March 2019
MCA issues Safety Bulletin to all mariners who use GPS equipment after 5th April
26/03/19
The Maritime & Coastguard Agency (MCA) has issued a special safety bulletin to all mariners that use GPS to prepare for a rollover event that will occur on 6 April 2019.
On April 6 navigation data from some older GPS systems might become inaccurate due to the ‘week number’ rollover event.
This could cause stand-alone GPS receivers and systems using GPS chips, to produce data that is 19.7 years either in the past or future, therefore generating errors in both the GPS position and time. However, if onboard equipment has been installed after August 1999, or has regular firmware updates from the manufacturer, there should be minimal risk of an error occurring.