Urban Canyoning / Loss of satellites

[RRconway]

Hi all,
I currently have a Garmin nuvi 300 but have had a few problems acquiring satellites. When I went into London the other day it lost them completely and never regained them until I got home (some 15 miles away from London) , I am aware of urban canyoning but my friends Navman was in the same car and had no such problems.
My questions are:

1. Has anybody else experienced this with Garmin units, Garmin have offered to replace it for about £90 but if another one will do the same thing I'm not sure I want to.

2. To combat this what is the general feeling as to which make will be best?

3. What units do you use and how often do you experience this problem especially in London?

Many thanks for your opinions,
Jeff.

[DennisN]

I have three TomTom units (well, actually, I've just replaced one of them with an HTC Advantage which runs TT Navigator 6) on the windscreen.

In London, I tend to switch one of them to 2D view to give me an alternative sight of where I am, because I can be pretty sure that at least one of them is going to start turning turtle from lack of signal. I don't like 2D view for full time use, but it does give me a wider overview and I pay a lot of attention to it so that I'm well aware of where I am and where I'm supposed to be going.

All 3 devices can lose signal in the urban canyons and I don't think there's anything you can do but grin and bear it. In my case, one at least will stay connected, but I still keep a pretty close eye on them all (it's no problem in London traffic flow, is it?). I sometimes wonder about putting my London street atlases back in the van, but I never do - not easy to pull over and start looking at a map when there's a zillion vehicles pushing and shoving all around me. I tend to lose signal when stationary or in very slow moving traffic jams - but with traffic flowing steadily, I think there's enough movement to snatch glances at satellites.
_________________
Dennis

If it tastes good - it's fattening.

Two of them are obesiting!!

[mikealder]

Jeff, Once the device loses the signal it will have a struggle regaining it when moving, sometimes it will manage it but depending upon the car, the position and type of windscreen (athermic is a big issue) - these factors combined with a moving vehicle can stop the device from re-acquiring the signal.
If you keep it or it does it again try stopping for a couple of minutes for the device to sort itself out once you are out of the very built up area - Mike

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