Re: [gpsd-dev] [PATCH] Clean up and update NMEA.txt

[Gerry Creager - NOAA Affiliate]

Yo Gary!

That's ok, rant on. I've had more ranting today than usual, so I'm pretty well used to it.

On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 4:46 PM, Gary E. Miller <address@hidden> wrote:

Yo Gerry!

On Tue, 7 Apr 2015 16:17:34 -0500
Gerry Creager - NOAA Affiliate <address@hidden> wrote:

> That's really not completely fair.

When is politics fair?  And Obama did take personal credit for killing it.

Never, and that's why I'm so tired of it. I just want to be a scientist when I grow up, not have to manipulate people...

 

> The LORAN decommissioning was on the books for a lot longer than the
> current administratoin. It'd been on life support for as long as I can
> remember (my first GPS project, Cows In Space, Motorola OnCore
> receivers... the original ones...) went that way because we weren't
> sure we could get LORAN signal long enough to complete the project.
> ca., 1994.

True, but then came the eLoran project.  A way to keep GPS from being
the one and only nav system.

And predating eLORAN was LORAN-H and LORAN-U, both of which were technically superior to LORAN-C and put out to pasture. And they predated the availability of NAVSTAR hardware (the while 42u rack of it!) to the public. Alternatives are good, some, though, do outlive thier usefulness.

> Subsequent administrations have been stringing it along to
> satisfy isolated constituents.

Yup, and some very important ones, like me.

I never qualified as a very important constituent. I can tell you stories about my current congresscritter... who I went to college with... refusing to respond to my e-mails because I called him up short, in a PRIVATE e-mail for inconsistencies and deviations in his public statement from accepted physical facts...  

> When SA was decommissioned, it was
> time to pull the plug on the respirator...

Not really, in many places my Loran worked better then my GPS the day
before they pulled the plug.  And with eLoran it might have been
comparable to GPS in most situations and way better in some situations.

About the only places I've had real problems with GPS were a couple of sites in NM, near Fort Polk, LA, and Ft. Huachuca, AZ... and once or twice in some sandy regions of the world when, perhaps, some spoofing with going on. I will say it's disconcerting to have your aircraft GPS reset, though, because someone sent the reset signal from the Flashcube.

 

GPS is not perfect and a system to cross check it would be goood to have.

Agree 

> Of course, I still find
> the occasional Cessna with a Loran-C receiver in it, and the
> occasional pilot who still tries to use it for navigation!

Or the occasional Cessna driver, like me, that was forced to update for
no good reason.  Places where I formerly had a good nav signal are now
dark for me.

Or consider all the yachties that also had to upgrade.

I've more sympathy for the Cessna drivers than the yachties. I've been flying (and throwing money into a hole in the sky) for awhile. I've never been that interested in the boats!

Later, 

Gerry

 

I could rant on, but will pause here...

RGDS
GARY
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gary E. Miller Rellim 109 NW Wilmington Ave., Suite E, Bend, OR 97701
        address@hidden  Tel:+1(541)382-8588

--

Gerry Creager

NSSL/CIMMS

405.325.6371

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“Big whorls have little whorls,

That feed on their velocity; 

And little whorls have lesser whorls, 

And so on to viscosity.” 

Lewis Fry Richardson (1881-1953)