I just got my aircraft insurance renewal and it has a new endorsement that
says "the company will not pay for a loss caused by a computer system,
hardware, program... etc. etc.... when the year changes from 1999 to 2000" and
for what came as a surprise to me "the dates from August 21, 1999 to August 22,
1999".
When asked, my agent told me the my insurance company thinks the GPS system is
being
closed down those days to re-program. I don't think that's the case, but I
really don't
don't know what my King (IFR approved for approaches and enroute navigation)
GPS will we doing those days. To be on the safe side I think I'll keep the
Skylane RG
in the barn and drive the GMC those days.
Richard Waters '76 PB, Troy, MI
> There has been much to do regarding the one-year-before-the-milenium bug (we
> all know of course that 1/1/2001 is the real millennium),
> but there are a couple other problematic dates:
>
> 8/21/99 - Exactly 1024 weeks since GPS was standardized. Timing is
> critical to the function of GPS. The problem is, Official Leap-Seconds are
> not known ahead of time until the astronomical measurements are made. To
> get around that problem, they guessed when leap-seconds would occur based
> on the rate that the earth's rotation and orbit are slowing and made
> "GPS-time" which might deviate from official time. Since the two systems
> will eventually diverge, this could only be done for a limited time. They
> chose 1024 weeks. Some GPs units built before 1995 have no provision for
> recalibration (many built since do automatically from data in the GPs
> signal).
>
says "the company will not pay for a loss caused by a computer system,
hardware, program... etc. etc.... when the year changes from 1999 to 2000" and
for what came as a surprise to me "the dates from August 21, 1999 to August 22,
1999".
When asked, my agent told me the my insurance company thinks the GPS system is
being
closed down those days to re-program. I don't think that's the case, but I
really don't
don't know what my King (IFR approved for approaches and enroute navigation)
GPS will we doing those days. To be on the safe side I think I'll keep the
Skylane RG
in the barn and drive the GMC those days.
Richard Waters '76 PB, Troy, MI
> There has been much to do regarding the one-year-before-the-milenium bug (we
> all know of course that 1/1/2001 is the real millennium),
> but there are a couple other problematic dates:
>
> 8/21/99 - Exactly 1024 weeks since GPS was standardized. Timing is
> critical to the function of GPS. The problem is, Official Leap-Seconds are
> not known ahead of time until the astronomical measurements are made. To
> get around that problem, they guessed when leap-seconds would occur based
> on the rate that the earth's rotation and orbit are slowing and made
> "GPS-time" which might deviate from official time. Since the two systems
> will eventually diverge, this could only be done for a limited time. They
> chose 1024 weeks. Some GPs units built before 1995 have no provision for
> recalibration (many built since do automatically from data in the GPs
> signal).
>
