Our GPS Conundrum

About a month ago, Air Boss and I--along with the kids--were coming home from somewhere. Can't remember where but when we were using our GPS (coincidentally named Garmin), it started wigging out. Like, "where the heck am I?" wigging out. Not good if one is relying on the GPS to get out of some sketchy neighborhood.
Luckily we knew where north was and could figure out the general direction. We got home safely. But the whole point of this is that while Garmin kept "recalculating" as we made turns and tried to manuever our way home, Air Boss and I noticed that Garmin was consistently "off." We found one of the freeways and jumped on it but Garmin showed our location on some non-existent street east of the freeway (we're guessing about 0.1 miles off). Weird. Garmin never recovered and we put him away and said, "He served us well for the 3.5 years we've had him."

We didn't think anything about it until tonight when we were driving home from Aliso Viejo. Since Garmin has been retired, Air Boss and I have been using our smart phones to guide us around unfamiliar territory (both phones got us up to and around San Jose on a recent trip). Here's the weirdness of it all

The same exact thing happened to Air Boss' GPS on his phone. Same exact displacement.

The phone GPS (powered by Google Maps) was consistently off and having us further east (again, about 0.1 mile off) than we really were. Just like Garmin's problem. We turned off the phone, rebooted it, took it off the car power supply, etc. We turned on my phone and my GPS was accurate. What are the odds that two different GPS's (okay, one GPS and one smart phone) would have the same displacement issue?

[Twilight Zone music fades in . . . ]

On the drive back (luckily Air Boss was with me or else I would be cluelessly lost without some navigation system), we thought of reasons ranging from: 1) there is something in the car engine blocking satellite transmission to 2) the world is coming to an end. This latter reason is a direct feed from all the birds and fish dying recently.

Anyway, we're still scratching our heads as to why we just can't seem to keep an accurately working GPS. One thing we'll have to try to rule out reason #1 is to take both Garmin and Air Boss' smart phone into our Blackhawk and see if both devices work properly. If so, maybe the problem is our Blackbird.

Garmin Update (Sat. 1/15/11)
Air Boss took Garmin for spin in the Blackhawk and has reported that Garmin is "back on track" and functioning fine. Thank goodness but it still doesn't solve the problem as to why it had wigged out more than a month ago.

Air Boss also tested his smart phone (this time again in the Blackbird) and the navigation system is function fine as well. Glad to hear that both devices are working accurately but the curious part of me is wondering how this happened to two separate devices in two different months with the same inaccuracy.

Anyway, I'm not going to lose sleep over it.