Finding Satellites

Yes. Two possibilities:
1) When you first turn it on, STAND STILL until it locates the birds.....or keep it on when you exit the car.
BUT
If you are in a BIG city with TALL buildings......the sat signal is blocked and reflected so much that there probably is nothing you can do to "fix" the situation. The problem often starts when you enter a parking garage.

An external antenna might help but they aren't available for most models.

I agree that it helps to stay put while searching for satellites in a new location. As for an external antenna, there's a jack on the rear of the 760 for that purpose if you want to give it a try.

This happened to me in Rome and Venice. We walked a little in Rome but it never would get closer than 90 feet. Never knew just what side of the street we were on.
Venice, with the little streets and buildings (walking only, no cars) and the water was another story. We started out on top of a bridge with good site of the sky. After several minutes in the ally ways we lost sat. and were LOST. Took 2 hours to find a spot to get sat. Then ploted a route back and looked at it all the way before we took a step just incase we lost it again. Needless to say if not for the GPS we would not have found our way back but on that same note we wouldn't have gone and wouldn't have been lost and wouldn't have seen so many great sights in Venice.

My suggestion is get the proper tool for the job, even though automotive units claim and even have a pedestrian mode, there not the best at it or geocaching.

Garmins
eTrex Vista® HCx
Enjoy Clear Reception

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I've had this same problem with my C340. It works fine when plugged in in the car, but when it's unplugged and you try to use it, it cannot find a satellite, no matter how flat the area you are is and how still you stay. I suspect the battery just isn't powerful enough to actually find the satellites (my GPS is probably six years old now, which might have something to do with it).

Your GPS receiver is a very simple minded beast. It makes a lot of assumptions. One of the assumptions it makes is that when it wakes up, it is still in the same place it was in when it was last powered off.

This assumption, plus saving details on satellite orbital parameters (the almanac), and a few other tricks are what give modern GPS units the ability to give you a fix in a minute or less.

A very good way to confuse a GPS receiver, then, is to turn it off and move it a few hundred miles or more. Turning it off in San Jose (California) and back on again in Los Angeles is good for a little confusion. San Jose to Atlanta is much better. San Jose to London, and it will be quite upset!

Because when you turn it on, it takes its last position, the current time, and calculates satellite positions using the almanac data it saved -- for the last position it was in! And it thinks bird 23 should be in range -- but it's not! And it should be able to hear birds 6 and 11, but it can't!

Eventually the little beast figures something is wrong; either the antenna isn't working too well, or it's been moved.

So it goes back to a slower start-up approach, searching the sky for *any* birds. If you've moved far enough, and it's been turned off long enough, it might decide that the almanac has gone rancid and it needs a new one. That's a really cold start, which can take many minutes.

So if you move your GPS a fair distance, over a couple of hundred miles or so, be nice to it and put it somewhere with a good, full, unobstructed view of the sky. Turn it on and let it sit there unmoving for ten minutes or so -- that's enough time for it to refresh its almanac.

Week before last I parked my car in an n-story parking garage. When I drove into it, my 680 complained bitterly that it couldn't see any birds.

When I left the parking garage at the end of the day, what I *should* have done was not let the 680 turn on until I was outside with a view to the sky. But I let it come on automagically when I started the car. By the time I got out of the parking structure (a few minutes due to traffic), it was convinced that I was playing tricks on it, and started asking me questions about the date, time, and if it was still in the same general area. When I got out of the parking garage, it took a few minutes before I had a fix.

Cheers--

Could this have anything to do with GPS unit orientation? When used in the car, the back of the unit is typically facing out the windshield, "looking" down the road. When used as a hand held unit, I suspect the the unit is held so the back is "looking" at the ground so the viewer can more easily see the display.

I can attest to the good reception of the eTrex HCx models, well at least the Legend but I assume they'll all function as well. I was on vacation a couple of months back in San Antonio doing the river walk with my Legend HCx, a bad place for sat reception, and it didn't fail to guide me once in there. I also use it for trail mapping while on my dirt bike under fairly heavy cover and it still manages to grab a good signal. Add to that these models have long battery life, something the auto models lack.

Steve

i don;t thing that should be a problem, the GPS reception should be the same everywhere given that you are under a clear sky. The problem seems to be on the GPS unit, may be its taking a longer time to get a GPS fix.

If you don't tell your unit approximately where you are, stand there until it starts to get signals, and it will adjust. My GPSMAP 60CSX takes a minute or so longer to get a fix when I've turned it off in say Illinois and back on in Germany, but it will get a fix and adjust itself accordingly once it gets at least 3 birds it can use.

I will try some of those fixes and let you all, know how it works out.

Nah, that's not the problem we're describing. I've gone with the thing sitting outside overnight and it couldn't get a fix on the satellites. There's something about being unplugged that makes it unable to find a satellite.

I think it is likely that the power cord is also functioning as an antenna of sorts........and your built-in antenna is not connected anymore.

P.S. Please TRIM your quotes in the future.