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goldy26uk Occasional Visitor
Joined: Nov 21, 2007 Posts: 4
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Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 3:30 pm Post subject: S50 Traffic Module Problem! |
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I bought a traffic module for my navman s50. But when I plug it in I get no signal for the traffic. I positioned the aerial on the side of my windscreen, but get no signal. I tried sticking the aerial onto my car radio aerial and the best I get is 2 out of 5 bars on the signal strength.
Has anyone else got a TM module for thier S50 or S70, what kind of signal strength do you get? |
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DaveMatthews Regular Visitor
Joined: Dec 25, 2004 Posts: 221
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Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 5:03 pm Post subject: Re: S50 Traffic Module Problem! |
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goldy26uk wrote: | I bought a traffic module for my navman s50. But when I plug it in I get no signal for the traffic. I positioned the aerial on the side of my windscreen, but get no signal. I tried sticking the aerial onto my car radio aerial and the best I get is 2 out of 5 bars on the signal strength.
Has anyone else got a TM module for thier S50 or S70, what kind of signal strength do you get? |
It's probably quite normal, unfortunately. I use my car's radio antenna via a "proper" extension lead (ie not using the length of wire supplied by NavMan) but even with that, most of the time I never see more than two bars. I get three bars occasionally. A few weeks ago I had virtually clear "line-of-sight" from the northern tip of Fleetwood (Lancashire) across the sea to Ulverston's Classic FM transmitter twenty miles away but still only got three bars. The one and only place where I can consistently achieve four bars is on top of a certain hill close to where I live. I've never seen five bars. (If I ever need to drive to Ulverston, I'll drive right up to the mast itself to see what happens!)
If you're going to stick with the length of wire supplied with the Traffic unit, the best position for it, in my experience, is to mount it horizontally along the dashboard as close up to the bottom of the windscreen as possible. Try to make it as straight as possible, too. You'll probably find the little suction cups on the wire are pretty useless - supplement them with use gaffa tape! I have to say that as NavMan supply a 1.5metre length of wire, they've been more generous than some other SatNav manufacturers (my old Navigon system's wire was only half that length).
The other thing you can try is attaching a little ferrite core (places like Maplins sell them for a few pence) to that end of the wire which plugs into the NavMan unit. Even with my "proper" antenna wire, I have found this helps a little bit. It would seem that the NavMan unit itself is generating stray signals that interfere with the incoming TMC one. The ferrite core "protects" the TMC signal.
Good luck!
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Cheers,
Dave
Last edited by DaveMatthews on Sat Feb 16, 2008 7:14 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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goldy26uk Occasional Visitor
Joined: Nov 21, 2007 Posts: 4
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Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 6:15 pm Post subject: Cheers! |
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Thanks for the reply, i'll try that see what happens.
Forgot to mention I have a heated front windscreen, I guess this might be a factor as well. |
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Gee-Pee Lifetime Member
Joined: Feb 10, 2005 Posts: 1951 Location: Mostly somewhere in Essex
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Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 11:40 pm Post subject: Re: Cheers! |
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goldy26uk wrote: | Thanks for the reply, i'll try that see what happens.
Forgot to mention I have a heated front windscreen, I guess this might be a factor as well. |
If you have an athermic windscreen, that would certainly be a cause of possibly not getting a signal. Secondly, you should find out if your area is one of those dead spots in the country that Classic FM fails to cover. Sometimes, just moving a few miles one way or the other can make a difference. Finally, you could try and overcome the windscreen problem by buying a Magmount and a connector so that you can have an outside aerial.
PS Have you tried to get a signal outside the car? Set the whole lot up on a worktop in the garden and leave it for 20 mins or so. Might work ;-) _________________ Gee-Pee
Lifetime member PGPSW - time rapidly decreasing |
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polygon99 Occasional Visitor
Joined: Jan 26, 2007 Posts: 12
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Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 8:44 pm Post subject: |
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athermic windscreen. I have a renault laguna which has the bane of satnav - an athermic windscreen. I have an extension aerial for the gps which ends up on the parcel shelf at the rear and works fine. Having just bought a Navman S90i to replace my old iCN520, I now have the problem of TMC reception for the traffic info. My logical (??) idea is to somehow fix up the TMC with the aerial for my car radio which receives FM reception very well. But I have no idea how to do this. Any advice welcome. |
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