• February
• March
• Calculations
• Observations

• GPS waypoints, tracks and data file.

• U.S. Naval Observatory
• Current GPS Constellation
• National Air and Space Museum
• U.S. Coast Guard Navigation Center

GPS experiments

The GPS experiments were the result of an idea that was formed only a few weeks after getting my first GPS unit over two years ago.

Astonomers track the motion of stars as they "travel" across the sky. Other people like to locate and watch satellites as they cross the sky. When I saw the "sky view" screen on the GPS unit, the question that came to mind was, "What directions do the GPS satellites move as observed on the GPS "satellite" view on the Garmin Vista GPS unit?"

The next step was to figure out how to record the movement of the satellites and plot the paths of the satellites.

I probably would have gotten to this sooner except I was busy on other things such as taking pictures, running all over the place with the GPS, printing out maps to see where we REALLY went instead of where the out-of-date maps show the roads going. Pictures and GPS data of some of our wanderings can be found at: Trips and Photos

The first experiment was conducted in February of 2005 when I photographed my Garmin Vista's Skyview screen. I used paint to create graphs which plotted the paths of the satelites from the photos. Since the camera wasn't computer controlled, only a few photographs were taken.

The second experiment was conducted in March of 2005. This time I used two computers. One computer controlled the camera and the second ran Delorme's Street Atlas program with the Garmin Vista sending it the GPS data. Once again I used paint to create graphs to plot the paths of the satelites.

In 2006, I wrote up my observations and scanned in my calculations.

This should pretty well finish up my experiments.