Navman 5500 problems

GaryC · 30 November 2009, 22:11

I have a Navman 5500 Chartplotter. It has started to loose sight of the satelites now and again. It can work fine for hours and then loose sight of ALL the satelites. Stay off for half hour or so and then comes back. It is the type with the remote receiver. It caught me out just as I was about to deploy divers and I had to fire up the back up which then caused a delay etc.

When it does go off I have checked the receiver cable and there is no apparent problem. I have wiggled it around etc and checked for nicks. Nothing.

Has anyone seen this problem before?

It is my assumption that it is the receiver or cable. Second question is... Has anyone tried the cheap receivers that you can get on ebay or am I asking for even more trouble.

Thanks

Gary

jyasaki · 01 December 2009, 15:48

Not sure of the Navman, but some of the GPS units use a NMEA 183 or NMEA 2000 network to communicate with the antenna. In that case, you *should* be able to swap antennas without too much trouble (haven't heard of too many people doing it though.)

Some makes are fairly sensitive to stray radar emissions (think Lowrance): a working radar set nearby can either temporarily disable or in some cases kill the antenna (the early LGC-200's were prone to this.)

Any chance of borrowing a different antenna and seeing if that's actually the problem?

jky

Ian Austin · 01 December 2009, 17:00

Hi Gary
I had a simular problem a couple years back with a 5600, it was the wire from the antenna, it broke right at the plug end, cut back an inch and fitted new plug and didn't work, the wire got crimped too much when fitting the new plug, fitted another plug and has worked fine since, probably will stop working now

Jizm · 04 December 2009, 06:13

My 5110i did this a couple of years ago, had to send it to navman for repair, I don't think they could fix it because they sent a new unit...

GaryC · 04 December 2009, 14:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jizm

My 5110i did this a couple of years ago, had to send it to navman for repair, I don't think they could fix it because they sent a new unit...

That is what I am worried about. Presumably that was within Warranty?

Gary

Jizm · 05 December 2009, 08:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by GaryC

That is what I am worried about. Presumably that was within Warranty?

Gary

Yep. Mind you the new unit wouldn't switch on the other day???