Should I Be Seeing 48?

[+pppingme]

I'm in Kansas City. I've been reading a lot of people stating that they are seeing sat #48 on their garmin units. I've never seen it. I have a Legend. I finally got my hands on a yellow etrex, it shows a very strong signal from 48 and a weak signal from 35, and had D's across the screen. From my perspective, although I can sometimes see #35, its pretty low in the horizon, so pretty much useless. I rarely see D's on my unit in the past month.

 

Also, dont know if its related or not, but for about two months now, the real accuracy of my Legend is out the window. It jumps all over the place. I can be standing right at a waypoint, and one minute it shows a close reading (less than a couple feet) and the next minute it shows I'm 60 to 100 feet off. The estimated accuracy also jumps all over the place.

 

I also tried turning on the Legend, covering the antenna area, and it comes up and asks about the time and my location. I've tried choosing both options. My understanding is that choosing either of these options forces the unit to re-learn the sat locations, is this correct?

 

Should I be seeing #48? Should I be seeing D's?

[peter]

I also tried turning on the Legend, covering the antenna area, and it comes up and asks about the time and my location. I've tried choosing both options. My understanding is that choosing either of these options forces the unit to re-learn the sat locations, is this correct?

 

Should I be seeing #48? Should I be seeing D's?

The PanAmSat Galaxy15 (shown as #48 on Garmins) is still in test mode so it isn't in the almanac being reported by the regular WAAS birds (#35 and #47). Therefore your Legend doesn't realize that it should even look for it. I think you have two options: 1) wait for the testing to be complete and hope that then the two new birds will be listed in the broadcast almanac and Garmin's algorithm will make a reasonable choice of which ones to use, or 2) do a full reset of the unit and let it find the WAAS satellites all over again - only this time put an obstruction in the way when it searches for #35 and #47 so it'll continue the search and find the new #48 instead (and maybe the other new sat, #38).

 

AIRC, on the Legend you do a full reset by holding in the clickstick and the Page button while turning the unit on. Note that this will erase all the user data as well so backup your waypoints/routes/tracks and make a note of your preferred settings *before* you do the reset.