WAAS in AUS?

GIN51E · Post by **GIN51E** » 28 August 05 10:17 am

well i know we don't have it, or do we?

Yesterday i was driving down to wollongong to do a day of cache finding, just about to go through the tolls for the Sydney Harbour Tunnel and what do i see when i look at my GPS? well in the accuracy screen it is reading WAAS and next to it it was saying 3m.

Then i was off into the tunnel and couldn't believe what i had seen and couldn't wait to pop out the other side, came out of the tunnel accuracy went to 8-10m as normal then a couple of seconds later it comes up saying WAAS and went to 3-5m accuracy and then driving along the freeway all the way down to wollongong it was just sitting on 3m accuracy and going down to 2m at times.

now how good is that?

also forget about waiting for it to average itself out when you get to GZ as i found throughout the day at all location i had WAAS signal then it told me i was at ground zero it never changed its mind again. took me right to GZ

where at the caches as we all know when i had no WAAS signal i would get to GZ then a minute later it would say a further 3-5m south,north ect

but with WAAS once i was at GZ thats where it stayed, didn't anyone know we were getting this? did anyone else get this yesterday Saturday 27th?

swampgecko · Post by **swampgecko** » 28 August 05 10:39 am

I doubt it GIN51E, This site would suggest not. Only other thing I can think of is a very flukey Ionosphere signal bounce from a WAAS Transmitter somewhere up north... but the chances of that? I guess would be very slim. Or You have a DGPS unit and didn't know...

What is your GPS unit?

acts2youthgroup · Post by **acts2youthgroup** » 28 August 05 10:44 am

This is kind of funny Dak Emu mentioned to me he had a similiar thing happen, but he just desregarded it as we take it we dont have it or do we, who knows what those military guys are playing around with?

GIN51E · Post by **GIN51E** » 28 August 05 10:53 am

I have a Magellan Explorist 600,

and yesterday was the first time ever that i have seen the woords WAAS displayed in my accuracy screen.

but all day i was picking it up, now and then the WAAS would dissapear but once i came out of the valley or whatever it would come back and many times through the day i turned it off and on an hour later and yup WAAS came back,

i can't explain it but it was there

i took this pic just before i went into the Tunnel

wish i had of taken another one when it was reading 2m,

The Garner Family · Post by **The Garner Family** » 28 August 05 11:29 am

Of course the problem is... even if you get WAAS... chances are the person who hid the cache didn't have it at the time anyway, so their co-ords could still be quite a bit out from where you're looking.

It is possible to pick up WAAS signals, but they're likely to be so distorted that I think you'd get better precision if you disabled it on your GPS altogether.

Richary · Post by **Richary** » 28 August 05 1:25 pm

I've managed to pick up WAAS signals on the Foretrex from Darwin. Purely to see if I could, as I realise there is no correction data for Australia so it won't be a help. I think from memory the closest place for where they broadcast corrections is Japan???

Damo. · Post by **Damo.** » 28 August 05 2:28 pm

GIN51E wasn't the only person who noticed.
http://forum.geocaching.com.au/viewtopi ... highlight=

GIN51E · Post by **GIN51E** » 28 August 05 2:28 pm

still getting it today,

Damo. · Post by **Damo.** » 28 August 05 2:44 pm

My Meridian is WAAS enabled. I just took it outside to see if it was displaying anything different but it doesn't seem to be. Looked in setup for a WAAS on/off setting but couldn't see one.

riblit · Post by **riblit** » 28 August 05 3:40 pm

The NMEA convention for numbering of WAAS satellites is the range 33 - 51.
Do you have satellites within this range showing in the satellite display?

Statement from the FAA
WAAS is based on a network of approximately 25 ground reference stations
that covers a very large service area. Signals from GPS satellites are received by
wide area ground reference stations (WRSs). Each of these precisely surveyed
reference stations receive GPS signals and determine if any errors exist. These
WRSs are linked to form the U.S. WAAS network. Each WRS in the network
relays the data to the wide area master station (WMS) where correction
information is computed. The WMS calculates correction algorithms and assesses
the integrity of the system. A correction message is prepared and uplinked to a
geosynchronous satellite via a ground uplink system (GUS). The message is then
broadcast from the satellite on the same frequency as GPS (L1, 1575.42MHz) to
receivers on board aircraft (or hand-held receivers) which are within the broadcast
coverage area of the WAAS. These communications satellites also act as additional
navigation satellites for the aircraft, thus, providing additional navigation signals for
position determination.

The WAAS will improve basic GPS accuracy to approximately 7 meters vertically
and horizontally, improve system availability through the use of geostationary
communication satellites (GEOs) carrying navigation payloads, and to provide
important integrity information about the entire GPS constellation.

WAAS uses two geostationary satellites:
AOR-W and POR,
AOR-W is over the East Coast of Brazil and POR over the Pacific Ocean

POR's position can be found from http://www.lyngsat.com/tracker/inmar3f3.shtml
or from http://scisites.msfc.nasa.gov/realtime/ ... ack3D.html (select INMARSAT 3-F3)
AOR-W from http://www.lyngsat.com/tracker/inmar3f4.shtml

As far as I can ascertain, there are no WAAS reference stations in Australia. If you happen to be receiving a signal from POR, the information within the data is not valid for this area.

energizer61 · Post by **energizer61** » 28 August 05 6:16 pm

swampgecko wrote: Only other thing I can think of is a very flukey Ionosphere signal bounce from a WAAS Transmitter somewhere up north... but the chances of that? I guess would be very slim.

Funny you mention that .... I've been picking up weird radio stations all week on the car radio, there was also a pretty wicked Geomagnetic Storm & Aurora display visible from Most of Tassie during the week. I dunno, but it could have something to do with it

more info on Aurora's etc can be found here;
http://www.ips.gov.au/Space_Weather
 
most of the warnings have been flashing red all week.

GIN51E · Post by **GIN51E** » 28 August 05 6:41 pm

I've been searching through American sites, Australian Government sites and Australian Air Services sites ect, find heaps of info about how Australia has done a lot of talking about WAAS type systems, testing and even designed their own style of system but can't find anything to say any of it is actually in use at the moment.

just have to see if i'm still picking it up next weekend up at Bathurst and Katoomba.


Also thought i would get out the old Magellan 3000XL and compare reading's between it and the Explorist with WAAS turned on and off, but nope no help. instead i just wasted a few hours outside and confusing myself even more, with both GPS units never really giving any real consistent readings. one thing i did find funny though was the clock on the Magellan 3000XL was 8seconds behind the Explorist, which i'd say is a big deal considering a GPS computes its position entirely based on time. but they were always within 10m of each other and i'd think a 8 second clock difference would cause a huge error but it didn't, so who knows what it was doing.

might slip this one into the X-files.

ftstn · Post by **ftstn** » 28 August 05 8:06 pm

Having just read the other posts I took my Etrex legend outside and fired it up making sure that WAAS was enabled, an number of interesting things occured

1) started picking up satellites between 30 and 45 held a fairly good lock on 42 for a couple of minutes till i went inside,

2) an number of satellites between 1 and 30 were picking up differential correction data which i have never noticed them do ever before, this being indicated by a D in the signal bar

Maybe something has happened a friend at the AAD told me the japanese site was not yet operating that was several months ago maybe they have turned it on thus we are now reciving correction data

Maffu
Team Rabble

GIN51E · Post by **GIN51E** » 28 August 05 8:43 pm

Good, i thought i was the only one

It's just you would think that you would find info somewhere about it. but nothing anywhere.

Kerry · Post by **Kerry** » 28 August 05 9:09 pm

Maybe Magellan don't control the reception footprint like some other manufacturers as there is no way known that WAAS is useful in Australia, simply no ground stations, none what so ever and very likely never will be to be anywhere near effective.

Of course we can actually get a better signal from POR than the country it is meant for, but getting the carrier without the correction data generally has the bad habit of decreasing accuracy.

Cheers, Kerry.

Geocaching Australia

WAAS in AUS?

WAAS in AUS?

waas in aus