GPS woes during Moscow marathon (Read 118 times)

During the last Moscow marathon (Sep 25) a lot of runners were suddenly baffled by the figures on their GPS watches. Some of them found they ran at about 36 sec/mile. Others were 'teleported' to suburbs and then back in a matter of minutes. At the finish line, some GPS devices showed the total distance of 30, 50, 100 miles. The absolute record was almost 17000 miles -- one of the runners managed to run to Australia and back. It could be funny, but imagine that in the middle of the marathon you don't know your pace anymore. Yeah, we had no GPS in 20th century, but in 2016 it's rather discomforting

Strava Flyby shows the discrepancies between GPS treks of runners:

It turned out that GPS signals are jammed near Kremlin. Not sure if Glonass was also jammed.

Yeah, so it seems. Looks like they started jamming in July. What an unpleasant surprise for tourists with GPS and maps on their phones.

Putin must have taken his shirt off around that time.

I believe some watches are able to use either GPS or Glonass. I wonder if both were blocked?

I believe some watches are able to use either GPS or Glonass. I wonder if both were blocked?

Some people said their Glonass watches worked all right. It probably depends on which system is given a priority. If I get it right, GPS signals were not simply jammed into total unreadability, they were simply overridden by fake GPS signals, so the GPS part of the watches was sure it was working well. But if Glonass was given priority, the location was correct.

Russian emergency services use Glonass for navigation, so at least the government was sane enough not to cause troubles for medics, firefighters and others.