waas, gps

[ribit]

I ran across my eTrex Venture had not seen it for a while. I know what the waas is and understand it will get you closer. The owners manual says currently waas satellite requires an absolute clear view of the sky. In fact you may not be able to receive or easily mantain a waas satellite signal until full satellite support for this program is complete. This is a 2001 manual. Is this system up to speed now? Thanks. It is smarter than me but I am not up to date myself. lol

Go for it Moose.

[Barnacle Bill]

I ran across my eTrex Venture had not seen it for a while. I know what the waas is and understand it will get you closer. The owners manual says currently waas satellite requires an absolute clear view of the sky. In fact you may not be able to receive or easily mantain a waas satellite signal until full satellite support for this program is complete. This is a 2001 manual. Is this system up to speed now? Thanks. It is smarter than me but I am not up to date myself. lol

Go for it Moose.

I have a Garmin 76 marine which I know absolutley nothing about. But just about every time I've used it to check speed, it acquires enough satelites for the Waas feature.

[Sam W.]

I bought a Magellan eXplorist 200 about 6 weeks ago, and I'm just learning to use it. It's WAAS enabled.

Every time I turn it on in the boat it picks up about 7 satellites, and according to the literature, my "waypoints" are supposed to be accurate within 3 meters (10 ft.).

I've used it to relocate a couple of brushpiles already, and it seems to work well for that.

[Jerry Blake]

Hey Ribit:

I think they are still adding WAAS satellites but there are enough in orbit now to get a significant benefit by having our WAAS enabled. If you are getting within 10-feet of your waypoint then you are receiving signals from WAAS satellites.

[ribit]

Thanks for the feed back. lol

[Moose1am]

Jerry pretty much covered it. I'll add this. I know of two WAAS satellites in orbit and hope they put another one or two of them up soon. The more WASS Satellite up there the better for us.

You can have a WAAS capable GPS unit that can receive the special WAAS Satellite signals but if there are not signals being sent or if your GPS can't see the WASS satellite then it can't receive a signal. If you were in an airplane up at 10,000ft then you would be able to receive the WAAS satellite down in orbit around the equator pretty easily all day long.

The one WAAS satellite that I know of is low on the horizon where I live. Which means that if I get a hill between me and the satellite then I don't get the WAAS Signals from that Satellite. If a tree gets in between me and the Satellite then I can't get the signal. Since the satellite is low on the horizon due to is location way south of me I can't receive it as well as say Jerry.. Remmber Jerry is 200 to 300 miles further south than I. He is in Arkansas and I an in Southern IN. So there is a few degrees of latitude between where we live. If you live down south your view of the WAAS Satellite should be better as it's closer to you and should be seen higher up in the sky. If you live up North then hope that they put more WAAS satellites up in an orbit that can be seen from the Northern Hemisphere.

I have not kept up on any new WAAS Satellite being lauched but they may not always tell us what they shoot up into space. Remember that GPS was developed for our Military and we are lucky to get to use it. We can thank the President for allowing us to have access to the signals without them being degraded to reduce the accuracy. Since they turned off the selective availablity we fishermen can find our brush piles much better than before.


Remember the earth is really ROUND not flat and the ships sail is the first thing you see when it starts getting closer to land. How many years or centuries did it take to finally convice the the authorities that the world was not flat?

Hope this helps.

If you are behind a tree... move to one side and you may get a better WAAS signal.

Also the satellites numbers 35 and above are WAAS satellites. Look on your GPS reciever and see which satellites are in view.

Remember if you have 12 good satellites in view and a WAAS satellite in view you can get accuracy of about PLUS OR MINUS 12 ft or THREE METERS. The fewer regular gps satellites you receive the worse the accuracy. So don't hide in a cave or behind a tree. LOL

I ran across my eTrex Venture had not seen it for a while. I know what the waas is and understand it will get you closer. The owners manual says currently waas satellite requires an absolute clear view of the sky. In fact you may not be able to receive or easily mantain a waas satellite signal until full satellite support for this program is complete. This is a 2001 manual. Is this system up to speed now? Thanks. It is smarter than me but I am not up to date myself. lol

Go for it Moose.

[ribit]

Thanks Moose. Best I can tell there are two WAAS satellites in service in geo-stationary orbit above the Equator, one over the Alantic Ocean and one over the Pacific Ocean. There are 25 ground points in North America only for now. They work together to give you a correct position. This information came off the internet, search Wide Aera Augmentation System. Not getting a WAAS signal will effect the speed of unit map drawing speed.

What do we know now? I am getting a headache. lol

[TAE73]

I have not kept up on any new WAAS Satellite being lauched but they may not always tell us what they shoot up into space. Remember that GPS was developed for our Military and we are lucky to get to use it. We can thank the President for allowing us to have access to the signals without them being degraded to reduce the accuracy. Since they turned off the selective availablity we fishermen can find our brush piles much better than before.

I wouldnt thank them to much Moose, they could do better. The gps that the military and land surveyors is way more accurate. Than what we have, I was told by a surveyor that there units are accurate within a couple of inches. The goverment doesnt trust those that pay for all there toys.

And if you think about your gps being good for 3 meters, in reality its 6 meters. If you marked a spot it you where getting a 3 meter accuracy. And then left and came back, and was still getting 3 meters. And you looked for that exact spot again. It would be a 6 meter circle that you are looking in. GPS are a wonderfull tool, and I dont go fishing without mine. But I think that they still could give us better accuracy. Just think if they got them accurate enough and someone came out with the a trolling motor that worked together, now that would be awsome! To get the trolling motor to "hover" in the same spot, and make corrections for the wind or current.

[unknown 5]

"Just think if they got them accurate enough and someone came out with the a trolling motor that worked together, now that would be awsome! To get the trolling motor to "hover" in the same spot, and make corrections for the wind or current."

Hummingbird was bought out by Minnkota, what do you think is going to happen soon?

[fiddlefarter]

I work for an engineering firm and used to survey. The equipment we had was accurate within a couple 100ths of a foot. You have to have two units working together to get that kind of accuracy. The way they do it is by recieving data from sattelites then communicating with each other to triangulate your position. Running autonomously their accuracy is a couple meters too. A handheld just doesn't have that capability to use data collected from other units. It basically uses the satellites to triangulate. With WAAS it uses the ground stations as another unit with a known location to add to the triangulation, increasing accuracy. What we need are more ground stations and a few more satellites. The GPS market is improving constantly and accuracy keeps getting better so who knows what the future holds. A survey grade GPS system costs about $20,000-50,000. I would love to have that kind of accuracy for fishing, but not at that price.