Q. Is there a WAAS service in South Africa (Cape) or
plans for one ?
A. WAAS will not come to our part of the world. We will have a equivalent
system called EGNOS which is compatible with WAAS and will work on the
Garmin GPS units. Check out
http://www.sac.co.za/gse/25degree/issue2/egnos.html
for SA info on EGNOS
Q. Is there a DGPS service in South Africa (Cape)
or plans for one ?
I had read there was a DGPS service in some of the
South African
harbors (true/false?).
If that is still the case, what range (distance) will that
DGPS
service cover and do you need to contact someone in order to
use the service ?
A. Free DGPS signal is transmitted round SA coast. You need to be in the
coastal regions of SA (50 Miles inland to 100 Miles offshore) to receive it
and you need a GBR21 receiver which connects to any Garmin GPS. Accuracy
will improve to better than 5 M 90% of the time.
Q. What unit will yield the best position accuracy
in Cape Town, South
Africa ?
A. Any of our 12 channel GPS units (The new 70 series possibly best as they
have new faster processors) with a GBR 21 differential receiver will give
best results.
Q. Are there other ways to enhance position accuracy
in this environment.
For example using specialised antennas (Quadrifilar
helix, active
antenna etc)
A. Not with our commercial units. The better the accuracy you require the more
you pay. The next level up will be an L1 L2 receiver such as Ashtec which
is arround R40000
Q. Are all GPS antennas tuned for 1575.42 MHz ?
In other words are antennas interchangeable
a) between Garmin units
b) between different
manufacturers (assuming same physical
connector)
A. We do not recommend that you interchange antennas as they are active and a
voltage is supplied by the unit to power them. A Garmin antenna is best
matched to a Garmin unit.
Q. I notice the P-code is transmitted on 1227.6 MHz.
Is that still restricted to military use or are there
civilian units
that can use this for additional accuracy ?
A. P-Code is strictly a military system and we will never have access to it.
Q. How do you print the route instructions generated by
City Select SA ?
Apparently once the auto route facility has plotted a
route
with turn by turn instructions, you cannot print that out.
If that is indeed the case - why ?
A. This is the case
(Don't ask me why)
You need to use a screen capture / gaphics grabber program
and print the route
from that.
This has been raised
with Garmin Cartography with a view to enhancement.
Garmin Cartography
responded >
Printing the route
directions from MapSource is not possible at this point in time.
Our engineers are
working on making this available, but it has been a bit of a challenge so
far. You can try exporting it as a .txt file, but it usually comes up
completely different than it should look. We hope to get this implemented
into a future MapSource software update. We apologize for any
inconvenience
this has caused you.
