they work at night though.
Select to expand quotefishmonkey said..
this recent demo video sent a chill down my spine:
Wonder what happened to the hockey stick, where do you think it ended up? Don't piss off the machine.
Ahhh... that's what we need, a good solar flare and all the Atlas's will be out of business!!! 
Ahhhh....a topic true to my heart....navigation. ..or as I prefer to call it....the ancient art of getting completely and hopelessly lost.
I'm a big fan of travelling only by day and island hoping and i don't get out of bed without a compass and a paper chart and had a chat to someone who "claims" has been there b4.
This stuff truly intrigue myself and amazes me-https://www.pinterest.com/pin/34832597087446387/
Short navigation story for you .... sailing around the Coromandel Peninsula in on NZ North Island. Beautiful place. Fish jump onto your fishing lines. It was the end of the day, crew of three all tired, 39ft boat, weather was crap looking for the bay we wanted to pull up in. Didnt have a chart plotter only GPS and charts. The bay we wanted to stay in was recommended by locals but they warned us about a semi submerged rock in the middle of the bay called Pandoras Rock. Yay, found the bay carefully navigated in avoiding the spot where the nasty rock was, we couldnt see anything because it was getting dark and rain and winding. Semi submerged rocks are the worst I think. Dropped anchor and were very relieved to finally get some beers out. In the morning checking the charts to leave, hmmm that point doesnt look like the one on the chart. Hmmm neither does the either side. Turns out we had entered the wrong bay, navigated around rocks that werent there and missed rocks that were there, gulp! 
don't think the depths are right
I'm just touching up the keel from a grounding 
when I came around to western port from the bay plus some old scares
Select to expand quoteHG02 said..
don't think the depths are right
I'm just touching up the keel from a grounding when I came around to western port from the bay plus some old scares
I was using my Garmin 551s chartplotter there and it was showing depths of 2.2 and so forth in the big shallow triangle north of the bridge up to Coronet Bay township and over to Elizabeth island area. At the time I was getting the depthsounder displaying 8 metres. I thought at the time that the chartplotter might have been displaying fathoms (very odd) so would have to check the settings some time very soon; or else my depth sounder is way out.
One question about the remote possibility of shutting off the GPS signals. My Etrex handheld GPS uses both GPS signals and Glonass signals. So if the GPS disappeared then in theory it should still be accurate, (if there are as many Glonass satellites as GPS satellites). Does that sound logical and relying on?
I could also navigate without it if I had to.
