"It's rare that someone can press a button and make something you already
own worth more, but that's exactly what's happening today. As of midnight
tonight, all the people who've bought GPS receivers for boats, cars, or
recreation will find that they are ten times more accurate."
Was the statement from the united states President regarding the US decision to stop
degrading GPS accuracy
The white house press release reads as follows:
I am pleased to announce that the United States will stop the
intentional degradation of the Global Positioning System (GPS) signals
available to the public. We call this
degradation feature Selective Availability (SA). This will mean that
civilian users of GPS will be able to pinpoint locations up to ten times
more accurately than they do now...
That means most reasonable GPS receivers should now be able to get to within 3-4m!
A great GPS info site http://www.joe.mehaffey.com/ which confirmed Selective Availability was removed at 12.04am EDT May 2
At what time was SA turned off?
The GPS satellites were commanded to set SA to zero at midnight GMT at the
end of May 1, 2000.
Will SA ever be turned back on?
Fishing.net.nz understands the United States will not employ SA again. The military have other strategies to combat GPS usage in war (whatever that means)
To see how Military grade service inproves your GPS, check out
http://jennifer.mehaffey.com/sa_trans.gif
and
http://jennifer.mehaffey.com/uscg.html.
May 2000 - Fishing.net news desk - thanks to Richard England for this story
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