GPS Failure

Hi all
Over the last 10 years or so I have owned several handheld GPS units and have found them to all work very well and then as most of us do got to the point of relying on them to find my way back to camp or the vehicle when out in the bush.
I have been lost before these units came out and never want to be in that position again.
Well a few months ago I upgraded again to a Garmin GPSmap 60CSX and being a high sensitivity unit found it to work great in heavy bush and valleys.
I carried the unit on my belt for several trips and it performed perfectly.
One day whilst I was out detecting I was getting more interference than normal from my ML3500 and I had a thought.
Was the running GPS on my belt causing this interference , I know it’s a receiver and not a transmitter but stranger things have happened so without thinking I passed the GPS close to my coil, nothing happened other than a rise in the signal tone so I put the unit on my belt and continued detecting.
The GPS was working fine but when I turned the power off to conserve batteries and turned it back on later to return to my vehicle my unit no longer could pick up the satellites to give a fix.
To cut a long story short I didn’t get lost and the GPS did everything except lock on to satellites, I sent it off on warranty and it had to have the chip re- flashed.
It came back and now works fine but I no longer have the unit anywhere near the detector and I walk away from the detector to turn it on to get a location fix.
It looks like to me the field from the coil disabled the unit but it also could have just had a fault.
I would like to know if the unit was disabled by the detector but the only test I know I’m not prepared to do again.
I thought it might be a good idea to put this out there to you all as if the detector did cause this failure, many other detector users could be caught out as I was.
Interesting to hear your thoughts and it would be good to get some electronics techs advise .

Mark

i have heard of a bloke that sat his gps on his coil and it stuffed his gps up,
just to be sure it was the detector that done it he tried it again with
another gps, the result was he now has two stuffed gps's
cheers all

Mark,
why not work out the bearing back to wherever you've decided you want to go, make a note of the bearing (should be magnetic so select that on your GPS) then switch the thing off and march on the compass bearing. If you become geographically embarrassed en route to your waypoint, switch the GPS on again and check the bearing - then march off to your waypoint again. Absolutely no need to have your GPS switched on continuously provided you know how to transfer your GPS bearing to a magnetic compass.

Naturally this presupposes you're not running your GPS in long/lat which is more appropriate to maritime or aviation use. Believe me the GPS will sooner or later let you down if you rely on it completely without backing it up with traditional map reading and compass skills.

Mike W

I usually just marked where I am and turn off the GPS and then only use it if needed. I have found that when using it to get a bearing back to where I want to go I need to turn my 4500 off as it seems to interfer with the Etrex. As Mike stated, I also take a manual bearing of the direction I am heading in case of GPS failure and also have a compass and spare set of batteries in my backpack.
Paul

Thanks guys
I will get a compass/map and learn to use them as a back up,it is a bit of a shock when you get used to GPS units which make it very easy to find your way in the bush and then over time start to switch off your inbuilt navagation without realising.
It looks like detector fields can damage GPS units so don't get caught like I did and keep them well away from your coils.
Mark

Hi Mark,

I have had the exact same unit for 2yrs now and have never had a problem with it????



I never turn mine off, I usually track the whole day as below. May have just been a case of bad luck mate.



PS: I've only ever detected with a Exp II as yet, so have had no use of a 4500 etc with it.

cheers,
Steve

Hi Steve, Just don't think that a Explorer 2 would have anywhere near the EM field that a PI machine would create, especially when using a large mono which may be why I get the interference now with the 4500 and not so much with the 3000 which I use to mainly run a DD on.
Cheers, Paul

Yeah thats why I mentioned I have only used it with an EXP II.

good luck,
Steve

Steve I like the track log in the pic, thats handy to get a view of the area your working
I will have to play around with mine and load it onto Google earth to have a look.
I have put on waypoints for spot locations but didn't know track logs can be included.
Mark

ooooh! I am so going to walk in the pattern of a smiley face or a huge rude word and upload it to google earth!

Mark:

Yeah I usually set the track to record about every 2sec which is probably a bit of overkill, but I like the detail. Yeah you can upload track and way point data to googleearth.

What I also do is upload the track and way point data to my pc (save it) and then download it onto my GPS if I go back to the same area, that way I know what ground I've already covered.

Steve:

That would be funny, how about a large phallic symbol to mark your territory.

cheers,
Steve

Actually mate some aliens beat me to it.. in the middle of England there's a crop cirlce done in the shape of a giant penis! My daughter found it on google earth.
They've mastered intergalactic travel and wisely use thier new found knowledge to shoot across the universe and spend thier time farting about drawing rude pictures in some poor farmers corn paddock!

We all have our hobbies!!

Night all, up for work at 6am........

then 1 more sleep till Melb F1 GP, you bloody rippa!!!

steve

I have had the exact same unit for 2yrs now and have never had a problem with it????

I never turn mine off, I usually track the whole day as below. May have just been a case of bad luck mate.

Yeah Steve, I know you mentioned you only had an Exp 2 but you also quoted the above statements. I was only suggesting it was not bad luck just the case of using a PI machine.

Good Luck,
Paul