Used the Navman over the weekend but it seemed to take forever to pick up a GPS signal. I'm sure it's only taken a minute or so in the past but on both Saturday and Sunday it took almost 10 minutes. Something wrong?

I they they work better if used frequently.

My Road Angel will sometimes take 10 mins but once warmed up it's almost instant.

Perhaps I better use it more often, like telling me how to get to the shops and my friends lol. Never know, I might find a shortcut!

As long as the unit stays charged up (or has batteries in - I don't know how your unit works exactly), it should remember where it was when you last used it, and so as long as you're in the same sort of vicinity (i.e. the same country), it should figure out where it is within a minute. Power it down completely or take the batteries out, and it'll take the ten minutes you're talking about.

The former situation is known as 'warm' acquisition - the GPS knows what satellites it's looking at, and just has to do the trigonometry to figure out your location. For 'cold' acquisition, the unit has to identify the satellites it can see, work out roughly where that puts it, and then has to do the maths bit - you can see why it takes longer!!!

(Or that's my understanding of it...)

Heard on radio last night on way home that there has been loads of solar flares over the last week or so and these are impacting satellites, radar and other electonic machines etc. just a suggestion

I always tend to turn the unit off totally so the battery doesn't get used up even though I'm not using it. Perhaps I shouldn't? Trouble is there's no keypad lock and I had it in my pocket once and I became aware of this female voice coming out of my pocket!

I always tend to turn the unit off totally so the battery doesn't get used up even though I'm not using it. Perhaps I shouldn't? Trouble is there's no keypad lock and I had it in my pocket once and I became aware of this female voice coming out of my pocket!

It may vary from unit to unit, but as long as the batteries remain in the unit, then there should be sufficient 'trickle charge' to maintain the volatile memory that keeps track of your last known location. For instance, the GPS mouse for my sat nav has a built-in rechargeable battery, and as long as I use it every now and again, the battery stays topped up, and the GPS remembers where it is. I hadn't used it for a couple of months before my last trip out, and so the internal battery had discharged and I had to go through the whole cold acquisition procedure...

But I don't know exactly how your NavMan works, so this could all be a load of bull hocks from your point of view.

Thanks guys, I'll try to remember not to turn it off totally after I next use it!

It may vary from unit to unit' date=' but as long as the batteries remain in the unit, then there should be sufficient 'trickle charge' to maintain the volatile memory that keeps track of your last known location.

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It's not so much knowing where you are that matters (anywhere in N Europe will do) it's where the satellites are. That information gets downloaded as part of the timing signal only when the unit is switched on, and the info goes 'stale' after 48 hours or so. Add to that the Yanks shifting the satellites around in orbit for their own purposes, and you could end up with needing a cold start quite often.

Not that this helps much but have had my road angle for a couple of years now and it's never taken more that a minute to get a signal - even the first time out of the box. I went through a phase of not using it then remembered I had it plugged it in and it sorted it self out in under a minute..... I hear lots of people complaining about signal pick up time. I did some work with GPs systems a few years a go and just a few things that we experienced with that can affect it are:

Movement - are you stationary when trying to get a signal?

Where is the antenna - is it obscured by any metal part of your car?

Are you parked under a tree - yes seriously a wet tree is one of the biggest blockers of GPS signals?

Are you in a built up area - canyon effect tall buildings can get in the way of the signal?

Eliminating some of these issues above may help you in speeding up the signal lock.

Good Luck!

Seb

Used the Navman over the weekend but it seemed to take forever to pick up a GPS signal. I'm sure it's only taken a minute or so in the past but on both Saturday and Sunday it took almost 10 minutes. Something wrong?

using a vw navi with a horsepill aerial under the dash top ,drove onto ferry in caen ,got back into car when we docked in portsmouth car insisted we were still in caen, but had us pointing in the right direction ,you load onto ferry in caen pointing south and drive off in portsmouth north(I beliveve navi has inbuilt gyroscope ) within 10 secs of clearing ferry hull, unit had found 5 satellites and corrected position .never noticed any delay in finding satellites when switching on unit

paul

assuming you're using a 520 or 510 spend 20 quid on ebay to get a mini-mcx antenna. you'll get signal in seconds rather than minutes, and almost always 7 bars or more, even in london on muggy days