SatNav system outage

zoidberg

zoidberg

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It seems the expensive EU Galileo system has been 'going wonky' and presently cannot be relied on. Experts are working, I'm told, to determine WIFIH.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-48985399

Reliable? Bet your life on it? Despite the soothing words of salesmen that 'Can't happen, won't happen', it does. And more often than is admitted.....

Me? I still know which way is up, and which end of a pencil to use.
 
Re: Galileo

Watch out anyone going to that site [Ehecatl's link], make sure your AV and anti-malware software are up to date. My Norton flagged it as trying to slip a trojan onto my machine, so careful there.
 
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We had a problem a week last Friday doing a night crossing. Right in the middle (between the shipping lanes) we lost everything. No position, no bearings, the lot. The autopilot was set to follow the track, and proceeded to drive us around in circles. My Navionics software was useless and even the compass on my iPhone didn't want to know, and being a steel boat, we didn't have a magnetic compass fitted).

I was asleep at the time and got woken by a worried owner who didn't know which way was up or what to do.

I pointed at Jupiter and told the helm to just point at that, which at least meant that we were going in one direction which was roughly where we wanted to go.

We re-booted everything, and still no joy.

After about an hour, it all came back and normality was resumed.

I told the owner that this was exactly why I keep paper charts and plot an hourly fix. At least that way I have a rough idea of where I am should all the electronics fail.
 
Galileo is or was having some issues, but nobody at sea would have even noticed, because the problem was correctly handled by flagging the satellites as bad. Every GNSS receiver that receives Galileo is by default also receiving GPS (US), GLONASS (RU), Beidou (CN) as well as the partial coverage from Japanese and Indian satellites if in their area, but filtering out the ones flagged such. The chips use any of the remaining satellites (from any of the systems) to derive a position. You'd have to be running a GNSS satellite monitor to even notice anything unusual at all, but it still would not affect your navigation systems.

Not to say the system is infallible, but you definitely would have no reason to dust off the paper charts and polish the sextant in this case (unless you like to, of course). And it's always a good idea to occasionally look at the compass and sky to see if they agree with what the screens tell you (GPS spoofing has been proven to be an actual threat, unlike the above outage).
 
Neeves said:
I wonder how many still have all the relevant paper charts?

Jonathan
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Aye, laddie...... but of more significance, how many still have the relevant competencies? And pencils? :rolleyes:


Right in the middle (between the shipping lanes) we lost everything. No position, no bearings, the lot. The autopilot was set to follow the track, and proceeded to drive us around in circles. My Navionics software was useless and even the compass on my iPhone didn't want to know, and being a steel boat, we didn't have a magnetic compass fitted.
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I'm thinking it takes a special kind of eedjit to get caught with his pants around his ankles so thoroughly as that......
 
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zoidberg said:
I'm thinking it takes a special kind of eedjit to get caught with his pants around his ankles so thoroughly as that......
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Really? So you reckon that most people these days don't just use their chartplotter and rely on electronics?
 
Bobc said:
Really? So you reckon that most people these days don't just use their chartplotter and rely on electronics?
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Most competent steel boat owners manage to have at least a useful magnetic compass, even if it's not what you'd call 'precise'.
 
lw395 said:
Most competent steel boat owners manage to have at least a useful magnetic compass, even if it's not what you'd call 'precise'.
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We had a hand bearing compass, but weren't convinced that the heading on this was correct as we didn't know what was going on, and the trouble with steel boats is as they roll, the compass heading changes by up to +/- 90 degrees.
 
Bobc said:
We had a hand bearing compass, but weren't convinced that the heading on this was correct as we didn't know what was going on, and the trouble with steel boats is as they roll, the compass heading changes by up to +/- 90 degrees.
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I said 'competent'....

Good steel boat owners are always taking an interest in how their mag compass behaves, so when the GPS stops working they are not completely helpless.
Even if the GPS is working, when you stop in fog, it's a basic requirement to know vaguely which way the boat is pointing, rather than which way the tide is taking you.

It's also nice, if you have an electronic magnetic compass, to give it its own power supply and sufficient isolation from other instruments that it will keep working when all else is against you.
 
lw395 said:
I said 'competent'....

Good steel boat owners are always taking an interest in how their mag compass behaves, so when the GPS stops working they are not completely helpless.
Even if the GPS is working, when you stop in fog, it's a basic requirement to know vaguely which way the boat is pointing, rather than which way the tide is taking you.

It's also nice, if you have an electronic magnetic compass, to give it its own power supply and sufficient isolation from other instruments that it will keep working when all else is against you.
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No, you said "special kind of eedjit", which is pretty rude. The boat has an electronic magnetic compass, and that was also playing games, and as preciously stated, the "independent" compasses on our iPhones weren't reading properly either.
 
Bobc said:
We had a problem a week last Friday doing a night crossing. Right in the middle (between the shipping lanes) we lost everything. No position, no bearings, the lot. The autopilot was set to follow the track, and proceeded to drive us around in circles. My Navionics software was useless and even the compass on my iPhone didn't want to know, and being a steel boat, we didn't have a magnetic compass fitted).

I was asleep at the time and got woken by a worried owner who didn't know which way was up or what to do.

I pointed at Jupiter and told the helm to just point at that, which at least meant that we were going in one direction which was roughly where we wanted to go.

We re-booted everything, and still no joy.

After about an hour, it all came back and normality was resumed.

I told the owner that this was exactly why I keep paper charts and plot an hourly fix. At least that way I have a rough idea of where I am should all the electronics fail.
Click to expand...

Leaving aside any accusations of ieedjicy from those who clearly know everything, I don't know everything so, to reduce my level of ignorance a little, how would you have dealt with the problem if you'd had 10/10ths cloud and no or variable wind?
 
Stemar said:
Leaving aside any accusations of ieedjicy from those who clearly know everything, I don't know everything so, to reduce my level of ignorance a little, how would you have dealt with the problem if you'd had 10/10ths cloud and no or variable wind?
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Most boats have a magnetic steering compass, which you could just follow.

What surprised me was how quickly people got dis-orientated and didn't have a clue which way was what. When I came on deck, nobody had a clue which way France was and I had to get them to stop the boat while we took stock of things and worked out which way was south and find something they could steer at.

Also, what stumped me a bit initially, was that the boat had 2 separate chartplotters, which were both agreeing with each other and both giving the same stupid numbers.
 
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Bobc said:
No, you said "special kind of eedjit", which is pretty rude. The boat has an electronic magnetic compass, and that was also playing games, and as preciously stated, the "independent" compasses on our iPhones weren't reading properly either.
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Wasn't me who said special kind of eedjit, but TBH it's what I felt when I was crewing on a delivery job where they'd really no idea of the basic need for some sort of magnetic compass that works well enough.
'Ah but we've got radar!'
Seeing someone attempt to use radar without knowing which way the ship is pointing was pretty funny for as long as we believed we had sea room.
I started sailing out of sight of land when GPS was still being developed for the military, with no electronic 'aids' at all, I've never understood some people's complacency about compasses.
 
....it takes a special kind of eedjit....
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Akshully, I'm quite pleased with that turn of phrase. It encapsulates neatly most of my thoughts on reading the OP's lament, and I shall store it away for a future use. Another one, not deployed on this occasion, is 'an accident looking for some place to happen'.
 
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