Vista C altimeter question

sworks00 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jul 19, 2005 Posts: 1

Hi all. I'm new to this forum and got my first question. I just bought the Vista C and have been playing around with it for a couple of days. I noticed that a couple of times the altimeter does not display a profile. Everything else on that page is displayed and works but there is no green profile. I'm wondering if it has anything to do with the number of satellites that are recognized. Does anyone know why this is happening?

Skippy · Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2005 10:28 am Post subject:

Hi and

It could be that you don't have enough sats locked. If you only have 3 sats then you get a 2D fix (lat/long) but if you have 4 or more sats then you get a 3D fix (lat/long/height). The accuracy of the fix also depends on where the sats are in the sky. 4 sats right above you or in the same quarter of the sky makes it harder for the GPS to triangulate an accurate position.

The Vista C is supposed to have a barometric altimeter in it but I don't know how this interacts with the GPS 2D/3D fix. Maybe you need to get a good fix and then the barometer will take over.

Was the behaviour you noticed from a cold start or had it been switched on for a while? Did the altitude flatline in the middle of a trip or was it at the beginning (possibly before it had a reliable fix).
_________________
Gone fishing!

Minidish · Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2005 5:36 pm Post subject:

You probably sorted the problem out by now but here goes for anyone else who may experience a similar problem.

I recently bought the Etrex vista (I assume the Altimeter profile works the same as the vista c)
I had the same problem then realised that the track log needs to be enabled for the frofile to build up on the altimeter, the baro pressure profile appears to work regardless of whether the track log is enabled or disabled.

The track log can be enabled from the Main menu then sub menu Track.

Happy tracking
MiniDish

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