[CA] [CA11] Intermittent no fix

[Paradox_John]

I have a GPS 130 interfaced with a gS165. The system is five years old. I have not had any problems until two days ago, when the "no fix" message came up on the screen about six times in the space of 10 minutes. Each time the fix came back within 15 seconds or so.

This happened about an hour from our home port after running for four hours. After that, I had no problems for the last hour of the trip.

When I started to close up the boat, I noticed that the battery fault light was on and that the house battery voltage was quite low: 10.4v. Again, I have never seen this before. Perhaps I have an alternator issue?

When I plugged into shore power, the voltage started to come back up and eventually got to and remains at the normal level of around 13 v.

I checked all connections inside the boat and everything seems nice and tight.

Questions:

1. Is the intermittent "no fix" message an indication of something starting to fail?

2. Is it possible that the low voltage (battery fault) caused the gps to lose the signals from the satellites?

[Chuck - Raymarine - Moderator]

Welcome to the Raymarine Forum John,

Q1. Is the intermittent "no fix" message an indication of something starting to fail?
A1. Axiom and Axiom Pro MFDs feature an internal GPS receiver. The latter may be accessorized with a GA150 GPS antenna to permit the MFD's internal GPS receiver to be used in locations where insufficient GPS signal strength may be available to the MFD. All MFDs ma also be interfaced to an external GPS sensor (ex. Raystar 130, Raystar 150, etc.) which combines GPS receiver and antenna within a single device. The symptom reported is most commonly encountered within systems featuring more than one GPS receiver and the operator has failed to use the Data Sources feature to configure the system to use the external GPS receiver or MFD receiving the highest level of GPS signal strength. In this case, the Raystar 130 GPS sensor should be configured as the system's data source for GPS, Date/Time, and Datum. If after doing so, should the problem persist, then please respond accordingly.

Q2. Is it possible that the low voltage (battery fault) caused the gps to lose the signals from the satellites?
A2. The specified condition can cause any one of a number of failures, including loss of GPS data.