Magellan eXplorist 500 - Vehicle Operation...

Hi, does anyone have any experience with the Magellan eXplorist 500
operating in their vehicle - I realize a connection can be lost because
of buildings, overpasses, etc. but generally does it work without an
external antenna on the roof of the vehicle? Thanks in advance...

I have a similar 600 and it works fine. Beware of windshields with metalic
sun screen coatings - they will kill any GPS signal. I also have a Meridian
Color with an external antenna jack and external antenna and it works
significantly better inside a car. Too bad that the external antenna jack
is becoming an historical artifact thses days....

algomedic@yahoo.com wrote:
I have the eXplorist 400, and just yesterday used it for a 3 hour trip
to my sister in law's house (where I had never been). I looked up the
coordinates on MS Streets and Trips, put it in, and put the GPS into the
tray in the armrest. It found its sats., and I told it to 'goto' her
coordinates with a street route (I have the region loaded from Mapsend
DirectRoute), and it routed me flawlessly to her house, although the
exact location of the house was off by about 200 feet from the MS
Streets and Trips coordinates. I consider that highly satisfactory!
No external antenna.

I have a 600 that I use in an Odyssey minivan. I just set the GPS in the
cup holder that pulls out from the dash. It works fine. I have also used
it the front lounge of a European river cruise ship; as long as I stayed
near a south facing window, it picked up several satellites and received a
good signal.

Mike Schnierle wrote:
On a recent cruise, the 400 had to be taken up on deck to see any sats.
Not really a surprise. Was rather surprised to find that the basemap
had shipping lanes marked in the Gulf of Mexico.