GPS antenna

E

ECLIPSE

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24 Feb 2007
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Hope this could be usefull....last year my garmin gps antenna swung upside down on its mounting, and took in some water, which totally knackered it. Tried drying it out to no avail. Replacement antenna around eighty quid, which my northern sensibilities could not bear. HOWEVER... maplins were selling a gps antenna designed to magnetically stick on a car roof; size of a fat fifty pence piece. So I bought one of these things on the offchance, soldered on the original connector, and stuck it on my cabin roof with sikaflex. Result... better reception than ever (maybe my original was iffy when I bought the boat, but I have no reason to believe this) and a saving of around £76.00... yep it only cost four quid.
 
Can also pick them up from eBay...search for GPS part number; comes complete with connector. Used with a Garmin GPS65 works perfectly. Postage etc. think was around $12.- but landed within a couple of days.
 
Most of these antennas work better with a metal ground plane around them, about 6 inch diameter is good, using an ebay item for my Garmin GPS120 myself.
Without the ground plane, the antenna was off tune, reducing sensitivity by about 10dB.
Hope that's helpful,
Chris
 
Interesting! My USB magnetic mouse is stuck to a VHF unit and gives better performance than two other full size chart table units!!
 
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