GPS Issues

[C. Bucher]

I got a new Lowrance 3500c. Its all installed and the antenna is mounted on the roof. Everything is hardwired, soldered, and mounted with nuts/bolts, yadda yadda. When I turn the unit on, it begins to simulate. It is in demo mode and wont allow me to set my local times.

The problem I am having is that I can find my location with it by using the arrow keys, but it doesn't seem to be aquiring my position through the satelites.

With our old handheld magellan we used to turn it on and wait a little while for the satelites to aquire and then the gps would track and what not.

This unit seems to not even aquire satelites and I cannot get it to stop going into demo and simulation mode everytime I turn it off and back on.

It's not an important piece for our racing as its mostly for chasing and what not, but the point is wont seem to work.

Any suggestions?

[14802]

When you first start the unit up it should respond w/ "aquiring position"??Make sure the receiver is in clear line of site(no major metal objects) the power is hooked up to your lgc-2000. Also check into your menu page and go into status and find what kind/how many power level bars are in your area, if it cannot find more than three it will not respond..If all else fails call jimmy @P.C.I.

[Chase 2]

Any suggestions?

Take the car outside so the it has a clear view of the sky.

[sparkypyro]

It comes factory set in demo mode. Go through the menu's and turn off the demo mode.

[S of SMD]

make sure you have BOTH hot wires to positive feed. otherwise it will not go out of demo mode

[C. Bucher]

Okay well car is outside so I know that isnt the issue. It has a clear line of sight to the sky at home as well as out at Plaster City where it was today.

Am I understanding this correctly when I hear that there is a power source for both the unit and the antenna?

This could be the issue. I have the power and ground for the unit itself all connected, but I dont belive I connected any power or ground wires for the antenna itself. All that I have done is connect the antenna to the back of the unit via the cable it came with.

Do I need to put power and ground to another set of wires?

Thanks

[14802]

Yes you need to power both supplies. The thicker wires red,black, white is power to your unit. Three smaller wires red, black, bare siver sheild wire is for the power to the receiver(LGC-2000). The other 4 wires are data ithink orange, blue, yellow,sheild are for some sort of interface(not used)

[C. Bucher]

Gotcha. Tried it real fast and sure enough that was the problem.

When I read the instruction manual I didn't pick up on the part about the antenna being needing a constant feed. Re-read the manual after you all posted and tried putting power to BOTH lines. It aquired my position right away.

Thanks again guys!

[DJDIRTWORKS]

I have run into this problem myself several times. It appears that the newer NMEA 2000 antennas are SOMETIMES powered through a seperate power cord ( which doesn't make a whole lot of sense-seeing as that cord goes right into the back of the GPS), and other times they wire up just like the old ones. A quick way to see if your antenna is worrking is to take it out of demo mode (located under GPS SETUP) and then go to the STATUS page-if the screen says " GPS module not responding", there's a pretty good chance that you need to hook up the seperate power lead. The different power connections are buried somewhere in the instructions.
Two interesting things.
1- the newer antennas are NOT interchangeable with the older ones. The connector has 1 more contact in the newer ones-so if you have an older spare for a newer GPS you really don't have a spare.
2-the new units are awesome! The color ones are so easy to read in sunlight-far eiser than the older monochrome ones. And they power up and find their position lightning fast! This is really nice-no more waiting several minutes for your GPS to wake up and get with the program.

[C. Bucher]

I can totally agree. I read through the instructions once and then twice and totally missed the part about the antenna itself having constant draw. I figured the chord that ran from the antenna to the GPS itself was all that was needed. Not so. I eventually (thanks to this board) found the other power and ground cables and wired those. Fired the unit right up and sure enough it aquired my position.

This is certainly an awesome unit. I used to play around with my dad's little hand held magellan and it was really cool because even that tiny unit had such a good display and plot trail. This unit that I have now is thousands of times better than the old hand held.

Anyone have trail they wouldn't mind e-mailing me for the dash course. I can't prerun it and would like to have something on the screen other than a few waypoints to guide by.

[Superfab]

When I bought mine I had the same problem. Lowrance said it was an ommision in the manual and they were going to fix it. Some of the newer units came with an extra instruction sheet to correct this error. It's the first thing I check when someone has this problem.