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GPS mishap.....

A GPS, a cell phone and four wheel drive. Three things people depend on to keep them out of trouble. or get them out of trouble. In this case all three failed them.

Luckily the people had supplies, and enough smarts to stay put.

I use a hand held GPS for boating, hiking and hunting but never depend on it to get me back. They are good tools to have but not 100% reliable.

I once had a GPS telling me to drive off a 20 foot embankment.
Click to expand...

I don't own a car GPS but borrowed one from a friend for a trip to Georgia. It directed me down a road that had recently been closed. A nice shiny new barricade and dead end signs greeted me about a mile down the road. Apparently no one told the GPS that a subdivision was going in.
 
I left Fort Worth on December 20, driving a rental 15' bobtail with a load of furniture, heading for Western PA. I have GPS on my phone; however I made sure I had a recent atlas with me. I thought I had planned the route to avoid the storms that were plagueing the Northeast (which I did, only hit snow the last 50 miles) but I packed food, water, extra warm clothes, batteries, and a blanket just in case I got stranded by the side of the road somewhere. I had my cell phone, and a hand held CB. I had a knife, lighter, and a handgun.

Drove the 1400 miles in 36 hours with no problems; however, I always try to assume that I WILL have trouble of some kind, and be as prepared for it as I can. I would never trust a GPS system alone -- sometimes they have saved me from wondering around lost in a strange town; sometimes they have led me on astray to odd destinations. I find they can be helpful, but on trips a also carry a map and compass. Yes, I keep a compass in the car. I guess I don't have a good natural sense of direction, and sometimes just knowing whether I'm going north, south, east, or west will help me get back to the right road when I've made a wrong turn.

P.S. My girlfriend laughs at me for being paranoid, but if we were stranded I bet she'd eat the food and share the blanket.
 
Looks like the Air Force is denying any responsibility.

c'mon. We all know it was the GPS' fault. :p

Lost Couple Can't Blame GPS, Air Force Says

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/200912...psairforcesays



The U.S. Air Force wants to set the record straight: Neither aging GPS satellites nor a weak GPS signal were responsible for an elderly couple getting stranded in the woods for several days after following directions in their GPS-enabled SUV.

On Christmas day, John Rhoads, 65, and his wife, Starry Bush-Rhoads, 67, drove their vehicle down a remote road in eastern Oregon, where it became stuck in 1-1/2 feet of snow. The couple was stranded for three days before authorities located them using a faint signal emitted by the couple's GPS-enabled phone.


Some news reports of the couple's adventure were accompanied by headlines such as "GPS Strands Couple and Then Saves Them: Aging Satellites?"

On Tuesday, the Air Force Space Command (AFSPC), which operates the suite of satellites that make up the GPS system, used Twitter to clear up the misconception.

Writing under the Twitter username @AFSpace, AFSPC said: "While we do not want to speculate on what caused the couple to get stuck in the snow; the cause was not due to the GPS signal."

AFSPC spokesperson Toni Tones said the current GPS constellation is the most capable in the history of the program.

"Since the inception of us putting it up in 1995, it has exceeded our performance requirements, and we are very proud to offer this service to the general public," Tones told LiveScience.

Tones declined to speculate about why the Rhoads were stranded, but expressed confidence that it wasn't due to the satellites. "All I can say is that the signals that are coming down are very strong and healthy," she said, "so I would have to defer those kinds of questions to [manufacturers] such as Garmin and others that are providing the GPS devices."

That's because even though AFSPC operates the GPS satellites that emit the signal that consumer GPS devices use, they do not create or update the maps that run on the devices, and they are not involved in calculating the routes between destinations.

Tones added that the GPS constellation is designed to be redundant: There are 30 GPS currently in space, but only 24 of them are active at any one time.

The remainder serve as backups in case one of the other satellites malfunctions or if one of them is being upgraded, which happens every few months.

"In the event that one of our satellites fails, we can immediately have another one up to have the full coverage that we need," Tones said.
 
I once caused myself a problem by misusing my GPS. I hunted until dark then headed back for my truck. I was following tracks in the snow and a good compass, using a headlamp. About half way back I stopped for some water and thought that as long as I had a GPS, I might as well check it. I hit the "Nearest Waypoint" function. I had marked my truck with a waypoint before leaving on the hunt.

The GPS got a great signal and the arrow pointed off in a different direction than I was headed. After being perplexed for a couple minutes, I foolishly concluded that I must have misread the compass and got off on some other hunter's tracks (there were several sets in this area). I followed the GPS.

After about a mile, I felt that the terrain just didn't look right and took another break to have some more water and contemplate the problem. I finally figured out what had happened: I had hunted the same area the preceding year and marked an old waypoint along another trail that was closer than the waypoint for my truck. DUMBASS! After that experience I clear the old waypoints at the beginning of each hike/hunt and am a lot more careful with how I mark and retrieve the truck waypoint.

If I'd stuck with the compass instead of the GPS (or if I'd used the GPS properly), I would have saved about 2 miles of tromping through snow in the dark.

DancesWithKnives
 
Like anything else made by man GPS isn't perfect. The problem is that many people think it's infallible.

This story from 2008 is one of my favorites.
CANNONVILLE, Utah – A GPS device led a convoy of tourists astray, finally stranding them on the edge of a sheer cliff.

With little food or water, the group of 10 children and 16 adults from California had to spend a night in their cars deep inside the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

They used a global positioning device to plot out a backcountry route Saturday from Bryce Canyon National Park to the Grand Canyon.

But the device couldn't tell how rough the roads were. One vehicle got stuck in soft sand, two others ran low on fuel. And the device offered suggestions that led them onto the wrong dirt roads, which ended at a series of cliffs.

The group was so lost it couldn't figure out how to backtrack and started to panic. Kids were crying, and one infant was sick with fever, according to a member of the party.
Click to expand...

This line from the story says it all. Glover said a GPS device is no substitute for good judgment or detailed topographical maps. As others have said, many people have become so dependent on technology that they don't bother to learn alternative methods or to apply common sense. They think that the technology will always work and always give them the right information....and are shocked when it doesn't.
 
Getting lost while using a GPS is like getting cut while using a knife - it couldn't possibly be the users fault could it?

Oh yeah - the GPS should have known how deep the snow was and how capable the vehicle was - because they know everything like that don't they?
 
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