Technology gone wild

[Canuck Dennis]

Here i sit in Tarpon Bay, Key Largo, arrived at 5pm, set the hook in 12 ft, 75 ft rode out, set the alarm, RayMarine RL80 C, for 300 ft drift, had a nap, alarm goes off, WTF...up I leap..boat is doing 3.5kts over land, then does a 180 and back to the other side of the bay, about a mile...finally after an hour comes back "close" to where we set the hook, the boat has not moved at all. This to me proves the inadequacy of today's technology, it just cannot be trusted in it's entirety. Use it, but keep your eyes and senses foremost.

[Boatsb]

What makes you think a rl80 is todays technology?

[magnawake]

Yeah, thats pretty scarey. I'm dreading the time we drag. knock on wood, we havent yet, but we're not that experienced either. I was fishing with a fellow last year when our GPS went crazy. I looked at my paper map, got a compass heading and went to our next wreck to fish over. It was marked with a buoy. Pretty easy really, it was only 10 miles away. My partner couldnt believe I found it. I dont trust these GPS's that much. Using our GPS in the ICW sometimes has us tracking way out of the channel, I know it. 95% of the time its right on though. Thats why I always have a map close by. Anchoring out, What else ya gonna do. It's gonna be hard for me to sleep in a blow. Glad nothing happened to you really.

[Canuck Dennis]

If RL80 is not dependable then we are being scammed.....it came out after the Gulf war, when patriot missiles were all the rage..by RAYMARINE, so Bob, you figure anything older than the 90's technology is NFG ??

[rsmith]

No its not. There are alot of older GPS's that can not recieve the current sattelites. Do a little googling on sat. prn32, its an old one that woke up and is wreaking havok with older units. GPS's are not all created equal.

[Ross Macdonald]

This is especially bad in areas of Mexico. We have a Furuno GP37 feeding a Nobeltec 9.0 down here in Banderas Bay off of Puerto Vallarta. Most of the time the Chart shows us about 2 miles inland. It works well up in the Sea of Cortez but for some reason along areas of the West coast of the Mexican mainland it is really off. We constantly cross check with paper charts and use the radar....

[Pascal]

I anchor out over 100 times a year and always set an alarm (usually 100' ) I have never ever had a false alarm due to GPS inacuracy. Sounds like you receiver or antenna has an issue

[jim rosenthal]

How many satellites was it seeing at the time, if you know? It needs at least three to get a stable horizontal fix, and that is only to +/- about sixty feet, I think. The more sats you have, the more accurate the fix is, and the more stable.

[Canuck Dennis]

Was seeing 6 sats, the system does go a bit strange every so often, will lose fix and then re gain it, all connections seem tight but maybe the exterior antenna is going sideways, even at that, with 6 in view why the boat would take off at 3.5 knots and go at least 1/2 mile is really odd. the system was installed by the p.o. in early 2000.

[rsmith]

Was seeing 6 sats, the system does go a bit strange every so often, will lose fix and then re gain it, all connections seem tight but maybe the exterior antenna is going sideways, even at that, with 6 in view why the boat would take off at 3.5 knots and go at least 1/2 mile is really odd. the system was installed by the p.o. in early 2000.

I want my Loran back for back up. USAF is not maintaining the sattelite system. Look it up! There are a bunch ready to go dead and others like PRN32 that are F'd up and sending out bad data. I had a late 90's GPS in the airplane that went crazy everytime PRN32 was visable.