GPS failure?

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Just slipping out of Port Towsend's Boat Haven this A.M. the C-80 beeped and displayed the message "lost position fix". Having experienced some similar temporary losses of heading information I just waited a bit, but no improvement and the message stayed on the screen.
After a minute or so I turned off the power to the RayStar 125 GPS and turned it back on to try to reboot; no improvement.
Then I tried powering down the C-80 and restarting. By this time we were passing the ferry dock, and everything woke up functioning properly.

I noticed as we were leaving the marina a large cell phone tower directly adjacent, but I find it hard to believe that such device might have any effect.

Any comments?

Paul Priest
J.C.Lately
Sequim, WA
 
Fascinating...the same thing happened to me pulling out of Port Townsend Boat Basin today just beforenoon. I have the same GPS (a 125 with a C120), but didn't do anything to reset it. A few seconds later it came back. I figured it was the breakwater blocking the signal or something....

Mac
Island Ranger
 
I have lost some GPS signals close to Navy ships or navy bases--never near a cell tower. The frequencies are a bit apart, so it is unlikely that there was a jamming effect, but concievable. (Civilian GPS L1: 1575.42 MH Civilian L2: 1227.6 MHz) Cell phones: 850, 950 1800 and 1900 mhz.

There are some Aeromobile and other satellite communication frequencies near the Civilian L1 GPS frequencies--which I suspose could temporarilly block the acquisition by over loading the reciever section??? This has certainly happened in the past.

One other possibilty is that the GPS was set on WAAS and didn't get the newer WAAS satellite fix, and then gave a loss of fix--even though the non WAAS satellites gave a good fix. If you turn the WAAS off, then it will get the fix. Remember that some of the RayMarine C and E series are not picking up the WAAS signals. and they have not put out a fix yet.
 
I had a similar problem with Ray C-80 in Port Townsend 1 year ago which also "mysteriously" disappeared shortly thereafter but within 2 weeks the unit crapped out completely with a microprocessor failure.

Raymarine was really quite fast in repairing it but, being a supplier of Avionics euipment I am probably paranoid about multi-function displays and the fact that one minor "brain fart" fault can lose you everything so I now have a spare display.

Two weeks ago the "newer" unit started to have issues with losing fix shortly after start -up. so I am waiting to see what happens.

My "el cheapo" black and white Garmin back-up has functioned through all of this.

Have to add that my depth finder could not find it's rear end on a dark night and yesterday my radar suddenly stopped rotating.

I am beginning to understand that Raymarine service dept is so good because it has lots of practice and it is probably a major source of their revenue. This is unfortunately true of a lot of business today.

Merv
 
I will be really disgusted to find out I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to manage and use the e-nav toys if reliability turns out to be a major issue. I could have spent that time brushing up on dead reckoning.

If reliability is something of an issue with the lower end recreational nav gear, I don't believe the solution is necessarily doubling up, at least not backing up with the same type of gear. That sounds like an opportunity to find onesself in the position of having alternative data sources each of which could be in question. Then the obvious question becomes, was the point of this exercise to boat or to troubleshoot? I guess we'll see.

Thanks for the input.

Paul
 
It's actually quite a simple calculation to determine where the monetary incentive is in any particular marketplace and how much the "spender" (=customer) will put up with in exchange for how much money.
After all, you buy a boat..... now think on and add up your expenses, all of which supposedly come from "discretionary income"
I think we all know very well that actually buying the boat is the least of our worries.

I'm not condoning this but it is an obvious product of a"flexible market" forces.

Having back-up is also simple fact of life. The ultimate back-up is charts and how we used to do it before electronics. That is why the first page you will ever see on a GPS unit is a disclaimer that it is not intended for navigation.

Nothing new in this. It is simply a fact of life which I regret but have to live with.

Just wanted to bring this topic back to simple market forces rather than the "dark side" popping over the hill in black helicopters.

Merv
 
I don't see any real reliability issues here--but I also noted that in the last week there were several posts on "The Hull Truth" about Ray Marine GPS units loosing fixes. I have been using GPS about since it became available to the recreational boat market--I took the first US GPS to an American Yacht in Australia in 1989 and haven't looked back--sure there were a couple of times we lost a fix during the last 18 years. But it is very very rare, and it sure beats all that came before: Loran A, Loran C, RDF< ADF, Ommi, Omega and Sat Nav--plus the Sextant, or pure DR....
The unit was so new, I burned it in on my car for 24 hours prior to departure, to be sure that it really worked...
 
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