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Forget interference knocking out your GPS system - see below for the reasoning.

If your navigation equipment doesn't work, then it is for something more mundane.

• Crewman "Butterfingers" McClutz dropped a box of heavy supplies on the GPS receivers and the spare batteries. Crushed them all, with a truly impressive bunch of sparks and fire as the lithium-based batteries self-destructed due to the mishandling.
• Crewman "Wrongway Feldmann" got lost in a sandstorm and was never found again - presumed dead and buried under a sand dune. Unfortunately, he was carrying the portable solar charging system. Once the batteries run out, you are down to navigating by the sun and the stars.
• Dockworker "Joe Don't Giveadamn" didn't bother loading the crate with your navigation gear before you started out because it was too heavy and he was due for a smoke break - but he did pencil whip the checklist so everyone thought the navigation equipment was on board.
• Your equipment was bought from the local equivalent of "Alibaba." It worked fine during testing, but in actual use you find that the batteries all quit working after only a couple of days - they have non-rechargeable primary cells instead of the rechargeable cells they were supposed to have.
• The local "camel" equivalent likes the flavor of the plastic used in the housings of your equipment, and ate it all one night - incidentally destroying the electronics.
• Straight up sabotage - somebody wants your group to die in the desert, and has done something to either destroy the navigation equipment or make it mislead you.

While we're at it, forget ideas like "the satellites have worked for millennia." The satellites have to be replaced and maintained in any usable system.

What most folks don't realize is, is that GPS signals are extremely immune to interference. The reason the GPS data rate is so low is because of all the things done to ensure that you can receive a usable signal under really bad conditions - and these conditions include intentional jamming.

An open desert is just about the ideal place to use GPS - nothing blocks your view of the sky. You have a fairly decent signal all the time. GPS only really has trouble in craggy areas - be it real canyons or the so called "urban canyon" effect where the city buildings block the signal.

Despite incidents of bad "solar weather" since the system went into service, GPS hasn't had any large scale, long lasting drop outs over large areas.

So, forget about bad reception in the desert. Ain't a problem if your future engineers are half as good as the guys back in the 1960s and 1970s who designed and built our current system. The design goal back then was 100 metre accuracy for civilian use and 10 meter accuracy for military use - and then they delivered 10 meter accuracy for civilian and 1 meter accuracy for military use. And then to top it off, other engineers added further processing to make it possible to use GPS receivers for surveying with accuracy down to single centimeters.

Forget interference knocking out your GPS system - see below for the reasoning.

If your navigation equipment doesn't work, then it is for something more mundane.

• Crewman "Butterfingers" McClutz dropped a box of heavy supplies on the GPS receivers and the spare batteries. Crushed them all, with a truly impressive bunch of sparks and fire as the lithium-based batteries self-destructed due to the mishandling.
• Crewman "Wrongway Feldmann" got lost in a sandstorm and was never found again - presumed dead and buried under a sand dune. Unfortunately, he was carrying the portable solar charging system. Once the batteries run out, you are down to navigating by the sun and the stars.
• Dockworker "Joe Don't Giveadamn" didn't bother loading the crate with your navigation gear before you started out because it was too heavy and he was due for a smoke break - but he did pencil whip the checklist so everyone thought the navigation equipment was on board.
• Your equipment was bought from the local equivalent of "Alibaba." It worked fine during testing, but in actual use you find that the batteries all quit working after only a couple of days - they have non-rechargeable primary cells instead of the rechargeable cells they were supposed to have.
• The local "camel" equivalent likes the flavor of the plastic used in the housings of your equipment, and ate it all one night - incidentally destroying the electronics.
• Straight up sabotage - somebody wants your group to die in the desert, and has done something to either destroy the navigation equipment or make it mislead you.

While we're at it, forget ideas like "the satellites have worked for millennia." The satellites have to be replaced and maintained in any usable system.

What most folks don't realize is, is that GPS signals are extremely immune to interference. The reason the GPS data rate is so low is because of all the things done to ensure that you can receive a usable signal under really bad conditions - and these conditions include intentional jamming.

An open desert is just about the ideal place to use GPS - nothing blocks your view of the sky. You have a fairly decent signal all the time. GPS only really has trouble in craggy areas - be it real canyons or the so called "urban canyon" effect where the city buildings block the signal.

Despite incidents of bad "solar weather" since the system went into service, GPS hasn't had any large scale, long lasting drop outs over large areas.

So, forget about bad reception in the desert. Ain't a problem if your future engineers are half as good as the guys back in the 1960s and 1970s who designed and built our current system. The design goal back then was 100 meter accuracy for civilian use and 10 meter accuracy for military use - and then they delivered 10 meter accuracy for civilian and 1 meter accuracy for military use. And then to top it off, other engineers added further processing to make it possible to use GPS receivers for surveying with accuracy down to single centimeters.

Forget interference knocking out your GPS system - see below for the reasoning.

If your navigation equipment doesn't work, then it is for something more mundane.

• Crewman "Butterfingers" McClutz dropped a box of heavy supplies on the GPS receivers and the spare batteries. Crushed them all, with a truly impressive bunch of sparks and fire as the lithium based batteries self destructed due to the mishandling.
• Crewman "Wrongway Feldmann" got lost in a sandstorm and was never found again - presumed dead and buried under a sand dune. Unfortunately, he was carrying the portable solar charging system. Once the batteries run out, you are down to navigating by the sun and the stars.
• Dockworker "Joe Don't Giveadamn" didn't bother loading the crate with your navigation gear before you started out because it was too heavy and he was due for a smoke break - but he did pencil whip the checklist so everyone thought the navigation equipment was on board.
• Your equipment was bought from the local equivalent of "Alibaba." It worked fine during testing, but in actual use you find that the batteries all quit working after only a couple of days - they have non-rechargeable primary cells instead of the rechargeable cells they were supposed to have.
• The local "camel" equivalent likes the flavor of the plastic used in the housings of your equipment, and ate it all one night - incidentally destroying the electronics.
• Straight up sabotage - somebody wants your group to die in the desert, and has done something to either destroy the navigation equipment or make it mislead you.

While we're at it, forget ideas like "the satellites have worked for millenia." The satellites have to be replaced and maintained in any usable system.

What most folks don't realize is, is that GPS signals are extremely immune to interference. The reason the GPS data rate is so low is because of all the things done to ensure that you can receive a usable signal under really bad conditions - and these conditions include intentional jamming.

An open desert is just about the ideal place to use GPS - nothing blocks your view of the sky. You have a fairly decent signal all the time. GPS only really has trouble in craggy areas - be it real canyons or the so called "urban canyon" effect where the city buildings block the signal.

Despite incidents of bad "solar weather" since the system went into service, GPS hasn't had any large scale, long lasting drop outs over large areas.

So, forget about bad reception in the desert. Ain't a problem if your future engineers are half as good as the guys back in the 1960's and 1970's who designed and built our current system. The design goal back then was 100 metere accuracy for civilian use and 10 meter accuracy for military use - and then they delivered 10 meter accuracy for civilian and 1 meter accuracy for military use. And then to top it off, other engineers added further processing to make it possible to use GPS receivers for surveying with accuracy down to single centimeters.

Forget interference knocking out your GPS system - see below for the reasoning.

If your navigation equipment doesn't work, then it is for something more mundane.

• Crewman "Butterfingers" McClutz dropped a box of heavy supplies on the GPS receivers and the spare batteries. Crushed them all, with a truly impressive bunch of sparks and fire as the lithium-based batteries self-destructed due to the mishandling.
• Crewman "Wrongway Feldmann" got lost in a sandstorm and was never found again - presumed dead and buried under a sand dune. Unfortunately, he was carrying the portable solar charging system. Once the batteries run out, you are down to navigating by the sun and the stars.
• Dockworker "Joe Don't Giveadamn" didn't bother loading the crate with your navigation gear before you started out because it was too heavy and he was due for a smoke break - but he did pencil whip the checklist so everyone thought the navigation equipment was on board.
• Your equipment was bought from the local equivalent of "Alibaba." It worked fine during testing, but in actual use you find that the batteries all quit working after only a couple of days - they have non-rechargeable primary cells instead of the rechargeable cells they were supposed to have.
• The local "camel" equivalent likes the flavor of the plastic used in the housings of your equipment, and ate it all one night - incidentally destroying the electronics.
• Straight up sabotage - somebody wants your group to die in the desert, and has done something to either destroy the navigation equipment or make it mislead you.

While we're at it, forget ideas like "the satellites have worked for millennia." The satellites have to be replaced and maintained in any usable system.

What most folks don't realize is, is that GPS signals are extremely immune to interference. The reason the GPS data rate is so low is because of all the things done to ensure that you can receive a usable signal under really bad conditions - and these conditions include intentional jamming.

An open desert is just about the ideal place to use GPS - nothing blocks your view of the sky. You have a fairly decent signal all the time. GPS only really has trouble in craggy areas - be it real canyons or the so called "urban canyon" effect where the city buildings block the signal.

Despite incidents of bad "solar weather" since the system went into service, GPS hasn't had any large scale, long lasting drop outs over large areas.

So, forget about bad reception in the desert. Ain't a problem if your future engineers are half as good as the guys back in the 1960s and 1970s who designed and built our current system. The design goal back then was 100 metre accuracy for civilian use and 10 meter accuracy for military use - and then they delivered 10 meter accuracy for civilian and 1 meter accuracy for military use. And then to top it off, other engineers added further processing to make it possible to use GPS receivers for surveying with accuracy down to single centimeters.

Forget interference knocking out your GPS system - see below for the reasoning.

If your navigation equipment doesn't work, then it is for something more mundane.

• Crewman "Butterfingers" McClutz dropped a box of heavy supplies on the GPS receivers and the spare batteries. Crushed them all, with a truly impressive bunch of sparks and fire as the lithium based batteries self destructed due to the mishandling.
• Crewman "Wrongway Feldmann" got lost in a sandstorm and was never found again - presumed dead and buried under a sand dune. Unfortunately, he was carrying the portable solar charging system. Once the batteries run out, you are down to navigating by the sun and the stars.
• Dockworker "Joe Don't Giveadamn" didn't bother loading the crate with your navigation gear before you started out because it was too heavy and he was due for a smoke break - but he did pencil whip the checklist so everyone thought the navigation equipment was on board.
• Your equipment was bought from the local equivalent of "Alibaba." It worked fine during testing, but in actual use you find that the batteries all quit working after only a couple of days - they have non-rechargeable primary cells instead of the rechargeable cells they were supposed to have.
• The local "camel" equivalent likes the flavor of the plastic used in the housings of your equipment, and ate it all one night - incidentally destroying the electronics.
• Straight up sabotage - somebody wants your group to die in the desert, and has done something to either destroy the navigation equipment or make it mislead you.

While we're at it, forget ideas like "the satellites have worked for millenia." The satellites have to be replaced and maintained in any usable system.

What most folks don't realize is, is that GPS signals are extremely immune to interference. The reason the GPS data rate is so low is because of all the things done to ensure that you can receive a usable signal under really bad conditions - and these conditions include intentional jamming.

An open desert is just about the ideal place to use GPS - nothing blocks your view of the sky. You have a fairly decent signal all the time. GPS only really has trouble in craggy areas - be it real canyons or the so called "urban canyon" effect where the city buildings block the signal.

Despite incidents of bad "solar weather" since the system went into service, GPS hasn't had any large scale, long lasting drop outs over large areas.

So, forget about bad reception in the desert. Ain't a problem if your future engineers are half as good as the guys back in the 1960's and 1970's who designed and built our current system. The design goal back then was 100 metere accuracy for civilian use and 10 meter accuracy for military use - and then they delivered 10 meter accuracy for civilian and 1 meter accuracy for military use. And then to top it off, other engineers added further processing to make it possible to use GPS receivers for surveying with accuracy donw to single centimeters.

Forget interference knocking out your GPS system - see below for the reasoning.

If your navigation equipment doesn't work, then it is for something more mundane.

• Crewman "Butterfingers" McClutz dropped a box of heavy supplies on the GPS receivers and the spare batteries. Crushed them all, with a truly impressive bunch of sparks and fire as the lithium based batteries self destructed due to the mishandling.
• Crewman "Wrongway Feldmann" got lost in a sandstorm and was never found again - presumed dead and buried under a sand dune. Unfortunately, he was carrying the portable solar charging system. Once the batteries run out, you are down to navigating by the sun and the stars.
• Dockworker "Joe Don't Giveadamn" didn't bother loading the crate with your navigation gear before you started out because it was too heavy and he was due for a smoke break - but he did pencil whip the checklist so everyone thought the navigation equipment was on board.
• Your equipment was bought from the local equivalent of "Alibaba." It worked fine during testing, but in actual use you find that the batteries all quit working after only a couple of days - they have non-rechargeable primary cells instead of the rechargeable cells they were supposed to have.
• The local "camel" equivalent likes the flavor of the plastic used in the housings of your equipment, and ate it all one night - incidentally destroying the electronics.
• Straight up sabotage - somebody wants your group to die in the desert, and has done something to either destroy the navigation equipment or make it mislead you.

While we're at it, forget ideas like "the satellites have worked for millenia." The satellites have to be replaced and maintained in any usable system.

What most folks don't realize is, is that GPS signals are extremely immune to interference. The reason the GPS data rate is so low is because of all the things done to ensure that you can receive a usable signal under really bad conditions - and these conditions include intentional jamming.

An open desert is just about the ideal place to use GPS - nothing blocks your view of the sky. You have a fairly decent signal all the time. GPS only really has trouble in craggy areas - be it real canyons or the so called "urban canyon" effect where the city buildings block the signal.

Despite incidents of bad "solar weather" since the system went into service, GPS hasn't had any large scale, long lasting drop outs over large areas.

So, forget about bad reception in the desert. Ain't a problem if your future engineers are half as good as the guys back in the 1960's and 1970's who designed and built our current system. The design goal back then was 100 metere accuracy for civilian use and 10 meter accuracy for military use - and then they delivered 10 meter accuracy for civilian and 1 meter accuracy for military use. And then to top it off, other engineers added further processing to make it possible to use GPS receivers for surveying with accuracy down to single centimeters.