Initiating A Sportrak

[+shunra]

I got a friend hooked on geocaching, and he bought himself a Magellan Sportrak Color, and he is eager to start. He will probably sign up here, soon. He just called me, however, to tell me that his Sportrak won't get a lock. He's standing outside under open (albeit cloudy) Toronto skies, he 'told' the GPSr where he is, entered time etc., but he won't get a lock. is there something else he should do, or would there be a problem with the GPSr?

 

Thanks!

[+embra]

For starters, he should just put it down somewhere for 30 minutes or so to allow the unit to download a complete almanac. Once it has that, it should acquire lock quickly.

 

If he is still having trouble, then clear memory/all and re-initialize again. Try letting it set for 30 minutes as suggested above. If it's still not working then we need to think of other things. But I'm guessing he just needs to be more patient for that first lock.

[+Night Stalker]

Is it possible that he hasn't told it where he is yet (Initialize). If he doesnt use the menu and initialize it for his location it will not know which satelites to look for and will take a very long time before it finds itself. Even when you initialize it will still take about 5 to 10 minutes the first time.