WASS Did You Say

          Was going through my GPS and all the options some of which confuse me.  Anyway came across an option called WAAS/EGNOS and being inquisitive I wanted to know just what this was.  Garmin's web page gives a good summary of the technology.
         

           WASS stands for Wide Area Augmentation System and was originally developed by the Federal Aviation Administration and Department of Transportation to increase consistency of signal accuracy.  How it works.  There are 25 ground stations throughout the United States and 2 master stations on either coast that monitor GPS satellite data.  The master stations gather data from the reference stations and sends out a correction signal for GPS units that are WAAS enabled.  The corrected signal takes into account disturbances caused by the ionosphere, GPS satellite orbit and clock drift.  This technology is available only in the United States however there are other countries developing similar technologies.  Japanese Multi-Functional Satellite Augmentation System in Asia and Euro Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (ERGNOS) in Europe.
          So what does this mean for my GPS adventures and just general increased accuracy if I desire it?  I'm not sure yet but the first chance I get I'm going to experiment with this.  I typically see on my GPS that I'm getting an accuracy indicator of + or - 9 feet and really never any better than this.  Garmins's web site says that I can get better than three meters (9.8 ft) accuracy.  I did find better numbers on other web sites I searched and a great explanation of what WAAS means to an average GPS owner here.  So if enabling WASS increases my accuracy by 2 or 3 feet when I need it that's neat.