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Old July 17th 13, 06:41 PM posted to rec.aviation.ifr
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Default flying LPV with Garmin G1000 & King KAP140 WAAS

L5 is not considered a Safety of Life service solely because of its reserved bandwidth. I'm given to understand that more crucial to this designation was the consideration that L1, L2P(Y) and L2C all share the same single point of failure on the GPS satellite: they all depend on the same Course Acquisition (C/A) chipset.

L5, on the other hand, has a completely independent data path, antenna, chipsets, power source, so that if the L1 or either of the L2 signals fail, the L5 signal will still remain operational.

I would also observe that, as of July 2013, while 11 current satellites have L2C, and only three have L5 operational, the current USAF schedule (which we know will change) has only a two year gap between FOC of L2C and FOC of L5. If either date slides to the right, both will, and probably by the same degree.