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I've heard many great things about the Glisson Antenna, but I had a question.
I really wouldn't want to have to carry the glisson antenna around and have it on my dash cause I think the antenna with the cord would just look cluttered. So I was wondering, if I could just use the Glisson Antenna to get a quick lock on satellites in the morning and then unhook the antenna and bring the ique to the car. Would this help at all, or would once I unhook the antenna and take the ique outside it'd be useless?
The lock obtained by the Que with the Gilisson Antenna is lost as soon as you turn off the Que and then move it to the car.
Other than it taking maybe a few seconds less to obtain the lock with the external antenna - there is very little reason to purchase the external. This few seconds is just that maybe 10 seconds or so. The external antenna in my car is on the dash and I've managed to route the cable to where it is nearly invisible through the gaps in the dash mounting areas.
If you get a 6 foot or 9 foot cable with the Gilisson then you should be able to place it near the windshield and then tuck the cable between the dash and windshield then route it around to the side and then in the gaps in the dash.
Of course make and model of your car will have an impact on the gaps but it may still look "clean".
__________________
Moose Man
iPhone 3G (current phone) too many Treo's and Palms mention and Garmin Nuvi 850 with voice command et al)
Welcome my son, welcome to the machine.
I accept payment in this form.
You will get a significantly better signal if you put the Gilson antenna on your roof. The magnetic mount will hold very securely; mine does not move even in a car wash.
There are three benefits to the roof location: 1. stronger signal without the attenuation of the window glass, and the obstruction of some lines-of-sight caused by the car body - worth about two signal steps; 2. Ground plane effects - the roof acts like a signal reflector, increasing the signal strength by three steps or more; 3. clear line of sight to low satellites - this especially helps accuracy geometry, and often is the only way I can get the WAAS satellites.
I have found modest satellites double or more in signal strength, often pegging just above the topmost line in the QueGPS display. The better signals will speed acquisition, and aquire more satellites. I often get all 12 channels (two WAAS birds) in So Cal. Driving in mountains (or in the concrete canyons of cities) and underpasses breaks sync, and the antenna helps reacquisition - I've seen lock return with"D" on 12 sats in less than 2 seconds comming out of one of the local tunnels.
I mounted the antenna next to the rear window, and fed the cable thru the weatherstrip using a phillips screwdriver as a pathfinder. A little silicone makes it waterproof.
I've also fed the cable around the door weatherstrip in a few rental cars - the cable is really small, and the weather strip is pretty flexible.
In my own car, I got an extra long cable from Gilson just by requesting with an email. This gave me enough length to feed from the rear window around the headliner, down the rear quarter, behind the rear seat, down to the carpet, under the center tunnel and into my console, where i have my iQue mount (garmin auto kit without the beanbag, power cable hardwired inside the console and speaker mounted nearby; power is from acessory block so the iQue turns on with ignition). Took about 11 feet - I ordered a 4 meter cable.
If you want to duplicate this, its better to get an extra long cable than to use a cable extender. The extra connectors from using an extender cost 3 to 6 db in signal strength.
I am a big fan of the external antenna. I've even locked five satellites and gotten a 3D location while still inside my garage!!! Also, I can place the iQue where its easy to see and not bothered by direct sunlight.
I agree 100%. But I have only bought one antenna, so far, and have two cars, so I've routed the cable out through the front of the opening for the rear passenger side door.
Thus I can pull the cable out and place the antenna in another car, when necessary.
My antenna is the BS-2 Turtle, but I think they are made at the same place.
In an email I received from Gilsson, They said that they are establishing a dealer network, and that when they are finished they will stop direct sales. Since the antennas they are competing with are in the $80 to $90 range, I expect their price will rise when this happens.
Right now, $20 is a steal, so I bought several. I have a black one with 6 foot cable for use in rental cars, a white one with 3 foot cable for use while backpacking, my black 13 foot (4 meter) cable in my Mercedes, and a black 9 foot one in my GMC.
One of them I accidently clicked on the wrong connector when ordering. A quick email got me an RMA and a new HX connector antenna in a few days. I've traded messages with them on some technical issues too. I have never had such a good experience with any customer service organization!
Get'm while they're cheap! These are the best antennas available!!!
I was looking for a Glisson antenna with a 6' cord for my iQue. Emailed gpsgeek and they told me they only had 3', 9' & 16' available. How did you get a 6'?
I bought one with a 16 foot cord and put it on the back shelf below the back window. Even though putting it on the roof gave a better signal, the back window position is still much better than the internal and the long cord can be passed under the carpet to the front for a stealth install. At $20 I can afford to buy another for my other car or for just walking around.
Thank you so much for your kind words ! We are proud to provide these high performance GPS antenna for Garmin GPS users. We try our very best to make sure each one of our customer is happy with our product, service and price.
For your information, we have just received our latest windshield antenna bracket (metal), one can just place the antenna on the bracket to enhance GPS signal reception while INSIDE the car, as our metallic bracket increases the ground plane, hence the signal reception. For those interested in mounting the antenna on your dashboard, this may be a good product to consider. It is only $5.95 (Garmin charges $15.95 for their version). One can see a picture at the following website:
Robertp366 said that he has a Glisson antenna with a 6' cord. How could I obtain a Glisson antenna with a 6' cord? Is it a special order? I would pay more for custom length.
The 6 foot cable version I have was a custom order - from quite a while ago. But I have seen nothing but excellent customer support attutudes from Gilsson, so try emailing them for a custom length.
Having been a "Lurker" for a number of months and taking in gobs of information during that time, it is now time to emrge from the shadows and actively participate now that I am comfortable with my iQue 3600 and the activities on this Forum. That stated, I want to say that my personal dealings with Ming Ho at Gilsson have been fantastic. Ming personally took the opportunity to afford me the privilege of Beta testing the new antenna bracket just before I went on a trip from Cleveland to Syracuse to visit my son for Parents Day. Claiming that this new base increased the ground plane significantly over the previous base, this antenna/base combination amazed me! While in my garage, I started to receive a number of sat bars almost as soon as I turned my 3600 on!! During the trip, not only was I locked into WAAS Sat 35 for most of the round trip, but almost every bar had the differential correction indicator and I usually had 10 bars locked in at any one time with high signal strength!! I highly would suggest that ALL iQue3600 owners purchase the Gilsson external antenna and the new ground plane baseplate bracket ASAP! For less than 30 bucks you will receive one hell of a deal, not to mention Customer Service that is second to none!! Oh, by the way, did I mention that the bracket is used INSIDE MY VEHICLE, stuck to the windshield with 4 suction cups and the mag mount antenna is strong enough to be held to this plate without screwing it on the plate? AMAZING, SIMPLY AMAZING!! One of these days, when it gets warm again (next May, maybe?), I should try this antenna on top of my minivan's roof!! Boy, I should be able to lock in all 12 sats!! In closing, I want to say that while I am an active participant in about a half dozen other web forums, this has got to be one of the BEST!! You experienced GPSers have helped and constantly continue to help us newbies "navigate" (pun intended) our iQue 3600s, and I am now so addicted to the board that it is running on my work computer in the background during the workday and I check it about 6 times/day! Hey, isn't that called an addiction? Well, I could not think of anything better to be addicted to, could you??!!
I have had my Ique now for about a week & I like it better each day as my learning curve goes up. I got the Glisson at the same time but have not yet used it. So far I have had excellent reception - seven satellites - with just the built-in antenna placed on the dash of my 2 cars (not at the same time . Oh, I am in Dallas, TX and have driven all over North Texas with the IQue.
Ming (GPSgeek) commented on the design of the Gilsson Tech antenna in a post on Oct 15. It is designed with a three stage linear amplifier (instead of two in others) in order to get high enough amplification for the external antenna input, which on most GPS receivers probably does not share the internal preamplifiers with the internal antenna.(Note: Three years ago, Garmin recommended 20 B and not more for not overpowering the receiver - that might not be valid any more, or with low voltages, that might be were the amplification ends up).
Furthermore, and just as important, the Gilsson antenna includes a voltage regulator, making the stated operating range an exceptional 2.5-12 volts. This is more important than you might think (and many have thought up until now), because the voltage at the external connector of newer GPS receivers is quite low. The iQue measures at 2.66 V unloaded, e-map 2.4 unloaded according to reports and Garmin 76 at 2.1 loaded according to another. The voltage will go down under load, but how much when you go from let's say 5-10-15 mA is not known, no mesurements reported to my knowledge - but still easily too low. Once more, the low power consumption of the GIlsson antenna has several advantages (less voltage drop, less battery drain).
So not only does the Gilsson have a low power concumption, it optimizes its own working voltage which I think it is the only one to do. There isn't a single magnetic foot (i.e. patch) antenna to my knowledge rated at 2.0 Volts. So GPS receivers feed by two NiMH cells yielding a total of 2.4 volts come too low. Using two alcalic cells for 3 volts is better, as long as it lasts. Earlier, when handheld GPS receivers fed on 4 batteries at 6V (or 4.8 with NiMH or NiCd), antennas where designed for 5 volts (Garmin 27) and people still buy those without realising that they are out of range (well, I didn't). Edit: garmin 27C, listed as an accesory to the iQue, emap and 76 is reportedly a 2.5 V antenna with an internal voltage regularor. For 100 USD. Count 150 in Europe, at least. Many thanks.
Then on to the ground plane. The patch antenna has its own gorundplane, but with the wavlength of GPS 1572 Mhz being 190,3 mm, a correct ground plane easily becomes impractically large (a quarter wavelength in square if I m not wrong). Hence the new Gilsson improved additional ground plane. You get an even better result on the car roof. Now, having an additional metal surface significantly larger than the "correct" groundplane helps (in to me obscure) ways, among other to dampen reflex (aka multipath) signals that impair reception and actually decrease signal strength. You will see an amazing improvement of the performande of the iQue folding out antenna if you lean your ique on a cast iron frying pan placed bottom up, with the antenna flat on its bottom. There was an earlier post explaining why iron would be better under the antenna than other materials (had nothing with magnetism to do).
All in all, it seems that GPS Geek/Gilsson technologies have found a niche with the newer range of receivers (incl Garmins such as the iQue) giving unsatisfactory results with the previosuly existing range of preamplified external antennas and hence optimized their antenna for those receivers (Magellan included).
Now, the price ain't wrong either. So I'll order a couple.
Behind the bars
if you had the stamina to read all this, I'll add what I learnt from sci.geo.satellite-nav on interpreting signal bars. It is not the signal strength but the relationship signal strength to noise (aka SNR = signal/noise ratio) which is shown. It is also more significant. And with the signal very weak, actuallywell into the noise, the readings are taken at the "correlator" level (further study needed). Garmin starts at 30 dB, each line on the sat status page indictes 5 dB more. So, in a way, it is the readability of the signal that is expressed. The exact signaltrength (well SNR) of satellites is shown in the GSV (?check) message in the NMEA-string that you can read with other software, well I don't have any for Palm but for PC there are many, VisualGPS is one (freeware). Palmgear will probably find you some.
Now, when preamp characteristics of the external antennas are described it is signal strength amplification that is indicated. Then you loose some in the cable. How much will be stated if there is one only cable length sold (Gilsson has several and no data, btw it is easy to shorten the cable and put on a new mcx connecor with the right, alas expensive, tool).
So the dB of the external antenna and the GPS sat screen do not indicate the same thing. All the better, because the sat screen indication will tell us if the preamp gave us signal or noise.
well I have both. I ordered the garmin 27c when I ordered the iQUE, but because i travel so much I need one to carry with me, so instead of taking the one in my car.
I find the glissojn antenna just a little better in geting and locking on the signal. While this is an observation (no numbers to back it up) I find it quicker on the 'uptake'
given that and the price differnece as well. I would (and may still) order another one just to back-up
After reading several of the external antenna threads, I ordered both the 3-ft and 16-ft models along with a mounting bracket late 11/13. The order was shipped on 11/14, and I received it on 11/15. BTW, I live in San Jose, about 30 miles south of GPS Geek.
Using the suction cup mount on my windshield with the 3-ft model, I was able to lock onto 12 sats with "D", get full signal strength on 8-9 sats, and had accuracy down to 9.5 ft. Prior to using the Gilsson, I had been only able to lock onto 6-7 sats using the beanbag on the dash, and had never seen the "D" except in the manual.
Given the improvement in signal strength, I'm looking forward to testing it in urban canyons.
The 90 deg MCX connector was a little challenging to unplug, but it wasn't as tight as other users had experienced. Although having another cable to plug/unplug is a hassle, the antenna provides flexibility in mounting the iQue for those who don't care for the "tombstone on a fresh grave" look of the beanbag on the dash.
Gilsson Antenna
Gilsson Amplified GPS antenna
Gilsson is the GREATEST!
. Oh, I am in Dallas, TX and have driven all over North Texas with the IQue.
Linear Mode
