GPS Rollover

Forget Year2000 for a while. Are you ready for 21 August 1999 ? On this date, at 23:59:47 UTC, certain navigation equipment using GPS (Navstar Global Positioning System) technology will fail or operate slower than normal. It is also possible that some computer systems may be affected, since GPS receivers are sometimes used to provide an accurate time signal for distributed networks.

Wrapup

News.com article

Various people in rec.boats.electronics report odd problems, patches applied etc. with Garmin, Magellan units.

It is unlikely that the position reported by GPS receivers will be significantly in error. However, units may lose lock or take more time to acquire satellites, and not give a fix for ten minutes or longer. It is therefore not a good time to connect the autopilot to the GPS and go below to cook dinner (you are, of course, obliged to keep a proper watch in any case..)

See the following sites for a brief technical description:

United States Coastguard
JPO
New-Age Navigating - Cruising World, May 1997

The Cruising World page also has a list of affected systems.

See also this list of affected systems reported by Marc Brett (Joe.Mehaffey.com)

GPS Upgrades

Manufacturers: 3S Allen Osburne Ashtech Austron Avcan Azimuth Bancomm CMT Corvallis CSI Datum Delnorte Eagle Furuno Garmin Hopf Humminbird Interphase Japan Radio Leica Lowrance Magellan Magnavox Marconi Motorola Novatel Raytheon Simrad Spectrum Starlink Trimble Universal Avionics

Many GPS products must have a firmware upgrade to be Y2K/rollover compliant. This usually means obtaining a ROM chip from the manufacturer or dealer, opening up the device and swapping the chip. Some devices may be upgradeable by connecting them to a PC and running a special program, while others may require unsoldering parts and should be left to a specialist in most cases to retain product warranty.

GPS Satellites and Ground Stations

The satellites and ground stations are maintained by the US military. Here is their website giving details of the server-side rollover issues:

Navstar Y2K/GPSEOW Index.

GPS Receivers

Raytheon - Raytheon Company has adopted and implemented a company-wide program to investigate "Year 2000 problems"
- Some older units reportedly affected after May 2005.
Furuno - enq sent
Garmin
- See Garmin Y2K. Garmin will issue instructions for older products a few weeks prior to the GPS rollover. Current products are Y2K compatible.
Humminbird
- Humminbird technical support report that the year 2000 rollover will not affect their GPS units.
Interphase
Leica (+Magnavox)
- See Year 2000/Week Roll Over Solutions for explicit model information.
Eagle Electronics
Lowrance
- Eagle Canada report (5 Nov 1998) that all Eagle and Lowrance units will be OK (re. Y2K and rollover)
Ashtech
- See g8 FAQ.
- Extensive testing has been conducted using GPS simulators; the G8 is not affected.
Trimble
- Trimble have an excellent Y2K/WNRO page.
- Some products are fully compliant, others require firmware upgrades.
- Certain products are non-compliant, including URS for DOS and OS/2, ARINC429, and FlightMate. A few products require a reset following week 1023 rollover. See Trimble's Status Table for complete details.
Canadian Marconi
- Canadian Marconi reports that their Allstar, RT-Star and Superstar products pass the 9 JPO tests successfully (26 October 1998)
Magellan
- Magellan has a Y2K page in their Product Support area. (you may need to disable JavaScript to view their site in certain browsers)
Avcan enq sent
Motorola Oncore - Motorola Oncore receivers will not need reprogramming or replacement in 1999. However, if the RTC in the receiver is not set or its battery has failed, and the reference year stored in EEPROM is also wrong, the receiver may select the wrong 20-year window. This may be fixed by entering a date command when the receiver is not tracking satellites.
- See Motorola GPS Y2K
DEL NORTE - enq sent
3S Navigation enq sent
Allen Osburne enq sent
Arbiter
- Y2K, rollover compliance
- All Arbiter products are GPS Week 1024 rollover and Year 2000 compliant.
Austron = Datum
Azimuth enq sent
Bancomm (Datum)
CMT/Corvallis
- Y2K/Rollover.
- Under investigation. May be affected by outsourced components.
hopf Elektronik
- FAQ.
- Some older systems may be affected.
Japan Radio enq sent
JcAir
Novatel
- See 1023Y2K.PDF (from the Breaking News page) for full details.
- Many cards will show a position error of several metres following week 1023 rollover until power-cycled. A few cards will generate invalid NMEA dates following Y2K. Firmware updates may be required to ensure compliance.
Koden, SI-TEX
- Si-tex Customer Service report (9 Nov 1998) that all KODEN (si-tex) equipment is free from any problems associated with the Y2K and week 1024 rollover events.
- Spectrum Geophysical
- Universal Avionics
  - GPS-058 - Upgrade to at least SCN 1.3 to avoid problems
  - GPS-1000 - Upgrade to at least SCN 10.2
  - GPS-1200 - Upgrade to at least CID 102
  - UNS 764-2 - Upgrade to at least CID 102
  - FMS, NMS systems - Upgrade internal GPS-1000 to at least SCN 10.2
  - FMS, NMS with SCN 601 and subsequent - manually switch to new database on 30 December 1999. Nuisance "Database Expired" messages will be seen between 30 December 1999 and 1 January 2000, but will not affect navigation.
  - FMS, NMS prior to SCN 601 - Nuisance "Database Expired" messages may appear prior to 1 January 2000.
  None of the (upgraded) products will be affected by Y2K, GPS week 1023 rollover or Y2K leap year. Source: Service Letter Nos. 2746, 2757. Contact Universal Avionics for full details. Operators will receive a Service Letter at the end of 1999.
- Simrad enq. sent
- Communication Systems International
  - OEM, ABX, MBX compliant; GBX, LGBX have minor issues.
  - See the CSI Rollover/Y2K page
- Starlink - DGPS equipment, GPS links, info etc.
  - Y2K and EOW issues
Other GPS Equipment Links
- US Coastguard
- joe.mehaffey.com
- www.redsword.com/gps
- old/gps_vnd.htm
Other Devices
- Older navigation equipment such as Loran, Omega, Satnav etc. will be unaffected by GPS rollover.
- Equipment which may contain a CPU or microcontroller but does not have a Real-Time Clock (RTC) cannot be affected by Y2K. This includes equipment such as autopilots, depth sounders, radios, electronic logs, radar, wind instruments, engine management systems etc.
- Some equipment which contains a CPU or microcontroller and does not use a date may nevertheless contain a Real-Time Clock due to poor design. Such systems may be identified by the presence of an RTC chip and Lithium or similar battery, and may be affected by Y2K.
- Equipment which requires a date to be set for proper operation may be affected by Y2K. Such equipment may incorporate a battery-powered clock; the owners manual will describe the procedure for resetting the equipment after changing the battery. Consult the manufacturer or dealer for Y2K information.
- Equipment on which setting the date is optional is unlikely to be affected by Y2K and will be safe to operate through Y2K.
- Equipment which displays a date or time derived from a GPS set using NMEA will be affected by any error in the GPS set. This will probably be related to loss of signal, which the equipment should handle gracefully in any case. Affected equipment may include high-accuracy computer clocks, electronic charting systems, autopilots etc.
Related Links
- Internet Time and Y2K links
- Peter Bennett's GPS/NMEA page
If you have any information on other systems, or corrections to this list, please let me know ()
Disclaimer
Information presented on this page is based on information provided by equipment manufacturers and other sources. GPS operators should verify details directly with their service representative. Andrew Daviel and Vancouver Webpages disclaim any responsibility for damages direct or consequential occurring as a result of action or inaction taken as a result of information presented on this page

Vancouver Webpages

GPS Rollover

Wrapup

GPS Upgrades

GPS Satellites and Ground Stations

GPS Receivers

Other GPS Equipment Links

Other Devices

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