Cold, Warm, Hot and a little Toasty?

[luxem]

I have heard people refer to their GPSr being cold, warm or hot when talking about times to lock in on sats. What does this mean?

 

Thanks.

[+bradtal]

Luxem-

 

When people talk about their GPSr being "cold" or "warm" when finding satellites, it has do do with how long it takes for the GPSr to find the satellites.

 

When you first turn on your GPS after it has been off for a long time (more than 1 hour, for example), it needs to "find" the satellites in the sky (because they have moved in orbit around the earth). This is what is called a "cold lock".

 

After it finds the satellites and you turn off your gps (like you found the geocache and don't want to waste batteries while filling out the logbook), but then turn the GPSr back on after only a few minutes, it knows where the GPS satellites were and finds them a lot quicker (because they haven't moved much in orbit). This is called a "warm" find.

 

A "cold lock" usually takes a minute or two to find the satellites while a "warm lock" can happen in just a few seconds..

 

Hope this helped...

 

Brad

 

Hard work pays off in the future, laziness pays off now.

[+Team Tecmage]

If you leave your GPSr off for a long time (Garmin states 1 week or more) or travel a great distance (again, per Garmin 600 miles), you may have to wait a few minutes for a lock. Your GPSr estimates where satellites should be based on last location and date/time it was last on. The assumption is the unit hasn't been moved far.

[luxem]

Thanks for the info...that's what I was looking for.