GPS Unavailable

[TFTC]

I have been driving from Port Elizabeth to East London and along the way my Garmin couldn't lock on any satelite as it keeps telling me it was unable to find satelites. I tried with my Blackberry and HTC Wildfire without any luck. Is it possible that there is a GPS outage since all my three gadgets can't be misbehaving?

 

[kayvee]

That's not going to happen, hey.

There are any number of satellites up there, so you should receive a lock from numerous ones. Have you waited long enough while trying? Some devices take some time to acquire first lock from cold start, like at least 5 minutes plus.

 

[pinkscorpio68]

On most days our Garmin will connect within a minute, then you get the odd day, that it will take up to 10 minutes to find anything.

 

[hexdream]

Go read up on the tech specs. Yes there are plenty of satellites. I think four are needed to be visible for civilian purposes, but all of the rest are needed for the system to actually work. They have lost a few satellites over the years if I recall, and currently have only 1 spare for if another dies. After that we are borked. This is why there is paranoia about it, and alternatives are being looked at.

 

[FrancTheTank]

Did you have it nicely in the windscreen? - GPS signal does not go through metal roof well
Has there been cloud cover? - this makes GPS signal slightly weaker, longer time to lock - should still be within 5 minutes

I doubt the has been an asteroid storm which has taken out all the GPS satellites....

 

[Arthur]

I doubt the has been an asteroid storm which has taken out all the GPS satellites....

But a CME might.

emergence of triple-sunspot group AR1356. This morning in Brisbane, Australia, Dennis Simmons photographed the sunspot's three dark cores rotating over the northeastern limb