Sportrak Not Locking Sats

[Team GeoSpeedy]

So the darnedest thing happened yesterday. I fired up the old STP, and everything boots fine, we go through the lawyer screen and satellite page loads up... and it sits there. Got some numbers in the radial display at the top, but no signal strencth bars. After 10 minutes I began to wonder what was going on. Wide open skies, no power lines, nothing. So I reboot.

 

And this time I get signal bars, but no satellite numbers. Repeat 10 minute wait, walk around slowly, tilt the unit, still nothing. I had 6 birds at 50% or greater strength but no lock.

 

So I drop the batteries out, power back on, and now I have sat numbers again, but no bars.

 

One more reboot and POOF! Everything is fine, 6 birds, signal lock, walk right to the cache with 25' accuracy.

 

What the heck just happened? Should I be concerned? I bought this refurb, which might be a part of the issue, but I can't think that this is normal. It's the first time it happened, and I'm going out again tonight to try it again. Has this happened to anyone else?

 

-p

[+embra]

I suspect that your GPSr needed an updated almanac--perhaps the old one was too outdated or otherwise corrupted. It can take 15 minutes or more to download a new one. If you run into the same situation, you might try leaving it for 20 minutes or so under an open sky, or perhaps reinitializing it and doing same.

[+DJ Calamari]

This has happened to me, and I deleted my track history, or as a last resort- waypoints, to clear up some memory, and things went back to normal. I suspect it may not have enough room to store the satellite. info. I may be wrong, but this is the only way I could bypass this problem. Start by deleting all tracks, especially if you have a lot of info stored on the GPS. Hope it helps.

Edited July 19, 2005 by DJ Calamari

[+GOT GPS?]

Best way to do it in this situation, I believe, is to do a FULL RESET, then leave the GPS outside for at least 15 minutes, and it should be back to normal, if it continues to be a problem after this, it could mean a bad component in the Radio Receiver portion of the GPS unit, or bad firmware.

[Team GeoSpeedy]

Thanks for the replies! I took it out last night after a reset, left it outside for 5 minutes and had no issues. It looks as though the issue has been resolved.

 

Thanks for the help!

 

-p