Simulating GPS jamming?

General Discussion Pilot Talk
1

Hello!

As many may be aware of, there’s a lot of GPS jamming especially in eastern Europe, due to the situation in Ukraine. Flightradar24 has made a map of the affected areas. This is affecting a lot of commercial flights, especially newer aircraft equipped with GPIRS.

I’ve considered simulating this in flight, as it could be an interesting challenge if you’re approaching an airport. Since its related to the situation in Ukraine, would that be allowed under CoC A.17?

A17 The re-creation of, or organization of events recognizing real world disasters, tragedies, or other such events, particularly those which resulted in loss of life, are not permitted. In addition callsigns that VATSIM has deemed prohibited shall not be used at any time.

2

Turn off the gps and dead reckon your destination…interesting exercise

3

I like how John Charles put it: just turn off your GPS. Dead reckoning is something you could do VFR; under IFR you would just have to plan your flight within the service volumes of whatever ground-based NAVAIDs are still available to you.

If you’re already airborne and want to simulate a failure of your instrumentation, that’s allowed. Just let ATC know that your GPS isn’t working, can they help you find a non-RNAV route, if you don’t already have one planned out. Saying that the failure is caused by someone jamming your GPS would likely go against the CoC.

4

Not only that, it would be unrealistic: when you experience this in reality, it manifests as a GPS failure. You have no way to know it’s being jammed, civilian aircraft have no equipment to detect that.

5

in pmdg boeings (as in the real aircraft) you can turn off gps updating and the fms will revert to IRS and dme/dme for position with corresponding changes to ANP

it really doesn’t change much especially over land. these aircraft are really redundant.

6

the best is actually fly all radio, vor and adf, but sadly most controllers frown upon it, did it a lot 2-3 years ago but was forced to give up.

your post is more current than when you did it, because of the Azeri embraer. but to my knowledge i only manifests in the adsb/data output, the system will filter out impossible waypoints, and revert to IRS or radio fixes

7

That depends on if it’s being jammed or spoofed; if it’s being spoofed, a sharp pilot might be able to deduce that.

Also, in general, there are ways to detect GPS jamming, but I don’t think the avionics in most civilian aircraft can do this.

I think GPS jamming or spoofing would be a cool failure mode to have in a flight sim. Like the OP said, it would be an interesting challenge!