sydserge said..
Information only slightly on topic, but in case it will be useful for someone...

Coastal Cruising Club will have a few free information evenings re. cruising from Sydney to Whitsundays over March.

https://www.coastalcruising.org/images/Announcements/CCCNth2016Notice.pdf

+1
I have registered for these sessions
good one sydserge

An event happened last Thursday relevant to this discussion and those who think GPS system is reliable and/or would never be used for unknown purposes regardless of our detriment by the controllers ...

A colleague of mine uses a precision timing system across NSW which derives its time from the GPS satellite system and has atomic clock back ups in Sydney, Wollongong and three other sites. At a high level my friends organization doesn't have confidence in GPS which is why they maintain atomic clocks. This is an example of why they dont and why we should watch out too.

On Thursday his time alarm sounded advising at his location only 2 GPS satellites were providing a time signal instead of normally around 10 or 12 meaning the system he operates was in danger of needing to be shutdown. His location has GPS antenna on top of a high building with total sky view. The other sites do too.

Simultaneously at Wollongong and his other locations their time bases also failed and switched to atomic clock backups. This outage lasted for 20 minutes then miraculously the 10 missing satellites at each site came back online.

The 5 independent systems going out at the same time means the GPS signal really did go almost completely out. Not interference or errors. Why would that be? A test maybe. Or perhaps globally there was a reason we aren't meant to know about. Presumably the two satellites left on were to prevent total mayhem everywhere.

The big important thing is that at any time the GPS system could be turned off.

Now if we were steering the QE2 into Sydney harbour at that instant, with no visibility or charts, we could be in a lot of trouble!

Ramona said..
Thursday was also the start of a lot of Telstra outages. Anybody else have problems with satellites? All those people out there with GPS in their cars have not complained. I had a quick search through the Whirpool Forums and there was no mention.

My friend surmised that the 2 satellites left on prevented most people noticing for the 20min. His organization only knew about it because all their alarms triggered.

Its possible the Telstra outage was connected. Very interesting.

sirgallivant said..
Solar flare?

These solar flares sound interesting. What will they think of next.

I will have to look into it as my flares are nearly out of date.

Can't stop wondering how they work at night though.

fishmonkey said..

this recent demo video sent a chill down my spine:

Wonder what happened to the hockey stick, where do you think it ended up? Don't piss off the machine.

Ahhh... that's what we need, a good solar flare and all the Atlas's will be out of business!!!

Ahhhh....a topic true to my heart....navigation. ..or as I prefer to call it....the ancient art of getting completely and hopelessly lost.

I'm a big fan of travelling only by day and island hoping and i don't get out of bed without a compass and a paper chart and had a chat to someone who "claims" has been there b4.

This stuff truly intrigue myself and amazes me-

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/34832597087446387/

Or "The last navigator" by Steven Thomas?

keensailor said..
I had a look at these today, looks like you would need a bunch of these to cover a voyage from to Sydney to Whitsunday. And at $38 each it seems expensive. Am I missing something here?

Is $38 the RNC or the ENC version? Australian Hydrographic office stopped upgrading RNCs (Raster navigation charts) some time ago. So any website selling them is most likely selling older/ancient charts. If its RNC, $38 is definitely not worth it.

If you just wish to view charts covering Australian waters online, there are several websites that let you do that.e.g. i-Boating , Navionics.
Here are few direct links to try.

fishing-app.gpsnauticalcharts.com/i-boating-fishing-web-app/fishing-marine-charts-navigation.html#9.79/-37.9771/144.9702

www.navionics.com/usa

don't think the depths are right
I'm just touching up the keel from a grounding when I came around to western port from the bay plus some old scares