Nav. gear playing up.

[tinkiewinkie]

The electronic gizmos on my boat include a Garmin GPSMap 298. It has worked perfectly in the 4 years I have had the boat but started to 'go wrong' a couple of weeks ago. When I first fire it up, it searches for satellites apparently normally and when it has found the requisite number, switches to the chosen display page. A couple of minutes later, it appears to lose the satellites and no amount of switching it off and on will persuade it to re-engage. Try again, say, the following day and it goes through exactly the same routine.

Anyone got any clues please?

Should say nothing has been changed on board, all connectors have been checked and are firm enough, no loose wires, plenty of volts without significant variation in supply current etc etc. It happens even though the boat has not been moved and thus the view of the sky is unaltered.

 

[RichardS]

My Raymarine GPS started to go wrong and take 10 minutes to find a satellite a few weeks ago after 7 years of perfect operation. I changed the CR2032 battery in the GPS antenna and it's perfect again. Don't know whether Garmin use a similar antenna?

Richard

 

[tinkiewinkie]

J

My Raymarine GPS started to go wrong and take 10 minutes to find a satellite a few weeks ago after 7 years of perfect operation. I changed the CR2032 battery in the GPS antenna and it's perfect again. Don't know whether Garmin use a similar antenna?

Richard

Thanks for that Richard. The antenna on the 298 is actually built into the main unit but the tip about an internal battery, perhaps to maintain the 'map' of where to look for the satellites when the unit is switched off is certainly worth following up.

 

[earlybird]

Maybe battery, but firstly I'd try a re-set. From off, hold down power-on and page until re-set or similar appears then press enter.
It should then re-load satellite data.
AFAIK, this won't erase waypoints etc.