Saturday August 21, 2:51 PM

"Make sure you know where you are" - ships urged

LONDON, Aug 21 - British ship captains were urged on Saturday to "make sure you know where you are" in case the Global Positioning System (GPS) is hit by millennium bug-style problems at midnight.

The Welsh port of Milford Haven, like many others in Britain, is closing for three hours and all ships and boats are being urged to check their navigational systems before moving off again.

"There is a degree of uncertainty," said port manager Ted Sangster.

Round-the-world yachtsman Robin Knox-Johnston said sailors would have to go back to the old system of dead reckoning "which means you note your position and then work out your speed and distance from that".

In a warning to sailors, he told BBC Radio: "Don't rely on it at midnight. Get a position at 11.30 p.m. Don't trust the system until you are sure it is all tying in together properly.

"Make sure you know where you are," said Knox-Johnston, who became the first person to sail round the world non-stop in an epic voyage lasting 312 days in 1968-69.

At midnight, the 24 satellites of the Global Positioning System, which provide navigational data from 11,000 miles out in space, switch their timing system back to zero.

When the GPS system started operating in January 1980 it was designed to record time for 1,024 weeks.

Experts say that when the "rollover", or return to zero, happens, at 23:59:47 GMT, up to 1.5 million of the 10 to 15 million GPS navigational devices in use around the world may be unable to handle it and fail, or start producing dangerously unreliable data.

The possible glitch promises to provide a dress rehearsal for the millennium computer bug, set to be triggered inside an unknown number of computers at midnight on December 31.

=========================================== End

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), August 21, 1999

Answers

Here's the link:

Yahoo Article

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), August 21, 1999.

Always good advice.

-- R (riversoma@aol.com), August 21, 1999.

>>>""Make sure you know where you are" - ships urged"<<<

Wherever You Go....There You Are.

-- INVAR (gundark@sw.net), August 21, 1999.