Gps

[jrfishe1]

Hello,

I just bought a Pharos iGPS-CF for my Toshiba, and it doesn't seem to work. I contacted the company, and they said that the Toshiba simply has a high "noise level", so that it takes about 10 minutes to get a lock, which is way too long to wait.

Has anyone else had similar problems, or can recommend a different GPS receiver?

[craig4wd]

just out of curiosity, do you have wifi switch off whilst using the GPS?

[johnspereira]

I use a 740 too. I too thought it was the WiFi. I got the same reply (noise) when I first called Pharos but being persistant that I am I found out that since I drive a GM van which has metal in the windshield it keeps the GPS from picking up the signal. To fix the issue, I used the external antenna on the roof of the van ...it is actually magnetic so it stays in place. It now works within 60 secs. Also with the WiFi on.

[jrfishe1]

I posted this same question on several forums, and the consensus seems to be that the external antenna is key, since WiFi apparently does send out noise even when off. Sigh. Thanks for the tips.

[Hobbyhorse]

Just lurking here for additional info; you mentioned other sites... can you offer some links?

Hobby

[jrfishe1]

that have forums include:
www.sprinklerhead.com
www.brighthand.com
www.pdabuzz.com
www.**********.com
www.pocketnow.com

There are lots of others, but I've found these to be helpful.

-Jon

[blntskul]

Same here. It's not much good without the external antenna. I don't think the reception's really that great even with the external antenna.

Tommy

[mfa]

I got back two weeks ago from using this same setup on a two-week trip to Canada. Here is what I said elsewhere at the time --

I got the kit that has the car power adaptor and the
external antenna. You can put the external antenna way up on the dash for
better reception. Since my kit (~$250) came with the US maps, I had to buy the
Canada maps separately (~$75).

Overall, I was very pleased with the unit's performance. In 2013 miles of
travel out of Boston up to PEI and back, I was never on a road that was not on
the map database. One very short stretch of road in Maine was a couple hundred
feet off. Nova Scotia and PEI were right on all the time. New Brunswick had a
couple of trouble spots where it couldn't show my position or showed me moving
parallel to the road but off by a signifcant amount.

Automatic route selection worked okay, in general, but not always the shortest
route that you might select on a map. In one case, going from Calais to
Bangor, Maine, it picked a route a 100 miles longer than the most direct. (It
seemed to want to refuse to direct me across Maine Route 9, although it tracked
me all the way across. About half way across, I had it update the auto-route
and it worked fine.) Auto-routing worked great all over the criss-crossed
country roads of Prince Edward Island.

Making up your waypoints ahead of time saves a lot of time. I made most of
them up before I started the trip and then made changes or new ones the night
before a day's traveling. I found the street intersection method the easiest
and most sure way of creating waypoints. There were some waypoints I made by
the street address method that the auto-routing could not find a route to.