My 60c Mysteriously Just Quit Working!

[Neo_Geo]

This is totally bizarre! at about 2:00 PM, I was on a road trip headed for a destination 60 miles out. At about 30 miles out, I checked the screen and noticed my GPSr wasn't tracking. I paged back to the satellite page, and I had absolutely ZERO reception! No signals of any strength. Everything else appeared to work - the screen, all the buttons and sounds. I just couldn't get any reception.

 

I was sitting in the back seat of the vehicle and had my GPSr's lanyard looped around one of the headrest supports to hold it in place. It wasn't the best position, but it was working fairly well - I had good strength from five sats at any given time before it quit. I tried holding the unit out the window for a minute or two and still got zilch. I then tried two master resets, which apparently did nothing to resolve the problem. After the second reset, I entered our general new location and tried a little while longer to get reception, but it seemed to be dead. I gave up on it and just left the unit powered on in the front windshield to "bake" just for the heck of it.

 

Well, on the way home - about three hours later, it just started working again - AND it appeared to have started working again in about the same general area that it stopped working! Probably just a coincidence, but still pretty freakish! I've never had any problems like this in the past (it used to power off on its own, but that's been fixed). And since it started working again, it hasn't had any more problems either.

 

The reason for the road trip was house-hunting. My family is outgrowing our 2-bedroom condo in the DC burbs, and we can't afford much more than that, so I figured I'd do the long-commute thing.

 

For those that believe in a higher power, would you take that as a sign from above to not move so far out?

[+GOT GPS?]

Pretty strange stuff about the 60c, because I have not had too much trouble with my Map60c, and it always seemed to get a good signal.

 

Would be hard to tell if the trouble was external or internal to the unit, like some interference. Could be a bad connection inside the Receiver portion of your GPS too.

[+Timpat]

This may sound strange, but since you mentioned being around the DC area, it could have been blocking or scrambling of GPS signals due to some important passing aircraft activity, like the Pres flying to Camp David for a "vacation". I use GPS to survey and have seen a complete loss of signal for no apparent reason. No solar anomalies, clear weather, a sky full of birds. I found later that a high ranking government offical was flying through our area. I was surveying at our local international airport and OPS suspected this was why I completely lost signal. It lasted about 20 minutes, then all came back as if someone flipped a switch. I can't confirm this, but it made sense at the time.

 

Edit: spelling

Edited November 28, 2005 by Timpat

[+WeightMan]

Last March I was in DC and had some trouble with the Maggie based system on my Hertz rental car. In that case, every time I drove near the Pentagon the screen indicated I was up to 300 feet off the road I was on. The unit recalculated from the road it thought I was on causing all kinds of confusion on my part since I wasn't familiar with the area at all. The amazing thing is that it only happened near the five sided building and alway when near it. My conclusion is the the government is doing something to the signals there. If they can do it there, they can do it anywhere.

[+av8ndv8]

The government has done occaisional GPS blocking tests at White Sands, NM for years. We used to get flight briefings and PiReps about them, dunno if they still do.

 

So I'd bet Timpat and Weightman are right on the money. They can blank out the signals or make your position wander miles away.