Clarification about the term "GPS Shutdown"

[Mxsmanic]

And GPS magically can stop a ship?

No, but with GPS you're less likely to have to do so.

 

[Dave Baker]

Name three or more and why they are 100% dependant on GPS. That is to say in
the absence of GPS there is no plausible workaround.

I did previously - ourselves & all our competitors. Tracking of vessels
around the world using GPS & Inmarsat.

Risk management is a serious issue to many stockholders.

Completely irrelevant in our case as we have no stockholders.

If it happens, will your company suffer a loss?

Of course - we will shut down until GPS comes back on.

How big is the loss?

Plenty - 30 or so staff out of work for starters.

Can your
company function without GPS for 24 hours?

24 minutes would be maximum.

What
workarounds would you invoke in the absence of GPS for those periods?

Exactly what I asked you, as I am unaware of any workarounds.

How do you use GPS?

For tracking ships remotely.

Dave

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[Dave Baker]

A ship's crew can navigate without GPS.

Read more closely - we are not interested in whether the crew know where they
are - the OWNER ( sitting in his office on the 25th floor of some building in
Singapore) wants to know where all his ships are, just in case something
like...maybe a tsunami or similar...happens to hit. He also wants to be
alerted immediately something goes wrong with the vessel, be it attacked by
pirates or going out of it's designated shipping lane.

When near coasts, they can fix their position very handilly
with shore beacons.

Irrelevant in our case. They spend most of their time not near shore.

When in mid-ocean a simple estimate based on heading, speed
and time can be made or a sextant can be used.

And then they have to type that information into a system that can transmit
that data back to Singapore - every 15 minutes. It's not going to happen.

There is no need to be as
accurate as GPS for what you describe above.

Not when they are working around oil fields with cables & pipelines all over
the place.

Piracy/theft are special cases.

And our core business. A business that didn't exist before Inmarsat D+/GPS
transceivers became available.

Dave

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[Dave Baker]

ROTFL - let me guess, the "Department of Homeland Security" came up
with that one

Actually I don't think they did - I'm not even sure it is a rule. I've been
on tens of vessels with AIS sitting in the main navigation area.

Maybe SSAS? That is required to be hidden, but from pirates, not ship crew.

AIS has password protection for certain parameters like vessel name, ship
length & breadth, callsign, etc, to stop tampering by crews, but usually the
installation manuals are left on board & have the password written down.

Dave

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[kashe]

Sam, keep your political opinions to yourself. You're going to make an ass
of yourself. And, you're wrong.

When did this become a newsgroup moderated by you, already a
self-declared ass?

 

[kashe]

If the wind blows away your map, you're out of luck.

I can keep that from happening at least as long as the
batteries you're carrying will last.

And a second map and compass are not that hard to carry.

If you posit an attack by paper-eating moths, I'm leaving.

 

[kashe]

Wonder what the cost of asextant and a reliable chronometer compared
to a GPS receiver.

I recall an account of a man who sailed a converted St. Pierre
dory across the Atlantic to Europe using only a fairly good compass
and a plastic Davis training sextant which cost only about $35 at the
time, some thirty years ago.

Around the same time, I had a cheap Timex watch which lost a
very consistent 18 seconds a month, regardless of my level of
activity. That should be consistent enough drift for navigation.

 

[kashe]

There are churches with the choir and altar in the west? Got to be
pretty rare, at least in catholic areas.

Ideally, in a Catholic church, the front door points west. The
gospel was read from the left side (toward the heathens in the north)
and the epistle was read from the right side (toward the Christians to
the south).

 

[Italy Anonymous Remailer]

I can keep that from happening at least as long as the
batteries you're carrying will last.

And a second map and compass are not that hard to carry.

If you posit an attack by paper-eating moths, I'm leaving.

Maps can get eaten by paper eating moths before moths can eat a GPS. G'day
mate and don't let the door bang you in the arse as you leave.

 

[Italy Anonymous Remailer]

When did this become a newsgroup moderated by you, already a
self-declared ass?

Well bloke, I haven't seen a bigger dipstick then you. Slag off.

 

[kashe]

I see moss on all sides of trees in my region, and it's a temperate
climate.

Agreed.


How many churches are there between Medina and Mecca?

Lousy method anyway.

But you have to know which hemisphere you're in.

Hang around till nightfall -- it gets considerably easier.

But you need a clock for that.

A watch has already been posited for the purpose.

How do you know which one is the polar star?

Elementary. Follow the outermost two stars in the Big Dipper
about five times their distancefrom the top of the dipper. If you
didn't know this, why are you discussing mavigation anyway?

It gets more difficult in the southern hemisphere.

And that's practically all you need in many cases. I've proven this in
the field many times.


From a Web site, usually.


If you know your position, you know which direction to move in order to
reach your destination. And then you don't need the rescue crews.

Not if you know as little as you seem to know about finding
north.

 

[Italy Anonymous Remailer]

I recall an account of a man who sailed a converted St. Pierre
dory across the Atlantic to Europe using only a fairly good compass
and a plastic Davis training sextant which cost only about $35 at the
time, some thirty years ago.

Around the same time, I had a cheap Timex watch which lost a
very consistent 18 seconds a month, regardless of my level of
activity. That should be consistent enough drift for navigation.

Old ground mate. This thread died. Now I know why they made kill filters.
*Plonk*

 

[kashe]

ROFL!! This has to be the easiest place in the world to navigate - merely
watch which way everyone faces to pray.

Which is toward Mecca -- not necessarily due east.

This is rarely difficult.

And the dishes can point to anywhere on the equator the
satellite of interest is above. In the central US, this could be well
to either side of south. A better method would be to check the
orientation of solar cells on the telephone kiosks on a freeway. They
should generally point south to get the maximum solar radiation
throughout the day, barring nearby clumps of trees. But if you're lost
on a freeway, I think you have a larger problem anyway.

 

[kashe]

How do you know when it's noon without a clock?

The only way I can think of is to plot the movement of the sun over an
entire day. You can then see true north plotted directly.

Actually you can then plot an east-west line directly. And it
need not take a whole day, if you've had access to a boy scout manual.

But an
entire day is a long time to wait. And if you are moving, that won't
help.

You check the altitude -- before noon the altitude increases;
after noon it decreases.

 

[kashe]

Any chance you'd be willing to provide specific details on
what you've done in practice? So far your arguments seem merely to be
an extended troll -- no more than a child asking, "Why?" after each
answer a parent provides.

 

[kashe]

And I get the feeling that our little maniac is still wondering what
those people in London thought when they discovered that the 0°
Meridian is running straight through the old observatory in
Greenwich... such a coincidence, and the people who built that
observatory couldn't have known, after all they didn't have
GPS!!1eleven!

Obviously it was sited by the same morons who built the
cathedrals right in the middle of the busiest, most crowded parts of
town.

 

[kashe]

In which direction do Christians pray?

Up? And will you have trouble establishing where that is as
well?

I guess the methods you suggest aren't valid for the tropics, then.


Not if you are moving.

Check when you stop to pee. Or do you do that in motion, too?

Which one is the polar star?


Why would I want such blast to the distant past? Nobody navigates with
moss and stars today. Neither method is certified by the FAA, either.


Why would that happen?

Because you ask tot goddamned many stupid questions. The pilot
just got sufficiently pissed off.

Why are any of these being discussed? None of them is a terrorist
activity, and none of them is a frequent use of navigation among
civilians.

Of course they're used by both civilians and that subset of
civilians known as terrorists.

Maps are notoriously unreliable. Direct observation works better.

Are you going to believe the professionally prepared map or
your own two lying eyes?

And after all this, I have to assume you have the integrity to
use a non-mapping GPS unit. We wouldn't want the device to be misled
by all those unreliable maps within.

 

[kashe]

Are you serious ?????? Surely this basic info hasn't been forgotten
already by humanity ?

Here's a hint: there's this astonishing thing called "the sun".


So. You know you're at 15.60N 32.53E.

Which direction do you go in, to get to Nairobi? Or Khartoum ? Or London?
No using a map (or substitute such as the web) to find out.

For all cases -- blub, blub, by blub, blub.

 

[kashe]

Yes, because they still have to have young officers


Of course. But they still train people to navigate without GPS, because
they might run into situations when GPS isn't available,

As in continuous, heavy, wet tree cover, where a map and
compass aren't fazed..

 

[kashe]

One must not look directly at the sun.

Directly at the sun not required. In any case, when very
young, I looked at an eclipse long enough to get a burn on my retina.
It took a considerable length of time.