Article 43698 of sci.geo.satellite-nav: Path: matra.meer.net!news1.best.com!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!howland.erols.net!netnews.com!news.iac.net!not-for-mail From: Jay Purvis Newsgroups: sci.geo.satellite-nav Subject: Re: I want one, but why? Date: Wed, 06 Aug 1997 14:47:36 -0500 Organization: GRCI Lines: 35 Message-ID: <33E8D4D7.6768@grci.com> References: <33e218ee.351520235@news.global2000.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: jpurvis.da.grci.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (Win95; I) To: Larry Basch Xref: matra.meer.net sci.geo.satellite-nav:43698 Larry Basch wrote: > Help me find an excuse to spend some money. Well Larry, I've been working with GPS for about eleven years now and I still don't have my own receiver. I've played with quite a few, and I use some professionally at work in the development of GPS-related applications. But, I've never had need of one outside the office. Nonetheless, I know of one excuse which may suit you well: Education! There's nothing like a hands on experience and GPS is one of the best ways to learn about a whole lot of stuff, even things you wouldn't think related to GPS. Not only do you find out about navigation, but look at all the other things you learn about: Geodesy, atomic clocks, leap seconds, time standards, datums, coordinate and reference frames, satellite orbits and ephemeris, relativity, spread spectrum, antenna theory, NMEA and serial interfacing, Kalman filters, matrix algebra, ionospheric and troposheric propagation phenomenon, communications engineering, interference and multipath, solar cycles, amp-hour and battery capacity, statistics, .... Even better, you not only learn about all this stuff, but you find out how it all works together. Now, if you had to buy all the books or take all the classroom instruction necessary to get all this, you'd spend thousands of dollars. Even then, you still wouldn't have the hands-on experience necessary to retain and apply the knowledge. So, a couple of hundred bucks for a GPS receiver is a real bargain considering what you can learn from it. Happy buying, Jay Purvis GRC International, Inc.