Russia announced today it would close down GPS stations in Russia (reverse sanctions) after June 1: http://rt.com/news/158680-russia-usa-rocket-gps/.

The GPS system uses ground stations to help the satellites determine their exact position, which ultimately means those satellites can accurately determine a users position. I dont know for sure, but I assume if the ground stations are shut down in Russia, then the accuracy of the signals in the Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia region will degrade. How much? who knows.

This wont affect most mobile phones as GPS receivers in phones are mostly GPS and GLONASS dual band, but only a few Garmin units are Glonass compatible ... https://support.garmin.com/support/s...00000000000%7D

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Time to treat yourself to a Monterra and a 64ST Walter !
Aside from a host of facilities and advantages, one of the more visible ones is that the above units no longer suffer from 'map wobble' when at stand still- due to their combined gps/glonass ability.

Hummmmm better start looking at doing a map reading course

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Mark
www.bamriders.com

I read in a separate article earlier today (which of course I can't find right now...) that there are in fact no gps stations in Russia.

Here is an article about it:
Russian Officials Puzzled About US GPS Stations in Russia | Russia | RIA Novosti

The gps stations in Russia appear to be of limited utility, so maybe this won't matter very much. It sounds like Russia needs the glonass stations in the us more because their satellite coverage is not as comprehensive.

Keep your skirts on ladies,,
Control part of GPS signal stations are located and controlled by the US Airforce ,, in fact it is owned by the US Govt,, the whole GPS.
32 some sats sending signals to 15 or so stations (Probably more hidden away) ,, with command station in Colorado,, the rest ,,outside of Russia,, UK,, Korea ,, Marshall Island etc ,, well away from the Russians.
This Russian action will not affect us riding through Russia , using smart phone,, garmin or any other civilian GPS.
Besides ,, USA and Russia has entered negotiation on this and international stations, with three months window.
As you can see ,, it can cover anything in between UK and Korea. Only way to shut that down is the US Govt.
Also ,, There are two types of GPS ground stations for the USA system. Main stations about 5 around the world provide corrections to timing data due to relativistic effects, clock drift, ephemeris, or ionospheric delays that are timing constants rebroadcast by the satellites to receivers for corrections. The types of stations in Russia are for augmented gps called Global-DGPS . DGPS improves local GPS accuracy from about 3m to 10 cm. However this lack of support in Russia's areas only effects civilian use of the US system in those areas. Meaning Garmin is really screwed (I can see Bertrand,,palpitating his lips already) ,, if this happens. The Chinese, EU, and Russian systems won't be effected. Smart phones come in all systems.

To see all this Russian action in the 21st century is mind boggling. Gorbachev and Yeltsin ,, one must be sad,, one must be turning in his grave.

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Sorry, I don't underStand your response...we should "keep our skirts on", but garmin users are "really screwed"?

If you're saying that garmin (GPS?) users will only be able to get 3 meter accuracy, I thought that in any event GLONASS accuracy is not any better than that?

Bertrand uses Garmin Monterra, which is fully GLONASS compatible

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Errr the satellites do NOT determine a users position. As far as any normal user is concerned they get a signal from the GPS/GLONASS satellites and the users device determines its own position based on those signals.. the users device sends no signal outwards (such a system would need a larger antenna and a much larger battery on the users GPS).

No ground stations in various parts of the world for political/safety reasons. My understanding is that if there were no new outgoing signals from ANY ground station then there would be a slow degradation of the GPS systems accuracy. For normal car navigation use .. well even one ground station could maintain the system to an acceptable accuracy! 20 meters should be good enough? Why have so many ground stations? To get better accuracy for the defense enabled GPS systems. And as a side benefit it allows; faster tuning of new satellites, faster detection of faults and redundancy.

The GLONASS system has less horizontal positioning accuracy that the GPS system .. better in the vertical! But .. the more satellites your system can see and use to get an average off, the better its accuracy will be. So best to get one with both GPS and GLONASS capability.

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You want water and dust resistant? Plastic bag it... much cheaper. And you get a wider selection of cheaper products.