GPS outage?

William Pete Hodges

William Pete Hodges

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Petehdgs
I was flying home yesterday from KDUH Toledo Suburban to Culpeper Virginia KCJR. I was cruising 11500 feet on course when about 12:30 PM the GPS's in my aircraft displayed no position data. I have a garmen GPS 496 and an AERA760. The 496 displayed no position data, But the 760 simply froze. The first thing I did was double check my magnetic compass and DG and maintained course at 135 magnetic. Satisfied that I was maintaining my course, I looked up VORs along my route and found the nearest one close to my route was Belaire BEL. My last known position from BEL was about 40 miles West Northwest of its position. After dialing it up as a position reference I then rebooted the GPS 496. It initially showed only one satellite. After about 10 more minutes it showed several satellites but it still had no position data. All in all both GPS units were out of service for about 30 minutes.

Did anyone else have an experience like this yesterday July 7th at around 12:30 to 1:00 PM Eastern time?

Was this likely caused by a solar flare interfering with GPS reception?
 
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At 12:30 yesterday I would have been at about the same altitude somewhere in Tennessee or northern Georgia. Did not have any gps glitches.
 
Up until your post, I didn't know what that was. Now I do. But I don't think that tells me what happened yesterday.
 
GeorgeC said:
Maybe you flew over a dipstick trucker with a jammer, but I don't see anything here

https://gpsjam.org/?lat=40.09896&lon=-80.65835&z=6.2&date=2024-07-07
Click to expand...
Dipstick truckers with jammers don't reach 11k, especially not for a 30 minute radius at cruise speed. They also don't cause device screens to freeze.

If a device shows reception of 10 satellites and can't compute location, the problem is with the device.

If a device screen freezes, the problem is with the device.

I'd start with firmware updates for both gadgets.
 
Any military training centers close by.??

Possibly some agency was practicing GPS jamming.??

Which is not uncommon around the White Sands restricted area.
 
Thank you all for your replies. All I know for sure is both gadgets went out at about the same time and both gadgets restored at about the same time. They each behaved a little differently but they are different gadgets. After they restored my flight went on without incident.

One Miracle at a time.
 
Sounds like you might have run into the GPS test. The military jams it to test military capabilities to operate without it because in the next war, GPS will probably be taken out in less than 10 minutes.
 
bflynn said:
Sounds like you might have run into the GPS test. The military jams it to test military capabilities to operate without it because in the next war, GPS will probably be taken out in less than 10 minutes.
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This is likely, Toledo Express airport has a decent number of F16 that fly out of there. Sounds like he wasn’t too far away when this happened. With that said, I fly that area a lot and have never had an issue with GPS.
 
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