Garmin GPS 126 thinks it is 14/08/1999

[Andrew_Trayfoot]

Just turned on my Garmin GPS 126 for the first time this season and initially it could not find itself..
After digging into the setup the time was wrong and the date was 14/08/1999.
After about 30mis of searching it found some satellites the time was corrected and it found a position, however the the date is still 1999.
Is this something I need to worry about?

 

[prv]

Sounds like the GPS week number rollover. The satellites only broadcast the date within a 1024 week cycle, which works out to just under twenty years. The GPS has to make its own assumption about which cycle we are in, and old ones will tend to assume wrong. There might possibly be a firmware update available to correct it.

Pete

 

[Quandary]

In the letters page of this weeks Argyleshire Advertiser (locally referred to as 'The Squeak') there is a warning from Luke Hallett, Marine and Coastguard Agency, advising of a 'roll over event' due on April 6th. which could cause Gps receivers installed before Aug. 1999 and not since updated to produce data 19.7 years in the past or the future. He recommends contacting the manufacturer before April 6th.

Must admit that since I had not seen the warning anywhere else I was going to ignore it though the boat does have have an old stand alone Garmin ??? of that vintage which I only keep as an all else fails back up.
I presume you could find the letter on the squeaks website but surely the info. must be circulated somewhere more relevant?

 

[Neeves]

I think there was a thread on the roll over somewhere here - but simply Google GPS Rollover - there are lots of 'news' and warnings from all sorts of sources - but its not yet April 6th, at least not in Oz, so???

Jonathan

 

[SteveNotlob]

The date will come up wrong on old GPS units but it should not affect the actual positioning, COG or SOG. It might mean that the unit will have to do a 'cold acquisition' each time it is switched on, but for the average leisure user this is not going to be a concern.

 

[Mistroma]

In the letters page of this weeks Argyleshire Advertiser (locally referred to as 'The Squeak') there is a warning from Luke Hallett, Marine and Coastguard Agency, advising of a 'roll over event' due on April 6th. which could cause Gps receivers installed before Aug. 1999 and not since updated to produce data 19.7 years in the past or the future. He recommends contacting the manufacturer before April 6th.

Must admit that since I had not seen the warning anywhere else I was going to ignore it though the boat does have have an old stand alone Garmin ??? of that vintage which I only keep as an all else fails back up.
I presume you could find the letter on the squeaks website but surely the info. must be circulated somewhere more relevant?

I had an ancient Garmin handheld GPS which worked perfectly through the last rollover in 1999. I think it might have been a bit slow initially but was fine after the first time it was used after the rollover. I assumed that having had a GPS week rollover already, followed shortly by Y2K, manufacturers would have installed firmware able to handle the next rollover.

No such luck twenty years later. I had a letter from Renault warning me that I needed to get a software update because of a "bug" which would cause the car's GPS to fail on 6th April. For "bug", read "stupid failure to write software able to handle a known event guaranteed to happen".

A quick check with Raymarine showed that newer MFDs and GPS units would be OK but they were still looking into older units similar to ones I own. (e.g. C80W MFD and Raystar 125 GPS). Oh well, fingers crossed.