Lowrance H2O had REALLY hard time with location - opinions?

[+jjmcwill]

I was backpacking with friends in north west Michigan this weekend.

 

Camp is located at:

 

+44° 5' 59.58", -86° 27' 17.16"

 

This is the Nordhouse Dunes Wilderness area north of Ludington, MI

 

While hiking the trails there, my iFinder H2O continually lost the GPS signal lock, often taking many minutes to reacquire. Even then, I was seeing estimated positional error as high as 800+ feet! I had tracking enabled, and the resulting track was a useless collection of wildly varying, disconnected lines.

 

This area of Michigan has hiking trails that cross mature dunes, but it's not like I was in anything like a slot canyon. When the trail did dip between two hills, it would emerge again within a few minutes of walking.

 

Even when we made it back to the parking lot, the GPS continued to have an EPE of 800 feet.

 

Can anyone explain why the GPS was having such a hard time acquiring an accurate lock? Was it due to topography/terrain? Lack of satellite coverage in the area? Something else?

 

Would an external antenna help?

 

Offtopic for Geocaching: The trail leading from the parking lot to the site has several forks which aren't shown on the published trail map. Hiking the trail, it's not obvious which way leads to this particular camping location, which is revisited by a group of us backpackers each year. I was hoping to get a solid track that I could turn into a route that other GPS users could use to hike into the site during future visits. Wish such poor tracking from my GPS, my hopes of plotting an accurate route are slim.

 

Thanks

[+Indotguy]

My H20C has done this sort of thing (extreme EPE, loss of lock) on occasion. It usually seems to happen when in a deep ravine or narrow valley. I contribute it to a restricted satellite horizon. I've also experienced repeated loss of sat lock when the NiMH bats were running low on charge. A set of new batteries fixed this.

[+bartrod]

From my experiences, I concur with Indotguy.

[+sodajerk]

Try a reset

 

Soft Reset (Does not delete GPS Data)

IFinder H2O C Reset 1. Turn unit OFF

2. Press and hold the PAGES key

3. Press and hold the PWR key

4. Release both buttons when the USA map appears

 

Hard Reset (Deletes stored GPS Data such as Waypoints and trails)

IFinder H2O C Reset 1. Turn unit OFF

2. Press and hold the ZIN&ZOUT Keys atthe same time

3. Press and hold the PWR key

4. A tone will sound

5. When tone is sounding, release buttonsand immediately press and hold the FIND key.

6. While pressing FIND, a higher tone will sound

7. The unit will reset. Turn unit OFF and back ON.

 

You have to be fast with the FIND key in step 5

 

Also sometimes the memory card causes problems. Do you put in a new card? Try without the card.

 

Good luck

I love my H20C

[+jjmcwill]

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

I've added the battery voltage monitor to the main navigation page. I rotate out several sets of NiMH batteries, and always put freshly charged ones in when the battery meter on the Satellite's page of the H2O reads near 1/4 on the "E.....F" gauge.

 

The voltage monitor field I added to the man navigation page showed a voltage of 2.5 volts, which seemed nominal for a pair of NiMH batteries, which are rated at 1.2v as opposed to 1.5v for Alkalines.

 

Yesterday, I did a 5 mile hike around a park near where I live in Troy, MI. Again, battery voltage read about 2.5 volts. The "meter" on the satellite tracking page of the GPS read about half.

 

Weather conditions were cloudy with one short period of drizzle. The H2O lost track several times.

 

I came home, did the soft reset, put in a fresh set of alkalines. I then went back out with my GPS and my mountain bike (in the dark) and retraced the same route. The GPS remained a solid lock the entire time.

 

So, was it the soft reset or a fresh set of alkaline batteries? I'll continue to experiment. Maybe some of my NiMH batteries need to be replaced with fresh ones.

[+Indotguy]

My experience with NiMH batteries and my H20C indicate you should start considering a switch to fresh batteries pretty soon after the battery indicator shows about 1/2 charge. Mine often begin showing some of the problems you describe (high EPE, dropped sat. lock) after running at or below half charge for a while.