No satellite reception

[+whinpine]

It's a gorgeous day out today so I thought I'd take my geo-pony out for a ride and grab a cache that I've been wanting to get for a long time. Hauled out to the area, saddled my horse, and.....can't get any satellites. Now, I've had this problem on cloudy days and in the woods but I was in the middle of nowhere (no tall buildings), in a desert (no trees), on a gorgeous cloudless day. I couldn't even get one satellite to come in with even a weak signal. Any ideas? I use a Garmin GPS Map60. Last time I used it was about a month ago and everything worked fine.

[+BlueDeuce]

You need to Bake your gps. That means let it sit under the open sky for a good 30 to 60 minutes under open sky so it can fully update the almanac. (The dashboard of your car is a safe place to set it while it cooks)

 

Check it every 15 minutes in case it asks if you want to continue acquiring sats.

 

You'll want to do this whenever it's been sitting idle for a while or you've traveled over some 200 miles with the gps turned off.

[mddbkzr]

sometimes it takes a long time to update, as Blue mentioned, if it has been a long time since it was last used or long distance. Sometimes what IU do is turn it on at home, let it get a signal, then turn it on part way so it has a good signal most of the way (if the batteries allow).

[+whinpine]

Thanks! Last time I used it was on a trip to Portland (200+ miles). I geocached my way down there, but came back well after dark so just turned it off for the trip home. I don't travel much so didn't realize this could happen.

[GOF and Bacall]

Thanks! Last time I used it was on a trip to Portland (200+ miles). I geocached my way down there, but came back well after dark so just turned it off for the trip home. I don't travel much so didn't realize this could happen.

 

It happens. You aren't the first and won't be the last.

[GPS-Hermit]

Also open the battery cover and clean the battery terminals on battery and GPS just to make sure sitting around is not the problem. Mine only takes a minutes or so to get the satelittes but my car GPS has taken much longer.

 

They do work on the satelites - if no luck repeatedly turn the GPS off and back on again. See if it is trying different satelites while making up it mind. If not change batteries to ones from a store instead of desk drawer. I have a battery tester at home and it is important not to mix batteries of different power drainage. Mine works long after saying it is empty. Anyway the power needs to be right for the GPS to function correctly. The GPS does have to boot up and can glitch during the process - so just try again.

 

See if it works any different with the usb hooked up to Laptop and getting power from the USB.

Edited October 13, 2010 by GPS-Hermit

[Motorcycle_Mama]

Moving to the GPS and Technology forum.

[+ventura_kids]

You'll have to drive back to Portland with the unit off....and then turn it on when you get there.

 

(ok, I'm just kidding)

[sviking]

Go to the menu under "setup" in the main menu page and check your GPS software version. If it's 0.00, then your unit dumped the GPS chipset firmware. My 60CSx did it once and was fixed by running Garmin's Webupdater. It updated to chipset version 3.00s and the O/S firmware to 4.00. Never had that problem happen again. It's happened to other people before, too, so it's not completely unheard of. Do you have any satellite icons showing in the "bullseye" part of the satellite status page? If there aren't any, as with mine, that's a major clue you need to update the firmware.