New GPS Standard Published

jeffy124 writes: "The Dept of Defense has released a new standard for GPS. The new standard will go into become available for use starting in 2003 when the first satellites are launched. Full completion is estimated to 2014. The new standard allows for greater horizontal accuracy of 36 meters instead of 100 meters, and also sets a new baseline for transmission protocols that circumvent ionic interference."

Comments

Geocaching

[xnn]

Anybody else use their GPS units for Geocaching? (Sort of a treasure hunt using GPS). In practice, the 100 metre figure is a 'guaranteed' level of accuracy, as i have never been anything like that far off. As it is a long weekend here, some friends and I have been using an old Garmin 45 to find all the geocaches within an hours drive of where we live. All caches so far have been within 10 metres of the waypoint, and the three we found today (one in the dark!) were within 3 metres of where the unit said the waypoint was. It is also quite common for match racing yachts to have centimetre accuracy units (often one in the bow _and_ stern), although the expense of these units (~$25000) makes for a very steep price/performance curve.

My Casio GPS watch

[clemens]

model no. PAT2GP1V's manual states that along horizontal plane the accuracy is 3.1m average, 10m maximum, and NO ACCURACY DEGRATION under U.S. DOD-imposed Selective Avaliability Program.
Geez, and they think such an 'upgrade' for GPS is NEWS.