[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?