At midnight last night, the Unites States disabled its intentional
degradation of GPS signals available to the public. Known as Selective
Availability (SA), the degradation feature was put in place to protect US
military and government interests, but with changing times President Clinton
and his cabinet "realized that worldwide transportation safety, scientific,
and commercial interests could best be served by discontinuation of SA." This
means that civilian users of GPS will be able to pinpoint locations up to ten
times more accurately.
I called Fugro's Greg Paleolog this morning to make sure my proposed HEM
survey of the Stillwater Complex would use SA. Fugro is testing the new SA
availability today and it looks like "differential"-GPS equipment may soon
join buggy-whips, Cray-computers, and DOS-disks on the techno-scrape-heap
<grin>.
For you geo-day-traders out there, companies built on "differential-GPS"
valuations may soon be in jeopardy.
In all, a very good GPS decision for acquisition/field geos like me (& glad I
voted for Clinton.)
Regards,
Terry J. Crebs
California Registered Geophysicist
Lakewood, Colorado
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