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Was Is Waas Not Doing Anything?


HuskyGrad

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Hello

 

I own a Garmin eTrex Venture and have been using it for geocaching since I have started a couple of months ago. I decide to turn the WAAS on to help in the search for the harder caches. But for about two weeks now I have never seen the WAAS satellites do anything. The book for my unit says that when WAAS is enabled at least one satellite 35 and above should receive a signal and that on all the normal GPS satellites there should be a “D” in their strength bar. My GPS sees the WAAS satellites but never gets any signal from it. It also never gets below ~ 35 feet in accuracy even on a perfectly clear day in a wide open field. What is going on…is my GPS receiver broken? Thanks for the help.

 

Later,

Erik

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When I first turned on WAAS on my GPS I was dissapointed. Nothing happened. So I turned it off. Then I tried it again and my EPE was higher than without it so I turned it off. Several months later I turned it on again and forgot about it. Over the weeks that passed it got a WAAS lock, did the satalite table and so forth. Then one day I noticed all the D's on my satalite signal strenght bars and thought "Hey I'm getting WAAS." My EPE was single digit and WAAS was working like it was supposed to.

 

Then I turned it off again. It takes time to get WAAS running right is the only thing I can say.

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My experience was similar to Renegade Knight's - it took a while for the WAAS on my Garmin eTrex Vista to start "working". It didn't seem to be doing anything at fist, but I just left it on and forgot about it.

 

I now frequently get WAAS (D's on the satellite signal strength bars) and single digit accuracy.

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What does it mean if I have like 8 satellite locks, all with a "D", but I do not have a lock on satellite 35 or up?

 

Do I still have a WAAS lock?

According to the eTrex Vista manual, the WAAS satellite numbers are 33 and up, not 35 and up. And yes, it says differential correction has been received if you're showing the "D" in the satellite signal strength bar.

 

It also says (I didn't know this) that "it is helpful to orient the unit antenna toward the WAAS satellie shown in the skyview". It doesn't say why, but I'm guessing that this may speed up the process of downloading the information needed for corrections.

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