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Joined: Dec 28, 2004 Posts: 133 Location: Ambler, PA USA
Posted: Tue Nov 29, 2005 3:26 am Post subject: Repaired NavMan sleeve
I was about to give up on my 3-year old Navman sleeve on my iPaq 3970, running CoPilot GPS (from V3 to V6).
I think the Navman sleeve is equiv to model 3400, though I can't prove it. The ID number (from CoPilot) is 2-2-A-15-0013. It precedes the sleeve model that offered the external antenna connection.
It began failing to find satellites, or losing them during the trip. Getting progressively worse, and apparently made worse by vibration.
Using CoPilot and the "View Satellites" diagnostic bar graphs, I could see that occasionally only 2 or 3 satellites would be shown and these were often of low strength. But it was intermittent, worked OK sometimes.
In desperation I took the sleeve apart and inspected the solder joints around the antenna. There seemed to be a missing or bad connection between the 'antenna board' and the 'mother board', so I did a touch up there. No effect.
On second try I did a more thorough touch-up of this joint, and for good measure I re-flowed the solder joints where the mylar cylinder connects to the antenna board (you have to be very careful not to melt the mylar). I did this even though my very good microscope showed no obvious problem here.
Presto! Immediately got strong signal from 6 or more satellites. GPS works reliably now.
This GPS unit has travelled over 60,000 miles on my motorcycle, so I can't complain about the durability too much. _________________ Doug
CoPilot 6.0.1.24 (USA)
Compaq iPaq 3970, with PC2003
Navman sleeve (3400)
Blue Tooth GPS
Joined: Dec 28, 2004 Posts: 133 Location: Ambler, PA USA
Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2006 8:25 pm Post subject:
towny wrote:
Hi, I have the same problem and was wondering if you could do a walkthrough with pictures showing exactly what you did.
Sorry, my pictures weren't good enough and I seem to have deleted them. Maybe I can describe it well enough to help:
Remove the 4 black screws inside the sleeve and pry apart the case.
The interior assembly consists of:
-the main board
-the antenna board, like a postage stamp mounted at right angle to mother board.
-the gps antenna, consisting of an open cylinder of mylar sheet supporting a double helical copper foil on the inside.
I think the degraded solder joints are where the antenna board connects to the copper foil antenna. I used a very fine-tipped solder iron to re-flow the solder here. You could easily melt and destroy the mylar if you dwell too long.
As I mentioned, this solder joint looked OK before I did this, but re-soldering somehow made all the difference in reception.
Also as I mentioned there are two solder joints making the connection from antenna board to main board. These are exposed by prying off a white plastic protective cover. Repeating again, I thought one of these looked like a very bad connection but adding more solder to it made no difference in performance.
I hope this helps.
Reception continues to be as good as or better than new, after two months since repair and a lot more motorcycle vibration.
On the down side I have a new annoyance of sometimes losing GPS communication altogether, apparently due to intermittent fault in the sleeve connector (nothing to do with antenna). This leads to temporary loss of GPS info, and multiple annoying popups saying "Expansion pack initialization failed". Usually I can clear the popups and continue navigating, otherwise I slide the sleeve up then down to reseat it and get a positive "initialization of expansion pack". Then all may work well for the rest of the day, or at least up to the next bumpy section of road. Minor annoyance, except that it likes to occur at critical turns where I could use some quick guidance. _________________ Doug
CoPilot 6.0.1.24 (USA)
Compaq iPaq 3970, with PC2003
Navman sleeve (3400)
Blue Tooth GPS
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