Meta4
Premium Pilot
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2014
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Mopar Bob said:Conclusion #1: Clouds do affect GPS reception. At least Phantom reception. Not all clouds however. Those puffy white things don't seem to have any effect on the reception. However, dark clouds that cover the entire sky dome do affect it. I went to the same field for a few days. Overcast one day, 6-8 sats. Clear skies, 10-12 sats. I repeated this test twice with the same conclusion. Within the course of an afternoon, the heavily overcast skies cleared up, and my reception did also.
The frequency of the signals sent from the GPS satellites was chosen so that they wouldn't be affected by cloud cover and rain. GPS navigation is an all-weather system for planes, boats and cars. They don't all have to switch to an alternative when it rains. The number of sats visible at any location varies with time and it looks like your testing doesn't account for that.