> Just curious; Some of these types of cards from other vendors do have onboard > GPS. I wonder if they would work (GPS wise) without being activated on the > cell carrier?
I know at least with Sprint, the GPS is heavily integrated with the cell system. The way the information was presented to me, it sounded like the GPS stores no almanac data. When the GPS wants a fix, it grabs the almanac data from the cell providers location server, then goes about acquire the fix. When cell service is not available, it runs in autonomous mode and downloads the almanac data each time you ask for a fix, which results in a long time-to-fix. This information was presented by a Sprint engineer in regards to pinging a missing person's cell phone during a search and rescue mission. He mentioned it also applies to air cards, but I would think the situation would differ when using a GPS app, as opposed to the GPS being activated by a ping from the network. And I don't know much about the other carriers' offerings. Tom KD7LXL _______________________________________________ Xastir mailing list Xastir@lists.xastir.org http://lists.xastir.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xastir