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rich_sasha01/20/20251 replyview on HN

In the context of position keeping I think it's not too bad.

If we focus on longitude, where timing I guess matters more, the equator moves at a speed of about 0.46 km/s. So I guess being out by 1 second translates to precisely 0.46km error. That's second order compared to the stated error of 4 km, and it will be smaller still away from the equator.

I'm working off the assumption that such a drone can sync up to an accurate time source at launch, and then only needs maintain good timekeeping for its time in the air. I guess without the accurate initial time source, it gets bad. Being a minute out is suddenly 30km of latitude direction away.


Replies

fisherjeff01/20/2025

Plus I think most decent quartz oscillators have a drift measured in single-digit PPM (or less) so even 100ms error over a single sortie would be surprising.