Locking to SATS Explorist 300

How come my Explorist 300 might take me 10 or even 15 minutes today to lock
into SATS and 2 minutes or less yesterday (from the same location).

Does cloudy weather weakens the signal?
Does having the Expolorist in my Truck Dash affects is? Does the windshield
glass weakens the signal?

Thanks,
mac

Mac wrote:
Some types of glass could limit the signal, but the most significant
difference is probably a matter of satellite position. It seems that my
eXplorist 400 finds sats. faster when it hasn't been off long. Having
uninterrupted sky access helps, but I often get 8 to 10 sats. locked in
from inside my car, but can't get any from inside my house (wood frame,
but with aluminum backed insulation.

I found that after updating the firmware on my Explorist 500 to the
new European version, it acquires sats MUCH faster. I am not
suggesting you do this on your model, and if you do choose to look
into it, read very carefully. There are some precautions to take,
like making a copy of your basemap file.

If you are not running the most recent firmware for your model though,
you might want to consider upgrading that. Might help.

Mac wrote:


No.


It's possible.. Electrically heated windshields contain a metal
film which will block GPS signals. Some tinted windshields may
also contain metal films.

Be aware that electronic interference can cause problems.

I had a Sirius satellite radio receiver that was mounted on
the dash of my car. If I placed my GPS unit right next to the
satellite radio receiver, I had trouble getting a fix and
the fix would frequently drop out on me.

The receiver was generating some sort of hash that was interfering
with the GPS signal. It took me a couple of days to figure out what
was going on :-)