The History of a Handheld GPS
The handheld GPS units we use today to find our way around the woods, mountains and deserts for our playtime adventures have its roots in the military. In 1957, the Russian government launched the first satellite – Sputnik. With Sputnik up in orbit, US physicists from John's Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory decided to monitor Sputnik's radio transmissions. They discovered that due to the Doppler effect, you could track the location of the satellite from the ground, mostly by measuring the distance and location of receivers on earth relative to the satellites overhead. To help locate their submarines, the US Navy built the first satellite navigation system in 1959. It initially consisted of 6 satellites and sometimes took hours to receive signals from the satellites – imagine how frustrated we get these days if we have to wait a few seconds.

In the 1970's and early 1980's, the US Air Force continued to launch more satellites into their system, which was originally called NAVSTAR. Many of these satellites carried atomic clocks onboard to accurately measure transmission times. In 1983, a commercial Korean Air flight was shot down by Russia after it wandered over the Soviet airspace border near the Kamchatka Peninsula. This prompted President Reagan to announce that access to the GPS system would be available to all civilian commercial aircraft to increase safety. However, it took until 1989 to get the system complete and fully operational. At that time, the first hand-held device was marketed in the US – the Magellan NAV 1000.

From 1990 through 2000, the US Department of Defense deliberately diminished the accuracy of the GPS system for private users, fearing that US enemies might be able to use it to gain advantage. When the signal scrambling ended, the system went from having 100 meter accuracy to 20 meter accuracy overnight, which made it useful for all sorts of private industries and purposes.

As of 2012, there are 31 satellites orbiting the earth approximately 12,600 miles high. They are programmed to each orbit the earth twice a day and so that at least 24 of them are available 95% of the day and so that at any one moment at any spot on earth is "visible" to at least 4 satellites.
http://www.outdoorgearlab.com/Handheld-Gps-Reviews

Just when the Sextant was relegated to the old-fashioned, not-so-hip folks...  Turns out the Navy has decided it's gonna stay as the backup navigation system.

http://gizmodo.com/the-navy-is-teaching-celestial-navigation-again-as-a-ba-1736311892

QuoteThe Naval Academy hasn't taught midshipmen how to navigate by the stars in nearly 20 years, but it's reintroducing the old-school approach to maritime travel. Why use a sextant instead of computers and GPS? Worries about ships stranded by cyber-attacks, which have the Navy re-thinking its reliance on tech.

The Capital Gazette talked to Naval Academy employees about the decision to bring back the shuttered program:

"We went away from celestial navigation because computers are great," said Lt. Cmdr. Ryan Rogers, the deputy chairman of the academy's Department of Seamanship and Navigation. "The problem is," he added, "there's no backup."

Quite interesting ....  Without GPS navigation, my job would be much more tedious and time consuming.   Paper maps were more or less discarded a few years ago, as all that data was put online.   If the Internet went dark, communications goes dark - cell phones, TV, radio, land lines, banking / ATMs, Credit cards, cash registers, gas stations - almost all of it is done over the Internet, via point-to-point links (tunnels & private networks).   So, now we have Internet MAPS working with GPS satellites to locate, navigate (absolutely mind boggling, the interdependency).   

In an extended outage, can you imagine how valuable a road Atlas would become overnight?   ... not to mention HAM radio.

Interesting twist on the "information war"

Quote from: Hoofer on October 15, 2015, 09:32:13 AM
Just when the Sextant was relegated to the old-fashioned, not-so-hip folks...  Turns out the Navy has decided it's gonna stay as the backup navigation system.

http://gizmodo.com/the-navy-is-teaching-celestial-navigation-again-as-a-ba-1736311892


Quite interesting ....  Without GPS navigation, my job would be much more tedious and time consuming.   Paper maps were more or less discarded a few years ago, as all that data was put online.   If the Internet went dark, communications goes dark - cell phones, TV, radio, land lines, banking / ATMs, Credit cards, cash registers, gas stations - almost all of it is done over the Internet, via point-to-point links (tunnels & private networks).   So, now we have Internet MAPS working with GPS satellites to locate, navigate (absolutely mind boggling, the interdependency).   

In an extended outage, can you imagine how valuable a road Atlas would become overnight?   ... not to mention HAM radio.

Interesting twist on the "information war"

I keep an up today road Atlas in my truck at all times.  I also keep all old paper road maps from each state in an old briefcase in my 5th wheel.  I now have a GPS but the paper maps will show you things the GPS will not.  I do find that if you put in a address into a GPS system it can be off up to a block or more.  I do find if you put in the Latitude and Longitude points, my unit will get me within 25'. 

As we live so far out of town, we have no address per say.  Only a mail box in town that we had to get so we could get mail.  The Washington state patrol said we had to get a mail box in town before we could get a new drivers license.  So I give out my Latitude and Longitude points of the start of my drive way from the main road. 

Quote from: walkstall on October 15, 2015, 10:17:56 AM
I keep an up today road Atlas in my truck at all times.  I also keep all old paper road maps from each state in an old briefcase in my 5th wheel.  I now have a GPS but the paper maps will show you things the GPS will not.  I do find that if you put in a address into a GPS system it can be off up to a block or more.  I do find if you put in the Latitude and Longitude points, my unit will get me within 25'. 

As we live so far out of town, we have no address per say.  Only a mail box in town that we had to get so we could get mail.  The Washington state patrol said we had to get a mail box in town before we could get a new drivers license.  So I give out my Latitude and Longitude points of the start of my drive way from the main road. 

Yea, my address on Google earth was the next farm over, the latest update is 3 farms down the road.  (no I don't want it fixed)
Our little hand held Garmin, with the TOPO maps has set idle for years...  I might work without a signal, just using the maps, but those big TOPO maps show some really handy short-cuts over the Appalachians... some are dirt paths, 4x4 stuff.   Good stuff to know, if the main roads or bridges were jammed up with traffic and we really had to get somewhere.

I wish Microsoft would continue Streets & Trips, I've mapped a ton of stuff into it.

Quote from: Hoofer on October 15, 2015, 09:32:13 AM
Just when the Sextant was relegated to the old-fashioned, not-so-hip folks...  Turns out the Navy has decided it's gonna stay as the backup navigation system.

http://gizmodo.com/the-navy-is-teaching-celestial-navigation-again-as-a-ba-1736311892


Quite interesting ....  Without GPS navigation, my job would be much more tedious and time consuming.   Paper maps were more or less discarded a few years ago, as all that data was put online.   If the Internet went dark, communications goes dark - cell phones, TV, radio, land lines, banking / ATMs, Credit cards, cash registers, gas stations - almost all of it is done over the Internet, via point-to-point links (tunnels & private networks).   So, now we have Internet MAPS working with GPS satellites to locate, navigate (absolutely mind boggling, the interdependency).   

In an extended outage, can you imagine how valuable a road Atlas would become overnight?   ... not to mention HAM radio.

Interesting twist on the "information war"

Perfect lead into why I placed this in Survival Because people can plan for all kinds of disasters, but in today's tech driven world, which is actually in it's infancy still, if were to collapse, life as we know it would come to a halt.

Pump gas, use an ATM, quick stop at the store? Forget it, there won't be any transactions unless you have cash, assuming you get to the head of the line of pissed off people.

Quote from: Solar on October 15, 2015, 12:45:44 PM
Perfect lead into why I placed this in Survival Because people can plan for all kinds of disasters, but in today's tech driven world, which is actually in it's infancy still, if were to collapse, life as we know it would come to a halt.

Pump gas, use an ATM, quick stop at the store? Forget it, there won't be any transactions unless you have cash, assuming you get to the head of the line of pissed off people.

So I take it a handshake or a IOU is out for the city people.   

Quote from: walkstall on October 15, 2015, 12:53:56 PM
So I take it a handshake or a IOU is out for the city people.    

Egads!   We grew up with two above ground 300 gallon tanks, one for Gas the other for Diesel.
We have less than 10 gallons on hand, in a couple of little Jerry cans.

Cash....?   what's that?  LOL

Quote from: Hoofer on October 15, 2015, 02:39:39 PM
Egads!   We grew up with two above ground 300 gallon tanks, one for Gas the other for Diesel.
We have less than 10 gallons on hand, in a couple of little Jerry cans.

Cash....?   what's that?  LOL

There is some of us old SOB that pay cash yet.  Don't leave home without it.    

Quote from: walkstall on October 15, 2015, 02:59:58 PM
There is some of us old SOB that pay cash yet.  Don't leave home without it.    

Same here. Just paid cash for the Polaris, and I warned them ahead of time so they could arrange to deposit it.
I Hate Plastic, especially since my new debit card has a chip in it, and I hate unwrapping the foil protecting it.

Nope, it's still a cash world for me, no matter what they do to track us like guinea pigs.

Heard this at a gas station:
Clerk 1 "I hate CASH!   My hands get so dirty from making change all day!"
Clerk 2 "I know, they ought to just ban it, or quite taking cash, it's such a pain in the ..."


I really need to fill a couple of 55 gallon drums with Diesel while the price is down.
100 gallons will last 2 years with my little 30hp Kubota tractor.... I don't know how it can run so long on so little fuel - love it!

And.... I'm going to pull out the Garmin this weekend, load up the TOPO maps, and take a walk or two - good practice for search n rescue.

Quote from: Hoofer on October 22, 2015, 05:19:54 PM
Heard this at a gas station:
Clerk 1 "I hate CASH!   My hands get so dirty from making change all day!"
Clerk 2 "I know, they ought to just ban it, or quite taking cash, it's such a pain in the ..."


I really need to fill a couple of 55 gallon drums with Diesel while the price is down.
100 gallons will last 2 years with my little 30hp Kubota tractor.... I don't know how it can run so long on so little fuel - love it!

And.... I'm going to pull out the Garmin this weekend, load up the TOPO maps, and take a walk or two - good practice for search n rescue.

Don't forget to add a full stabilizer if you get that much.  I use Sta Bil Fuel Stabilizer.  I have been using it for over 50 years.   I use it in everything all year long. 

I never use GPS.  The Sun rises in the east. 

I'm at 41-ish magnetic-degrees north of equatorial 0, by about 83-degrees west of some place in Greenwich, England.  I live on the outer-edge of a mini-arm of a spiral-galaxy, clocking-in at around 500,000mph in a 90-ish degree 'southwesterly' vector away from the Big Bang's magnetic-nexus, but closer to the blast's expanding corona.

I never get lost.  In survival-mode I'm more interested in foiling GPS's with electromagnetics.

Quote from: kit saginaw on October 24, 2015, 04:04:31 AM
I never use GPS.  The Sun rises in the east. 

I'm at 41-ish magnetic-degrees north of equatorial 0, by about 83-degrees west of some place in Greenwich, England.  I live on the outer-edge of a mini-arm of a spiral-galaxy, clocking-in at around 500,000mph in a 90-ish degree 'southwesterly' vector away from the Big Bang's magnetic-nexus, but closer to the blast's expanding corona.

I never get lost.  In survival-mode I'm more interested in foiling GPS's with electromagnetics.

When I lived in the valley, I never got lost, the sun was always visible, and a compass never failed me, not that I needed one, I felt as if I had a gift from God in always knowing where north was located. Boy, was I delusional.

That all changed when I moved to the wilderness, everything looks the same when all you see is 100+' tall trees obscuring your view beyond 50' and mountains/trees block the sun, and there's so dammed much iron in the ground, a compass is simply dead weight.
But even GPS can lie during inclement weather, or at the bottom of a ravine, not to mention weak batteries, which I always seem to have when I really need to turn it on.

Quote from: Solar on October 24, 2015, 06:50:53 AM
When I lived in the valley, I never got lost, the sun was always visible, and a compass never failed me, not that I needed one, I felt as if I had a gift from God in always knowing where north was located. Boy, was I delusional.

That all changed when I moved to the wilderness, everything looks the same when all you see is 100+' tall trees obscuring your view beyond 50' and mountains/trees block the sun, and there's so dammed much iron in the ground, a compass is simply dead weight.
But even GPS can lie during inclement weather, or at the bottom of a ravine, not to mention weak batteries, which I always seem to have when I really need to turn it on.  

Know the feeling!   On the farm, 250 acres, 160 of that was woods - and I always knew where I was.   Then one night we went coon hunting, crossing this ravine, over that hill, turning this way and that.  When my brother said, "Hey, do you know where we are?" - oppsie!   Crossing fences we didn't recognize, corn fields, dang, did we feel stupid.   Our internal "compass" was worthless.  We walked straight until we hit a road, and discovered they all look alike in the dark...  so do alot of farm houses.   and the dogs - show up with a gun, and they assume their going hunting too!   When we figured out where we were, about 1 mile away, we made an effort to avoid becoming a laughing stock to the neighbors - "Lost?  Us lost?  No, did you see our dogs?  NO?  Yeah, we've had a couple of dogs ... long time!  They got lost."   (Pure BS of course, and they knew it).

Where we currently live, we all went on a hike, down to the creek.   GPS in hand, tracking for us.  We got there, and the younger kids got tired.  Not a problem!   I've got the house plotted right here, we just walk straight this way, and we'll be home in no time....  right through the longest and thickest patch of briars on the property, lengthwise.

I could hear Bob White Quail...  might have been laughing at us.

Quote from: Hoofer on October 24, 2015, 07:19:38 AM
Know the feeling!   On the farm, 250 acres, 160 of that was woods - and I always knew where I was.   Then one night we went coon hunting, crossing this ravine, over that hill, turning this way and that.  When my brother said, "Hey, do you know where we are?" - oppsie!   Crossing fences we didn't recognize, corn fields, dang, did we feel stupid.   Our internal "compass" was worthless.  We walked straight until we hit a road, and discovered they all look alike in the dark...  so do alot of farm houses.   and the dogs - show up with a gun, and they assume their going hunting too!   When we figured out where we were, about 1 mile away, we made an effort to avoid becoming a laughing stock to the neighbors - "Lost?  Us lost?  No, did you see our dogs?  NO?  Yeah, we've had a couple of dogs ... long time!  They got lost."   (Pure BS of course, and they knew it).

Blame the dog. Hey, it never fails.

QuoteWhere we currently live, we all went on a hike, down to the creek.   GPS in hand, tracking for us.  We got there, and the younger kids got tired.  Not a problem!   I've got the house plotted right here, we just walk straight this way, and we'll be home in no time....  right through the longest and thickest patch of briars on the property, lengthwise.

I could hear Bob White Quail...  might have been laughing at us.

Ugggh, I know your misery, been there done that over the decades, first as a dehydrated kid looking at the shortest distance across a saflower field to get water. I had no idea they had thorns and so much sticky sap.
It started out as ankle high, and hit 3' in the middle of a half mile crossing.

Then one day fishing from a raft on a slough, we hadn't noticed we drifted at least a quarter mile or more, so we paddled to shore covered in black berries, struggled through thorns to the top of the levee, all bloody by this point, only to discover the road turned way back crossing the farm field.
Desperate, treading back to the slough, only to discover the flimsy wooden raft drifted on.
Possibly one of the worst in the top 100 days in my life., scratched beyond belief, hundreds of thorns still in our skin and we had to swim in that nasty slough water with less the 2" of visibility.

We got back to our original launch site and spent the next two hours picking leeches off each other.
We didn't have a dog to blame for our own stupidity, though we never really told anyone about it either, considering.