This whole GPS jamming thing is really starting to G-PS us off! Unfortunately, it isn’t something that can be resolved at the source anytime soon.
While they can’t fix it, EASA have come along with a nice new SIB to help us deal with it though.
What’s the (new) story?
There isn’t really anything new, but there is a slightly updated list of places where you can most expect to ‘get jammed’.
SIB 2022-02R1 was issued on Feb 17, and you can read it here.
It lists the most common spots that pilots are reporting jamming occurring:
- The Black Sea area:
- FIR Istanbul LTBB, FIR Ankara LTAA
- Eastern part of FIR Bucuresti LRBB, FIR Sofia LBSR
- FIR Tbilisi UGGG, FIR Yerevan UDDD, FIR Baku UBBA
- The southeastern Mediterranean area, Middle East:
- FIR Nicosia LCCC, FIR Beirut OLBB, FIR Damascus OSTT, FIR Telaviv LLLL, FIR Amman OJAC northeastern part of FIR Cairo HECC
- Northern part of FIR Baghdad ORBB, northwestern part of FIR Tehran OIIX
- Northern part of FIR Tripoli HLLL
- The Baltic Sea area (FIRs surrounding FIR Kaliningrad UMKK):
- Western part of FIR Vilnius EYVL, northeastern part of FIR Warszawa EPWW, southwestern part of FIR Riga EVRR
- Arctic area:
- Northern part of FIR Helsinki EFIN, northern part of FIR Polaris ENOR
We made a map:
This map is quite possibly not ‘anatomically’ correct. It is just a ‘sort of around there’ map. Also, I definitely think that bit of land between Poland and Lithuania gets its fair share of jamming.
Anyway, the SIB also contains some really handy information on what to look out for (signs you’ve been a-jammed), and what to do about it if you think you have. We aren’t going to list all of that though, you’re better off checking out the SIB.
There is also a new poster
Here is it:
We like it a lot. Of the man who made it, you might say that ‘EASA’ great sense of humour 🙂
We liked it so much, we wanted to make our own one too…
So here it is:
Yes, we did take it way too far and realise that now.
We have mentioned GPS jamming before.
That we have. You can find the previous posts here:
Filled with lots of juicy, jammy information so help you become a ‘Jammin Dodger’:
More on the topic:
- More: Battleships: Updated Risks on the South China Sea
- More: GPS Outages: The Hotspots
- More: GPS U/S in the US
More reading:
- Latest: Dodging Danger: The Three Routes Through the Middle East
- Latest: US Pre-Clearance: How does it work?
- Latest: 2025 North Atlantic Plotting & Planning Chart
- Safe Airspace: Risk Database
- Weekly Ops Bulletin: Subscribe
- Membership plans: Why join OPSGROUP?
Last summer (2022) there was a major jamming event in the DFW area. This resulted in several ground stops, a ground delay program, and a ATC restriction allowing only aircraft capable of none GPS based navigation for about 2 days.
No GPS jamming discussion is complete without a link to this website. https://gpsjam.org/
I fly Turkey / Iraq / Pakistan routinely and I have found it to be very good. And it is way more real-time (2 days old) than ATC information.
Also, I’ll harass Embraer here on the Phenom 100 and 300 – why is VOR/DME positioning not a standard feature of the FMS? Why is it that when the GPS is spoofed the CDI compass spins wildly? Who’s idea was it to base heading on GPS data?