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Is your GPS up to date?

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I can tell you for a fact that google maps does not care.

For YEARS they showed a McDonalds four blocks from my house.

There are no businesses in the immediate area.

Nearest Mickey D's is 3 miles from here on the other side of the hill, in the business district, on a main street.

Reported it.

Month later I reported it again.

After six months with it still there, I gave up.

Over a YEAR later it disappeared off the map function.

Morons.
 
Yeah, can't image they can really investigate all such reports. I'd probably have better luck getting the City to install center curbing or divider at that spot. :(
 
Good luck. Have a spot here where folks turn left into a former grocery store now Goodwill, across double line, left turn lane, two lanes of traffic and bikes, 100' past a signalled intersection, and the hits just keep on coming. Nasty crashes.

Suggested at least C-curbing. That was 8 years ago this 01JUN.

Guess what nobody has done?
 
If I lived right there I might do my own (hazardous) thing... a simple sign-post ("don't even thing about turning here") but it would probably need constant replacement.
 
I recall doing something similar where the GPS finally said, in many more words, "you're lost." Wish I could remember what it was because it was hilarious.
 
This entire thread just tells me that I haven't missed anything by never using GPS.
 
Boink said:
It is VERY helpful in a foreign place (and overseas).
Click to expand...


I find it very useful to quickly and easily find addresses. It works great 95% of the time, but there are rare occasions where it has led me astray.
 
GPS doesn't work here in Oklahoma, I think Texas is sending blocking signals to the satellite directing everyone to Texas! They want our money! :rolleyes2:





:highly_amused:
 
PAUL161 said:
GPS doesn't work here in Oklahoma, I think Texas is sending blocking signals to the satellite directing everyone to Texas! They want our money! :rolleyes2:





:highly_amused:
Click to expand...

Texas has an Okie GPS Jammer! :cool-new:
 
I use GPS a lot - I don't use Google though because that requires a device with constant internet data connectivity. Garmin is pretty good about keeping their maps current (and when I bought mine the ability to get free updates 2x a year was included in the purchase) and I have an unactivated phone that serves as both a music player and GPS - I can go somewhere that has WiFi and download the map updates as often as I like. It doesn't have as deeply comprehensive an index of addresses and places of interest as Google, but the actual Open Streetmaps maps have are very detailed...sometimes too much so because they often show private driveways. I also like having a very accurate speed reading (and in one of my trucks it is the ONLY speed reading since the dashboard speedo broke 4 years ago - a cheap used $20 Garmin with outdated maps still gives a precise speed reading at a fraction of the $400 it would have cost to get someone to take the whole dash apart in an ATTEMPT to fix the speedo where I would have been billed regardless of the success of the attempt).

Hard copy maps are wonderful in that they always work, but the downside is you have no clue as to where YOU are on that paper map.
 
We had Ships Inertial Navigation System (SINS) on board. The techs used to say "SINS takes all the locations in the world and calculates all the places you're not and what is left over is where you are." Sounds like GPS may work like that, too.
 
John Turney said:
We had Ships Inertial Navigation System (SINS) on board. The techs used to say "SINS takes all the locations in the world and calculates all the places you're not and what is left over is where you are." Sounds like GPS may work like that, too.
Click to expand...

um.....not quite. Depends on the SINS, I suppose.
I was a MK3 MOD6 SINS Tech, ET of all things, and ours was good. After 90 days on patrol, the worst off it was was showing us on the other side of the pier.

SRN-9 Satellite Updates (when we could get a mast up) LORAN A and C, Gyros and PIPAs in a binnacle...

Ours only compared to DRAI positioning....manually..../
 
John Turney said:
We had Ships Inertial Navigation System (SINS) on board. The techs used to say "SINS takes all the locations in the world and calculates all the places you're not and what is left over is where you are.....
Click to expand...

I like that.

It's wrong. But I like it. It's fun.

Inertial systems work by telling them where they are to start out. Then they "feel" how far they travel and add that to the initial starting point.

All inertial systems share a common problem. They "drift," i.e. lose accuracy over time and distance as they're used. They have to be continually re-calibrated or they'll eventually give bad readings.

They're re-calibrated by entering known locations to reset them. That can be data from sextant sightings, GPS (or other electronic nav), or crossing over known surveyed locations.

When I was in the nav biz, the inertial systems I worked on were cal'ed at the factory and shipped out operating. They knew where they were (minus a little drift) in the shipping container as it traveled. Then the customer kept them in a surveyed storage location so they could re-cal continually as they sat on the shelf.

The coolest systems (imho) that we made had built in sextants with little observation domes and would re-cal themselves intermittently on the go.
 
Coriolis effect. 24-hour sine wave, figure out from outside data (lorans, satellite, radar) actual positions and plot, then calculate a reset.
Like I said, when we were good, other side of the pier.

And in the North Atlantic when you need a sked to get a position fix....periscope depth....no keel....geez, throws the deck 45 degrees either side and folks puke.
 
And then there's enophilic-retro-Coriolis dyskesia. That's twirling your wine glass the wrong way. :wink-new:
 
Trained on that. Learned that. In Gyros, believed it.

Unless yer terlet has a jet to cause "other direction" north of the equator it swirls one way when you pull the plug.

Spent some time in South America, enough to see the terlet (when it wasn't an outhouse) swirl the other way when you pulled the plug.
 
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