Magellan Triton --- Crazy Readings

[fenixdigger]

Hi guys;

I have several sites the unit will start jumping around with the readings going up and down. I move 50 ft. and it straightens out and locks on 1 position. When this happens, I will be locked to 8 or 9 sats. No high voltage wires or underground cables around. Any ideas???

 

[Andrew Kalinowski]

High voltage over or underground cables don't really affect GPS. What does affect it is clear view of the sky around you. If you are in a canyon (urban or natural) or have the reception blocked from one side or dealing with the forest canopy overhead or blocking one side, the readings may be severely affected. Some units are better with filtering stray (echo) signals than others. I don't have experience with the Triton so, I have no idea how well it deals with difficult reception but; in general, the best accuracy you can get is when you get clear reception from satellites evenly distributed around you. If there is no signal coming from a sector of the sky or there is only an echo of it, expect high dilution of precision. Sometimes moving a bit puts you in a spot where reception is clear and things get back to normal.

 

[edjcox]

Think of GPS signals as if they were optical.

Good sky view great reception, tree's and plants you get degradation. Building canyons you get multipaths and reflections that will degrade accuracy. Being on onse side of a mountain with a good block of sky and you might be down to a few sats (again location accuracy degradation).

When you start up your unit soem will give you an image of where SATS are supposed to be at that time in the sky. Try and make sure enough are visible to you. If not wait a n hour or so and the SATS will be in defferent places and might give you better coverage...

GPS SAT signals can be inadvetantly jammed by harmonics from local transmitters. Highly unlikely though.

Make sure your batteries are good...