Today’s Global Positioning System is great for tracking tanks in the desert, but turn on your Garmin in New York City or inside virtually any building, and you’ll be staring at satellite static—GPS doesn’t perform well indoors or in urban canyons. Now a new technology is poised to pick up where GPS satellite signals cut out.

Developed by Rosum Corporation in Redwood City, California, TV-GPS, as the system is known, triangulates positions using television signals that are 2,000 times as strong as GPS satellite transmissions.

Kansas State University flight instructor Brad Amstutz jumped at the chance to simulate Steve Fossett’s round-the-world GlobalFlyer flight. The challenge presented by Popular Science: Take off at the same time as Fossett, fly the mission as if it were his own, and see if a simulated flight challenges him in the same ways the real flight challenges Fossett. His only rule is that if Fossett has to terminate his flight, Amstutz will also land.