daddywpb: You have to live in the idea state(Florida) for WAAS reception. The WAAS system consist of a Eastern satellite and a Western satellite along with 25 ground correction stations located across the United States. (WAAS is currently of little value outside of the US) Florida has two of the correction ground stations. The lack of high mountains are also a benefit to the WAAS users. Florida's highest land mass is less then 400 feet in elevation. I am sure that the new tall buildings being built on the land scape could have an effect.
Florida WAAS users and other East Coast users should be receiving satellite # 35. The satellite bar on their Garmin Gps should display a D within the bar when receiving a WAAS signal. There are a number of correction stations clustered in New England.
In the West users will need to look for Garmin satellite #47. There are ground correction stations located in S. Cal, Central Cal, and in Washington. Again if you are not receiving the letter D in the satellite bar(Garmin), you are not receiving WAAS signals.
If your Garmin unit is in the battery saver mode it will not receive WAAS data. Should you have your Garmin in WAAS mode, 2-channels are reserved to receive WAAS data. I understand that precludes those two channels from receiving data from non-WAAS satellite reducing your accuracy.
A few years ago an individual placed a geocache in a deep, canyon, covered with heavy oak and pine vegetation. The individual claimed to have received WAAS data in this location. The river bottom location was a thousand feet or more below the ridge tops. It was boxed in by high ridges. I followed the post on the cache site and cachers were not finding it. I made two trips to the location and I could not find the cache. I sent the owner of the cache an e-mail requesting more information and voicing my concern that the steep moist hillside was showing a lot of wear and tear from people looking for the cache. I expressed my concern the land management agency would take a negative view of the destruction.
The owner admitted that he could not find his own cache and he had problems with the reading from his (2) gps units in the location. He was using Magellan gps units. Magellan does not display WAAS signals in the same manner as Garmin gps units. After making another effort to find his cache he pulled the post. Frankly is was a tough location to recieve any gps signel with the heavy cover and located in a deep canyon.
The bottom line is that WAAS is designed for aircraft traffic in the USA. The supporting satellite system is not complete. WAAS is of no value in Europe, Europe is building it's own system. When the WAAS satellite system is complete the system will be of little or no value in Canada or Mexico because of the lack of supporting ground stations.
For those ground pounding, and water borne outdoorsmen who benefit from the WAAS system, I say take advantage of this tool.
