Malsingmaps Forum

can the signal penetrate through several inches of steel plates and reach below sea-level?

I m goin to sail, since I wont be in charge of the bridge(ship maneuvering department) hence cannot monitor the real-time gps all the time as i will in charge mainly in engine/machinery compartments( usually below water level in ship) . I m planning to buy a USB gps receiver that works when connected to laptop or get a gps nuvi phone to play around during free time, will it work ?

If you are enclosed inside a steel cabin it is unlikely the GPS receiver can see any Satellite. If your cabin is below the water line it will be even tougher to get any signal. You can experiment by placing a Bluetooth GPS receiver on higher deck within the range of your Notebook.

Do let us know how it goes... Happy Sailing & Bon Voyage.... Cheers!

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MSM Glossary/Index - http://www.malsingmaps.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=57986#p57986

I work on an oil rig. I've tried but not possible to get GPS signal while inside hull or cabin due to steel structure.

If that is what you want to do, then you can place the GPS above deck or anywhere where it can 'see' the sky. It will work. I placed mine at the porthole of my cabin when I was on the Alaskan Cruise and recorded the entire journey. Then you can see your track in your laptop during your free time and if your laptop has MapSource and a map of the area you were sailing, you can see your track in the map which makes it a lot more meaningful.

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Lean not on your own understanding

I'm just thinking.....

He can get one of those external antenna and connect to one of those handheld or Nuvi (capable of attaching external antenna) and it could work. If the wire is not long enough....he can probably DIY and lengthen it to run from the above deck with sky view and all the way down to the engine room.

The other method is probably one of those bluetooth capable GPSr receiver... but against the distance and walls might be a problem.

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I don't have free fish......

Depends on what kind how big a ship he is working in. If it is one of those super tankers / cruise ships, the top deck to the engine room can be be pretty high. The length of the cable needs to be pretty long with result signal degradation

Bluetooth distance is pretty short.

A good professional GPS re-radiator is one option to transmit the signal though again the length of cable has some limitation.

I don't think he needs or have the time to view the GPS in real-time when he is working in the engine room. He only likes to view it during his off-duty hours.

So as long as his colleagues will not steal his GPS, he can leave it above deck and record the track unattended, to be viewed later. No need for any elaborate or expensive set-up for real-time viewing.

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Lean not on your own understanding

If that is the case, than the arrangement in the picture below should do the trick...

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I don't have free fish......

Exactly.

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Lean not on your own understanding

You can actually buy one of the very cheap GPS data logger. Then leave it above deck to see the sky while you are busy. Then when you are free, just connect it to your laptop to download the tracks, then you can continue to leave the logger up on deck while you take your laptop back to your bunk to view the track of the journey. If you order one of the cheap GPS datalogger from USA, I think it will cost less than SGD100. Then at least it will not be as tempting a theft target as a GPSMAP60CSx which cost much more.

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Regards,
Francis T Lim.