NAV in CT & NY - recent loss of signal?

Often while driving in Connecticut & New York, many times, every day for the past week, I notice the NAV losing sense of where I am on the map. This has never happended before the past week. Are there know satellite issues or could this indicate that this GPS needs factory service?

I've been through 2 car washes - I assume the antenae need not be removed? Radio reception seems to have gotten more fuzzy at times but is not a problem I guess on teh strong stations but there seem to be less strong stations. I have 6800 mileson the car. MPG average is up now between 44 to

  1. Rocky
Reply to
Rocky
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I have been going through problems with the nav not showing interstates, showing me on a road where I'm not, and voice recognitions are a mess. There is a tsb on it, but I've been waiting 3 weeks for the updated disc that is supposed to be the fix for all.

Reply to
Roy

It could easily mean that Homeland Security has some idea that they should degrade the signal seriously, maybe randomly.

I haven't used my nav recently. Has anyone else noticed anything?

Occam's Razor, of course, simply says that your unit needs service.

Reply to
Elmo P. Shagnasty

more than once on Saturday, the GPS showed me as drivig on the metro north train tracks when I was really on I95.

Reply to
Rocky

I've never understood the need for these toys. How hard is it to look at a map, and jot a few notes on a piece of paper, maybe using a felt tip pen so the writing's fat enough to read quickly while driving?

Reply to
JoeSpareBedroom

I tell you Joe, Once you try the GPS, you'll never go back to the lame old map = ) My GPS is only

Reply to
EdV

Feh.

I have a handheld GPS for locating a particular fishing spot on a lake with no useful navigation features. But, for a car, it's silly. Next, you'll have a device that tells you 1/2 hour ahead of time that your bladder's half full and it's time to find a rest area.

Reply to
JoeSpareBedroom

Much more than that. Traffic backs up in front of you and you have a chance to go around it but not sure, the nav will tell you.

Reply to
Roy

Roy, you don't need a toy for that. Cars already have the necessary accessory.

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Reply to
JoeSpareBedroom

Are you sure these are not the framers of our foreign policy

Reply to
Roy

Could be. "leT's stoMp Iraf..Ir..iRak..."

Reply to
JoeSpareBedroom

I haven't tried that one yet, hmm that's a nice feature to play around with. I don't go fishing, maybe just play with it on a large open space like a park . I know my gps has a "pedestrian" setting and have tried it once but going from my parking spot to a store and back, parked on a side street and not a covered parking, I could have easily memorized it but just wanted to try how it works.

I cant answer you about the bladder issue but that why you need an empty bottle of Snapple in your car. Just make sure the Snapple label doesn't say pineapple juice.

Reply to
EdV

Especially if you need to bail from the main road to avoid a large traffic jam.

Reply to
Bonehenge (B A R R Y)

I flew with it several times this week, in the NY, CT, and RI area, with no complaints.

Aviation GPS units use the same signals as your car, but have additional software that monitors the quality of the solution, called RAIM. If the GPS has a calculated position error out of limits, including intentionally induced errors, the pilot receives a warning alarm.

Reply to
Bonehenge (B A R R Y)

You might post this question in sci.geo.satellite-nav.

I'm not an expert on GPS but I have one and used it/played around with it many times and two things occur to me:

  1. The satellite signals your GPS receive needs are fairly weak. If your antenna or antenna connection (or internal RF amplifiers) aren't working well, you might have problems with reception from time to time, especially where signals are weak or suffer from multipath. I don't know how you could diagnose or calibrate this.

  1. What's the terrain like where the location is lost? Is it about the same place or places every day? Are you in a valley? Are there mountains to one or both sides of the road? Are you under trees with leaves? Is there a lot of truck or bus (i.e., taller) traffic around you? Are you under bridges or elevated roadways? Near tall buildings? Almost anything that comes between your car (a truck, bridge decking, skyscraper, etc) and the sky or part of the sky might block a GPS signal that you need for a position solution The moisture in tree leaves will actually attenuate the signals enough to cause problems for some receivers (my old one often loses position lock while hiking in the forest). Some items will reflect (multipath) GPS signals (like a building or a cliff) and the delayed reception of a reflected signal might confuse a GPS into thinking you're not where you really are. So, it depends.

Reply to
DH

Yep, you are right about that. I've always laughed when I see farmers using GPS in their tractors when they plant their fields. If the poor bastard can't tell what field he's in, GPS isn't going to help him!

GPS might be useful when fishing out of sight of land but most of my fishing is done within 100's of yards of land and I can usually tell if I'm where I want to be (depends on the beer level in the cooler).

Jack

Reply to
Retired VIP

That's not what it's for. They can hook the GPS up to the steering, so when they are laying out the furrows the computer does the steering and the rows come out straight and even automagically.

And they have graders slaved to both GPS and laser levelers, so the field comes out billiard table flat, or with the exact drainage slope and direction desired. Save on water - if it's dead flat the irrigation water won't run off, and the rain will drain slowly with more time to soak in.

If they can get an extra row or two of crops per acre they can get another 1% or 2% more crops from the same plot of land. Might not sound like much - till you see six or eight extra lug boxes on the back of a truck.

The farmer can meter the output of the combines and harvesting gear, and chart a field's output yields precisely, down to 10' x 10' patches. That way they get answers to Boss-type questions like "Did adding extra fertilizer to the South Field help, or hurt...?"

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Reply to
Bruce L. Bergman

It's art, really, this automated farm machine thing. We backyard vegetable farmers do it with a rake, and hours of observation to see the results.

Reply to
JoeSpareBedroom

It helps when you don't have to pay the bills with what comes out of your backyard garden ;-)

Reply to
Ray O

Its science not art.

Reply to
EdV

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