GPS Rollover Tonight

A reader wrote to us with the reminder about the GPS rollover tonight. It will occur at midnight, UTC time. Most machines should be compliant, but check out The Coast Guard for more information. Essentiallly, they are rolling over the GPS time, and machines that aren't repaired/replaced will claim that it is 6 Jan 1980, and August 23 will be Jan 7, and so on.

Comments

W2**10 bug

[rde]

Which is more aesthetically pleasing; calling it a W2**10 bug or W2^10 bug? Or W1K bug, perhaps? Or Just WK?
A while ago I attempted a humourous web page, part of which enumerated some of the ways that tech was going wrong; I was surprised that my research research dug up so many ways that technology we relied on is fundamentally flawed. It seems that there isn't a technology out there that doesn't feature a fatal flaw that'll kill us all a few years hence.
It's got to the stage where I'm thinking of heading for the hills not because of Y2K, but because sooner or later something electronic is going to kill us all.

The only thing affected is the almanac

[coyote-san]

Unless the GPS is particularly dumb, the only thing that should be affected by the rollover is that old, cheap units won't be able to use their internal almanac and the approximate date and location to quickly scan for the satellites. The date and location will be correct, but the birds won't be in the same position as they were 2^10 weeks ago.

Instead, they'll have to scan the entire sky for GPS signals and I'll reacquire my position after 20 minutes or so. I then need to leave the GPS running for a while so (pieces of) the new almanac can be downloaded; IIRC it's included in a low-bandwidth data channel. Or I can simply download the new almanac via a free program and a non-free PC/GPS cable. (I've ordered the cable, but with my luck they may be out of stock. :-)

Aviation and marine units, unlike hiking units, usually have far better antennas and they should be able to perform a "where in the heck am I?!" search much faster. Aviation units, in particular, will already be updated since they must periodically load new aviation databases containing the location of airports, VORs, etc.