Egnos postponed to 2006

Latest news from the ESA website: EGNOS will not be available until "early
2006".
See http://www.esa.int/esaNA/SEMIGVW797E_egnos_0.html

The article states, however, that "Today, general public receivers can
already receive the EGNOS signal on a test basis".

Makes me wonder whether they leave the test-bit set in the EGNOS-signal or
not, because as far as I am aware the firmware of Garmin receivers is still
programmed to ignore any test signal.

JVking

On my recently purchased Garmin iQue M5 I occasionally get a "D" in or
above the black satellite bars, when I enable WAAS. Since this is my
first GPSr with WAAS, I don't know what to make of it. But I know EGNOS
is still in its testing phase (I live in The Netherlands) so it is not
very important to me. Just playing around with my new toy :-)

When I enable WAAS, after a couple of minutes sometimes the iQue M5 does
find a satellite (number above 32) with a non-solid bar. This bar never
becomes solid (should it?) and until now the "D" has not appeared on all
other satellites. In two cases just only one remained!
The reported accuracy jumped from ±4 meters to ±2 though. Funny thing
is, it stayed at 2, even after the EGNOS-satellite disappeared from the
display, together with all the "D"s.
It's not a big issue for me, I know it's not reliable. I'm only curious.
However, this postponement to 2006 is a bit of a disappointment.

The "D" you received probably didn't come from EGNOS but from ESTB.

ESTB is the smaller scale testing version of EGNOS and has been active since
2000. As far as I know it works about the same as EGNOS, but it uses an
infrastructure that is completely separated from EGNOS. It also has its own
satellite (number 44 on Garmin receivers) that sends out a EGNOS-like signal
without the testing bit set. Therefore it can be used and received by Garmin
receivers which otherwise ignore test signals. However, satellite #44 is
very low on the horizon and can hardly be received in north-west Europe.

33, 37,39) send the signal from the real EGNOS, but it still has the
testing-bit set. Therefore it can not be used by Garmin receivers at
present, unless ESA either removes the test flag or hurries up and finishes
EGNOS. Another possibility would be that Garmin brings out firmware that
allows the user to choose whether or not to use the test signals.

For me it also isn't a big deal that EGNOS hasn't started yet, but it is
frustrating to see that ESA time after time announces that EGNOS is about to
start and than postpones the start with 3 months (or in this case even with
a full year).

I also am curious to see that "D"s in my screen, especially because I like
to walk in the mountains and can use some extra accuracy in the height
measurement.

JVking

You're right, it's #44 every time.


With the external antenna fixed on my roof I have excellent reception.
I did some testing, and was not impressed by the difference in quality
of WAAS (#44) versus non-WAAS. In fact, I'm still doubtful whether it is
an improvement. I wanted to do some real testing with NMEA, but got
distracted because of some strange things I found in NMEA.
Maybe of interest: this time it took me 1.5 hours before #44 appeared
and started putting "D"s in the other satellite's bars.
Maybe it gets switched off sometimes? :-)

Thanks for your explanation.

NoMailPlease@ThisAddress.nl wrote:


read my article on dgps to understand what you are seeing. The open bar
for the correction satellite means that it cannot be used as a
navigation satelleite but it can still provide correction data for other
satellites. The D's mean that correction data is being supplied for that
particular satellite.

The accuracy number is only an estimate and cannot be trusted.

Dale
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_ _ Dale DePriest
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