eLoran deader, GPS wounded

How horribly ironic!  The screen above is grabbed from a USCG video showing the demolition of Alaska's tallest structure, a Loran tower that might have hosted an eLoran backup to GPS, maybe already was.  Just three weeks earlier, Intelsat let it be known that it had "lost control" of one of the two WAAS satellites, and that it would "drift out of orbit over the next two to four weeks."  And Alaska will be the place that suffers the most loss of WAAS, though all North American navigators should take note that WAAS redundancy just went away.

Ben Ellison is electronics editor for Bonnier Marine Group, specifically Yachting and Cruising World. He previously was electronics editor for Power & Motoryacht and SAIL, as well as a writer for Ocean Navigator. His blog posts appear courtesy of his website www.Panbo.com, which has 80,000 monthly readers worldwide.