Could this affect the Gps signals?
- Thread starter Pegasus2
- Start date
Thanks for the question. I was reading this story this morning and wanted to post the same question.
My answer would be yes, but on an intermittent basis and not all satellites.
I'm flying the beach tomorrow so I'm not going to think about it for now!
Meta4
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Well, maybe one in the far northern hemisphere that can fly the aurora.....
(Only in the consideration of photo opportunities)
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N017RW
Premium Pilot
Yes, but what does this mean to a Phantom operator?
I’ve seen this info posted for years here with no correlation to flying these toys.
What can you add?
Some of us who are mired in technology for a living know that when that big orange ball in the sky throws a tantrum, it can spell trouble for all kinds of things, not just radio communications. While the magnetic storms can screw with our power grids, using transmission wires almost like the coils a generator, the charged particles from the sun can alter data on microchips including processors and memory. It can cause hardware failures or cause software problems that most folks would just shrug off as a rare software or firmware bug, or a piece of hardware getting ready to fail.
We're actually exposed to tons of stuff all the time by the way, and it does cause things to happen that most folks will never nail down. But the flare-ups make it much worse. It's a numbers game. Our planet has some nifty protections but a percentage of stuff does sneak through.
When we've had a really crap day at the office where tons of equipment is doing weird stuff it's never done before, first thing I look at is solar weather. My boss - an experienced RF engineer - laughs, but not with complete skepticism.
Some of us who are into ham radio may instead celebrate certain types of solar weather flare-ups because it can enhance the ability of radio signals at certain frequencies to reach much farther. The ham club we operate keeps a handy solar weather widget in its web site's sidebar.
I'm on the west coast. It's not state or federal park land. The only airport nearby is a grass field with no tower.
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