Re: GPS

[Tom Droege <tdroege2@earthlink.net>]

Chris and all,

Ah! Ha!  Chris came up with the answer.  Recently in order to extend the 
battery life, I started to run the GPS by closing the battery door when I 
wanted to use it.  I realized that the batteries were slowly running down 
even though the unit was off.  Chris explains below what was happening.

This just happened to coincide with Sept. 11.

It looks like that if I want to see more satellites, that I have to use 
more batteries.

Tom Droege

At 10:59 AM 2/6/02 -0800, you wrote:
>The GPS unit stores ephemeris data internally in nonvolital
>memory for all sats it has seen.  They can't program
>it in at the factory. The unit collects this data while in use.
>If you use your GPS
>a lot it will eventually store ephemeris for the entire
>constellation.  I'll bet Tom typically leaves his GPS on
>only for a few minutes at a time.  Others like me for example
>will run the GPS outdoors for an entire weekend.