Something's gone all goofy and I'm not sure which to blame!

suemccartin · Occasional Visitor Joined: Feb 23, 2004 Posts: 7

Hi All
Been using mapopolis 4 with a axim x5 advanced. Before this everything has been working like a champ with no problems. About a week ago I got my brand new fortuna pocket xtrack CF unit in the mail and tried it out. It seemed to be having a problem because there was an annoying amount of map "float" and it would fix/lose about four times in a row before it could maintain a fix. I sent the Fortuna back for a replacement, put my old holux gm 270 back into the mix. At first it seemed ok except that I was seeing more map "float" than I've ever seen before on this unit under mapopolis 4. Now a week later the holux is behaving the same way the fortuna did. So I'm thinking there's a machine issue or a software issue, just doesn't make sense that two gps units would flip out in the same way.

I've been reading posts describing ways to force the gps back into NMEA(?) mode, but it seems to be there because the holux viewer shows data streaming down the screen and I've tried the Cold Start option in the software. Right now I can't get any fix at all no matter what I do, I tried soft and hard reset of my axim still no go. I looked at the cruxview software and I've found the article here about winfast navigator ce (trying that one tonight as I've got no way to load the sofware from here at work).

I took my unit on a trip this weekend (Pinellas County Florida to Ocala National Fores, Florida) and while it lost fix a few times it got me where I was going on the trip out, on the way back the dang thing would not work at all. If I got a fix at all it died the second I tried to set a destination and when I got home I ditched the mapopolis 4.37 and went back to 4.33 and it when it claimed it got a fix it was pointing to someplace that certainly wasn't my house!!!! The thing can see the satellites, it just won't fix or stay that way.

I've got my old audiovox maestro on the charger going to see what it can do tonight but I'd love to know what caused this in case I run into it again. I looked to see if maybe we've been having atmospheric issues that could be effecting the gps signals but I can't find anything about sunspots or anything but I did see something that seemed to be saying we're in some kind of magnetic storm right now. A friend of mine tried his unit out and it works fine but I also saw a post from someone in my immediate area that said he had a spat of lost fixes within the last few days ago but the problem fixed itself. Any and all suggestions are greatfully appreciated, this comes at a bad time because I'm going on vacation in two weeks. Rolling Eyes

lbendlin · Posted: Mon Feb 23, 2004 6:05 pm Post subject:

I can confirm that last week there were some oddities in the reception in the Texas area. We don't need solar activity for satellites to go fishing...
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Lutz

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suemccartin · Occasional Visitor Joined: Feb 23, 2004 Posts: 7

Is there any place where I can find out about gps satellite problems? I was wondering if maybe I got a bad almanac download as I understand those are suppose to be good for a couple of months. Does a factory reset wipe that puppy out of there and reload it?

Well here's an update. Semsons got my fortuna back to me. I loaded up mapopolis 4.33 on my old audiovox maestro and put the new fortuna on it, it got a fix and kept it pretty quick but I feel like I'm seeing a lot more map float than I've seen in the past. Put my holux gm270 on the maestro and it got a fix and lost it almost immediately and also locked up the maestro to the point I had to soft reset to shut it off.

I think maybe I've got it down to a gps in a flaky state but the question is how to get it back. I downloaded winfast navigator CE and used the settings to factory reset it but that doesn't seem to have helped. Any other ideas?

lbendlin · Posted: Tue Feb 24, 2004 4:33 am Post subject:

Check DavidW's posts - not too long ago he had a pretty good explanation up, and also a link to the site of the management center.

If the receiver doesn't react to any attempts at hard reset then you can still disconnect the main battery and wait for the backup battery to deplete.
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Lutz

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Darren · Posted: Tue Feb 24, 2004 8:51 am Post subject:

If you're feeling brave, the latest Navstar constellation status can be found at http://gauss.gge.unb.ca/NavstarGPSConstelStatus.html Thumbs Up

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Darren Griffin

suemccartin · Occasional Visitor Joined: Feb 23, 2004 Posts: 7

Thanks for the link for the satellites but that's greek to me.

suemccartin · Occasional Visitor Joined: Feb 23, 2004 Posts: 7

lbendlin · Posted: Tue Feb 24, 2004 4:32 pm Post subject:

Let the CF card sit around for two weeks - that should be sufficient to drain it's backup battery. In the meantime you can get yourself a decent BT receiver 8)
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Lutz

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suemccartin · Occasional Visitor Joined: Feb 23, 2004 Posts: 7

You can go to FAAs web site and look up NOTAM advisories, I found these this morning, it sounds like either one of these could be affecting central florida and I'm definetly within the radius for Miami. Now I know where to look when there's a problem.

ZJX JACKSONVILLE (ARTCC),FL. [Back to Top]

!CARF 02/093 (KZJX A0060/04) ZJX GPS UNRELIABLE WITHIN A 270 NM RADIUS OF 3050N/08025W AT FL400. THIS AREA DECREASES WITH ALTITUDE TO 225 NM RADIUS AT FL250, THEN TO 160 NMR RADIUS AT 10000 FT MSL, THEN TO 115 NM RADIUS AT 4000 AGL. IFR OPERATIONS BASED UPON GPS NAVIGATION SHOULD NOT BE PLANNED IN THE AFFECTED AREA DURING THE PERIODS INDICATED. THESE OPERATION INCLUDE DOMESTIC RNAV OR LONG-RANGE NAVIGATION REQUIRING GPS. THESE OPERATIONS ALSO INCLUDE GPS STANDALONE AND OVERLAY INSTRUMENT APPROACH OPERATIONS 1600-0400 DLY WEF 0402221600-0403010400

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ZMA MIAMI (ARTCC), FL. [Back to Top]

!CARF 02/079 (KZMA A0031/04) ZMA GPS UNRELIABLE WITHIN A 270 NM RADIUS OF 3050N/08025W AT FL400. THIS AREA DECREASES WITH ALTITUDE TO 225 NM RADIUS AT FL250, THEN TO 160 NMR RADIUS AT 10000 FT MSL, THEN TO 115 NM RADIUS AT 4000 AGL. IFR OPERATIONS BASED UPON GPS NAVIGATION SHOULD NOT BE PLANNED IN THE AFFECTED AREA DURING THE PERIODS INDICATED. THESE OPERATION INCLUDE DOMESTIC RNAV OR LONG-RANGE NAVIGATION REQUIRING GPS. THESE OPERATIONS ALSO INCLUDE GPS STANDALONE AND OVERLAY INSTRUMENT APPROACH OPERATIONS 1600-0400 DLY WEF 0402221600-0403010400

Number of NOTAMs selected: 2 End of Report

Well that was annoying, next time I'll know. FYI I've also got a fortuna pocket xtrack, on the ST side it has the same chipset was also having difficulty but when I put it in XT mode it fixed right away, XT mode is really too slow to drive with but at least I'll have something if this happens again.

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